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Over at Ars Technica they’ve got a nice write up about Google’s progress in bringing their WebKit-based Chrome browser to the Mac.

Chromium has made huge leaps forward. You can load web pages, follow links, and work (somewhat) with tabs. There’s no support for plug-ins, and the browser remains fairly unstable, leaving as it did a wake of hung processes which I could follow using Leopard’s Activity Monitor.”

In fact so much progress has been made that The Googlers behind Chrome wouldn’t name a date or even a timeframe for the release of Chrome the Mac. Hmm, good luck with that.

In the mean time, the folks at Mesa Dynamics have created a multi-process, “Chrome-inspired” browser, Stainless, that’s also based on WebKit with the big difference being that they’ve actually put out a product that you can get and use. The most recent release is 0.5.4, maintenance update that tweaks features and quashes bugs, and is generally representative of the steady progress Mesa has made since first releasing Stainless way, way back in September of last year.

• added: labels display bookmark titles and mouseover URL
• added: middle-click support for bookmark opening and tab closing
• fixed: after continuous use server process may slow down and use excessive CPU
• fixed: dragging bookmark to + does not open a new session group
• fixed: window switching via window menu doesn’t switch spaces when needed
• fixed: bring to front fails when windows are in different spaces
• fixed: bookmarklets that use cookies or HTTP POST don’t work
• various other minor bug fixes and enhancements

Get your copy of Stainless 0.54 here (515KB).

Filed under: Mac