GPU-powered Canvas and CPU-powered WebGL are now available in Google Chrome 18 Beta.
Now that Google Chrome 17 is in the stable channel, Google Chrome 18 has been pushed to the beta channel. The latest chrome to wear the beta label comes with two big new features, both focusing on graphics.
On the one hand, 2D HTML5 Canvas graphics are now hardware accelerated, resulting in a huge increase in speed. This could mean that Canvas games should run significantly smoother and will be able to use much more detailed graphics.
"For most Windows and Mac users, we’ve enabled GPU-accelerated rendering of 2D Canvas content, so that canvas-based games and animations run faster and feel smoother," Google explained.
"This is a tricky area to optimize, due to the wide variety of hardware and operating system configurations found in the wild," it added.
The feature only works for Windows and Mac users, it was deemed too unstable for Linux. What's more, the team is looking to see how stable it proves in the wild with the Chrome 18 beta. If problems are encountered, the feature may be pushed back to Chrome 19.
