Chrome 14 Beta Brings Native Code

In not so new news this week, Google has released Chrome 14 to the beta testing channel which brings with it Google's Native Client technology.  The download is available on their beta downloads pages.

So what does all this mean?  Well in short, quite a lot.  To read more about it, head over to Google's Native Client SDK pages which explains everything in much more detail.  To summarise quickly, it allows compiled C and C++ code to run within the browser which in theory means that anything you write will be able to run on any of the major platforms giving almost true application portability.  It also in theory could reduce security threats because Native Client utilises what Google calls a 'double sandbox' so that system security will be difficult to penetrate.  Performance should also be enhanced, as desktop applications will be able to run within the browser.

If Google get this right, it should allow for a much better browsing experience, and it ties directly in with their Chrome OS strategy with the browser being a key application to do most things on the OS.  And if they do get this right, it would allow web developers to utilise code libraries from multiple platforms.  Sounds great!

If you get a chance, download Chrome 14 and take a look at their Native Client demo here.