Google has released Chrome 25 to the beta channel for Windows, Mac, and Linux, and while the previous release wasn’t too surprising this one has some particularly important changes.
Perhaps the most significant will see external extension deployment disabled by default, which means if you install an application on your Windows system, for instance, the author will no longer be able to silently add a Chrome extension as well just by manipulating the Registry. They’ll normally have to ask your permission to install any add-ons within Chrome itself.
Google hasn’t stopped there, though. If your Chrome 25 installation already has some extensions that have been deployed in this way then they’ll be disabled by default, and when the browser first launches you’ll see a one-time dialog prompting you to re-enable them.
Elsewhere, Chrome 25 aims to allow search engines to customize the new browser’s new tab page with a search box or whatever else they might need, as well as displaying any results in Chrome’s omnibox. Google hopes this will save time by minimizing the need to visit your preferred engine’s home page whenever you want to search.
Support for the JavaScript speech API could make for a more interesting browsing experience in future, with support for speech recognition as well as the more usual text-to-speech options.
More technical additions include what Google’s official Chrome 25 blog post calls “better support for HTML5 time/date inputs”, as well as “better WebGL error handling.
And as usual, if you’re in need of the details then everything you need to know about Chrome 25(and probably a lot you really don’t) is available in the SVN Revision Log.