With improved features and capabilities comes Google's Tuesday-released new beta version of its chrome browser - the first chief update of its general public-aimed software, almost half-a-year after Google ventured into the browser market.

In its discernible attempt to keep up with market leader Microsoft, Google's new version boasts of faster performance for web surfers. The key new features incorporated into the browser comprise - full page zoom; auto-fill of personal information on online forms; auto-scroll capability; and the advantage of side-by-side view of various Web pages by dragging tabs within the browser window.

Earlier all these new features were available to programmers who were using Chrome's "developer" version. However, now Google has put together all the mentioned updates into a more consistent beta test version, which is already available for download.

Google's product manager, Brian Rakowski, elaborating on the newly-added features, said: "We're doing our best to quickly churn out new features as they are available rather than saving them up for occasional major releases. The best thing about this new beta is speed - it's 25 percent faster on our V8 benchmark and 35 percent faster on the Sunspider benchmark than the current stable channel version of Chrome and almost twice as fast compared to our original beta version."