Keeping up with their six week development-cycle, Google's Chrome developers have brought another new version of the popular browser into the beta channel.
Chrome 8 brings all of the normal tweaks, fixes and bugs, but also adds a very interesting new feature - an inbuilt PDF viewer. With the beta, you'll be able to open the documents inside Chrome without installing any additional software or plugins. According to the announcement, "the PDF document will load as quickly and seamlessly as a normal web page in the browser," which should be a huge improvement over certain third-party viewers.
Knowing full well that some shady individuals like to hide malicious code inside PDF documents, the developers have also put the viewer in its own 'sandbox', separate from the rest of the browser. This should stop any malware from infecting the rest of the system and keep your PC running smoothly.
Having taken the latest version for a quick test-drive, we can confirm that the viewer is exceptionally fast, and while you shouldn't expect any bells and whistles, it does provide a very smooth, very quick experience. However, at the very least you can save PDFs, print, and fill in forms.
In a related announcement, the developer channel has been updated to Chrome 9, for those feeling particularly adventurous.
Chrome 8 is expected to be released from beta and join the stable channel in about four weeks time. For anyone wanting to give it a test drive, the installer can be downloaded from Google now, where you'll also find a full list of changes.
