Web Developers: Keeping Up With Google Chrome

Original: Web Developers: Keeping Up With Google Chrome

Google Chrome is moving fast. Version 2.0 was stabilized just six months after 1.0, and auto-updates have ensured that nearly all users are using the newest version of the browser within days of a release. As a web developer, it can be a bit daunting that the browser version changes so fast: What if the new version breaks something? How can I be prepared for changes that will affect my sites?

To answer these questions, it's helpful to know how Google Chrome releases are made, the relationship between "dev," "beta," and "stable" update channels, and how you can test new versions. In this post, we'll be expanding on Mark Larson's earlier explanation of the update channel system.

Dev channel. The Dev channel is where the sausage gets made. Dev releases happen frequently, and they track what's happening upstream in WebKit, V8, and other relevant systems very closely. This means that c rsion tries to read the newer us