Google has launched Chrome 14, adding two major new features for app developers.
Following on from last month's beta release, the latest iteration of Chrome comes with a Web Audio API so developers can add "fancy audio effects," Google said.
Google has also added Native Client capabilities. The Native Client SDK will hand developers a set of APIs to "build web applications that seamlessly execute native compiled code inside the browser," Google said.
This means the end user will not have to download a plug-in to run an app, which should, in theory, make the web app run as quickly and smoothly as software running on a hard drive.
Currently, the Native Client technology only supports apps in the Chrome Web Store, but Google is working on opening it up as soon as it can.
There were some notable additions for users running the latest Mac OS too.
"This release also contains some changes for our Chrome users on Mac OS X Lion. For all web pages, Chrome uses Lion's overlay scrollbars, which appear only while you're scrolling," said Brad Chen, Software Engineer, in a blog post.
"We've also added initial support for Lion's full-screen mode, triggered by a full-screen button or Ctrl+Shift+F."
A host of crash bugs have been fixed, whilst "some all-around visual polish" has been added.
In July, figures showed Chrome had gained yet more market share, as Internet Explorer and Firefox saw declines.
