Google Chrome Beta Nearing, Some Features on Hold

If you’re waiting for Google’s Chrome browser for the Mac, a stable beta may not be that far away.

Yesterday, TechCrunch pointed to to a Twitter posting from Mike Pinkerton of the Chrome for Mac team noting that there were only eight bugs remaining to be addressed before the Mac beta of Chrome is ready for its launch expected for some time in the next month.

“8 remaining M4 Mac beta blockers! Go team! #chrome”

This means that there are only 8 things standing in the way of Chrome for Mac going beta. “M4” stands for “milestone 4,” which is how they phrase “version 4,” which the Mac beta build of Chrome will be (the current dev channel version is 4.0.249.12, for example).

So far, the following features have been pushed out to the next beta version in order to allow Google to meet its goal of releasing the initial beta before the end of the year:

– Bookmark Manager

– App Mode (allows Chrome to run Web apps in their own simplified windows)

– Task Manager

– Gears (offline support for Web apps; apparently being scrapped entirely in favor of HTML5)

– Bookmark syncing

– Multi-touch gestures

– 64-bit support

– Full support for extensions

– Full screen mode (possibly)

Developer builds of Chrome for Mac have been available for several months, but the move to a beta version suggests that users can expect to see a fairly stable browser with a number of significant features included. Work will continue on Chrome with additional Developer Preview releases occurring on a regular basis. Refined versions will then periodically be released as new additions to Chrome’s Beta channel. Releases will eventually make their way to Chrome’s “Stable” channel, which will offer “rock solid” performance without the inclusion of features still under development and testing.