Google’s (News – Alert) open-source cross platform browser, Google Chrome, has received some upgrades in its various versions. The Beta version has received an upgrade to version 23, while the Dev version moves a notch higher to Version 24.

In the upgrades, Google Chrome 24 Dev gets some minor updates while the Google Chrome 23 Beta steals the show by getting a whole lot of revamped and new features/capabilities. The new beta version comes with integrated support for a number of Application Programming Interfaces (API) and HTML5 technologies that will improve on web video playback and real-time audio/video interactions over the Internet for end users.

For instance, Google Chrome 23 Beta will have track support for HTML5 video enabling developers to add elements like subtitles, captions, chapters, descriptions and metadata to videos. Adding such information straight to the video clip will augment user experience and ensure that they get the most from the video without straining.

In bid to avoid start-up and buffering delays, the browser version will also support MediaSource API that allows the morphing of video quality to suite the network and computer performance of a specific user to avoid stretching the use of available resources to achieve impossible perfection at the expense of user enjoyment. The people at Google chrome have taken the liberty to upload demos of these capabilities on the web for user review.

Developers will also get a good chance to play with the browser version since the PeerConnection API puts them at liberty to develop and deploy apps supporting real-time audio and video calling with the need of a separate plug-in. The PeerConnection, together with getUserMedia API, are the next steps in the development of WebRTC standard that aims at delivering high quality video and data exchange over the Web.

Google Chrome Dev version 24.0.1284.2 changes are minor. It features updates to the V8 and WebKit engines and a number of fixes like the one that led to the crashing of Chrome when attempting to launch YouTube (News – Alert) in full-screen mode. Both new versions of the browser are available as freeware downloads supporting Mac, Windows and Linux. Those out for stability can settle for the more stable version, Google Chrome 22 FINAL.