GOOGLE CHROME 12 AVAILABLE

Google's Chrome browser has been updated to version 12. This stable version brings expanded malware protection. In addition to Chrome’s existing phishing defenses and Google’s Safe Browsing integration, Chrome can now warn users before malicious files are downloaded. Another handy security-related update in Chrome 12 is that its built-in file clean-up tools can now delete Flash cookies (Local Shared Objects) in addition to standard browser cookies.

And since updates are always about adding functionality, it’s worth noting that Google Chrome 12 has finally done away with the Google Gears plug-in.

Chrome 12 has hardware accelerated 3D CSS enabled by default. To check out the capabilities head on over to the Chrome Experiments site and play around with some of the fun demos.

If your using Google Chrome you can wait for it to update automatically or click the wrench and then About Chrome. If you need to download Chrome, click here.

GOOGLE SAYS GOODBYE TO GEARS IN CHROME 12

Gears is a browser plugin released by Google back in 2007, The initial goal was to add support for offline web apps, but the plugin added many other HTML5 features at a time when HTML5 wasn't a priority for most browsers. Google discontinued Gears last year to focus on "bringing all of the Gears capabilities into web standards like HTML5" and to implement them in Google Chrome. Features like geolocation, notifications, web workers, application caches are already available in Google Chrome, so it's probably the right time to stop bundling the Gears plugin.