Changing your computer's web browser is a piece of cake:pick one of the other big names in the industry, download it, and install it. The end result, in any case, is a well-polished and stable browser that should work for the majority of your needs.
ContentsHistoryCanariDevelopment channelBeta channelStable channelWhich version to use?
Chrome is a relative newcomer to web browsers and, unlike Firefox, has never been rebranded. Google retains overall control of the browser, hence its tight integration with other Google services. Chromium and SRWare Iron, the two browsers we've talked about before, offer the familiar feeling of being an alternative without Google's services.
Canarian versions of Chrome can be distinguished by their yellow-tinted icon and are released nightly in the same way as Mozilla's Nightly versions of Firefox. Canary builds are not subject to pre-launch testing and therefore may not work as expected or may not work at all.
Although it is a variation of the Chrome browser, it works separately. Rather than sharing a profile or replacing an existing installation of Chrome, Canary builds can be used separately and won't retain passwords or history from other builds. Canary is the only version of Chrome to work this way, mitigating most of the risks associated with such an experimental build.
Canary is similar to snapshot versions of Chromium, but it includes some of the features that Chromium does not offer for various reasons. Among these are the built-in Flashplayer and PDF readers which can be extremely beneficial for some users.
Note :Chrome Canary is only available for Windows and OS X.
Once Chrome hits the "dev channel", it moves closer to the finished and final builds of the browser. Some bugs may still exist, but the majority should have been ironed out at this point and updates are therefore less frequent. In fact, rather than updating once a day, development builds may only update once or twice a week.
If you want to use a pre-release version of the browser for general browsing, it's probably a bad idea to choose a more distant variant of the release, like Canary, over this one. Since the dev channel updates less frequently, it should be significantly better for overall stability.
As the "Beta Channel" its name suggests, this version of the browser is closest to release. As the name of the beta suggests, the release of the browser is very close at this point in the development cycle. Updates appear once a week, but major updates only come once every six weeks or so.
The Chromium Project website explains the beta channel as the best way to test the browser with "minimal risk". Whether you're willing to risk bugs along the way to get the browser version even further down the development roadmap or not is entirely up to you, although the beta channel provides a good first foray. in pre-release versions of Chrome.
The stable browser channel is, of course, the most popular version. Google does not make it clear that other versions exist and do not need them. Chrome's Stable Channel does everything most people require of their browser and does it admirably well.
Updates for Chrome's stable channel appear every few weeks, bringing minor changes and revisions. Once every six weeks, a release will change things more drastically, and this is signaled by a global version number change.
If you're not sure which version of Chrome best suits your needs, chances are the stable channel is good enough. If you enjoy experimenting with browsers at their "bleeding edge", then it is possible to do so without jeopardizing your current Chrome installation.
By using Canary Builds, you won't interfere with your daily Chrome build, but you can get a taste of the browser's progress. For example, the photo above of Chrome's bookmark management displays fonts slightly differently. It's a minor change that's hard to highlight, but one that could have wider impacts on how websites look.
