Chrome Beta Loads Pages As You Type

Google has released a new beta version of Chrome that speeds up your browsing experience by loading web pages before you've even finished typing the URL.

Chrome 17 beta uses the existing autocomplete function, which predicts the URL you are typing into the browser's address field, also called the 'Omnibox', based on your browsing history and the Google search index.

“If the URL autocompletes to a site you're very likely to visit, Chrome will begin to pre-render the page," said Google software engineer Dominic Hamon. "Pre-rendering reduces the time between when you hit Enter and when you see your fully loaded web page- in some cases, the web page appears instantly." However, Google did not offer any data to back up these claims.

Autocomplete isn't a new feature. Google first offered the facility in its search engine in 2008, and had been experimenting with it as early as 2004. Google Instant, a feature that shows search results as you type, was introduced in September 2010, in both Google Search and Chrome.

For the moment, you'll only see the change in the beta version of Chrome 17, which may still have some bugs in it Hamon warned that only confident users should download the beta, and advised most people to stick to the latest stable version, Chrome 16.
 
Do Not Track add-on for Chrome released

A privacy campaigner has created a Chrome version of the Do Not Track add-on (http://bit.ly/donottrack284), the advert-blocking technology that comes built into Firefox and Internet Explorer. It lets you tell websites that you don't want your internet usage tracked by advertising systems. Google has never said why the tool isn't built into Chrome, but by not removing it from the Chrome Web Store, it appears that it doesn't mind someone else creating the add-on. At the time of writing, the add-on only works in Chrome 17 beta.