Posted on Thursday, March 29 2012 @ 20:11 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck
Hexus
delivers news that Google has released Chrome 18. This release fixes some security bugs, bundles the latest version of Flash, offers 2D performance enhancements, and enhanced 3D compatibility.
The 2D performance boost is in relation to the HTML5 Canvas, which is fast growing in popularity as a quick, plug-in-free way of delivering animated content, vector graphics and 2D games, with the new changes in Chrome 18 bringing advanced GPU acceleration to web developers' latest toy.
Chrome 18 also adds support for WebGL on older or limited functionality chips, where either the graphics chip or platform would not normally be capable of delivering an effect, Chrome allows this to be offloaded to the CPU and processed through TransGaming's SwiftShader. Whilst performance will take a hit, more content will be available to Chrome users running under such conditions, with SwiftShader offering some of the best CPU-bound performance ratings out there.
