Google ships Chrome 18, patches bugs and boosts hardware acceleration

Google yesterday patched nine vulnerabilities in Chrome and boosted the speed and reach of the browser's hardware acceleration with the launch of version 18.

According to the company, Chrome 18 enables accelerated Canvas 2D on Windows and Mac machines with compatible graphics processor units (GPUs), and expands support for the WebGL 3D standard to older systems.

Canvas 2D acceleration has been part of earlier builds of Chrome, but this is the first time that Google has turned it on in a "stable" version of the browser. Read more...