Chrome 14 has finally hit the Beta channel.

On Thursday, The Chrome team officially announced the launch of Chrome 14.0.835.35 to the Beta channel on Windows, Mac, Linux, and Chrome Frame. It was a pretty big update- and a rather awesome one. If there were things to be excited about with Chrome 13, that’s doubly true for Chrome 14, which comes packed with a plethora of awesome new features that I can’t wait to see hit the stable release two months down the road.

I’d argue that the most exciting aspect of this release is that it’s primarily aimed at a particular usergroup. Developers, I’m looking at you.  Several of the most touted features in this update are designed specifically to make your lives easier.

First and foremost, Native Client has now been officially released. While it’s definitely been around for quite some time, it’s not really seen much exposure- or use. As a result, it’s basically been quietly gathering dust in Chromes about: flags section. Kind of a shame given its rather incredible potential.

NaCLBox is just one of the possible applications for Native Client.

If you’re not sure what Native Client is, don’t worry- there’s a lot of people in the same boat. The best way I can explain it is to tell you that it’s essentially a software virtualization interface designed for Google Chrome. They’ve explained it a little better on the Google Blog than I can here:

Native Client allows C and C++ code to be seamlessly executed inside the browser with security restrictions similar to JavaScript. Native Client apps use Pepper, a set of interfaces that provide C and C++ bindings to the capabilities of HTML5.

Windows applications are primarily coded in C. So, yeah. Native Client; kind of a big deal.

Second, Google’s released a new API for high performance audio, which they’ve christened “Web Audio API.” According to the Official Google Blog, “the Web Audio API supports audio effects such as room simulation and spatialization, allowing web developers to create even more interactive experiences and games.” They’ve provided some examples for the devs to toy around with, as well. Not as exciting as Native Client, but pretty cool just the same.

Also present in the new release is additional support for Mac OS X Lion, Print Preview for Mac, two new experimental APIs and a new Sync Encryption security feature. We’ll take a close look at those tomorrow, in the Weekly Release Roundup.

Via Chrome Release Blog, Google Chrome Blog

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