With Microsoft releasing the first Internet Explorer (IE) 9 beta yesterday, the spotlight is squarely on Internet Explorer. Hardware acceleration is among the several advancements that IE 9 boasts over its predecessors. It is something that Google's Chrome does not currently have. Thankfully for Chrome users, they will not have to wait too long for hardware-accelerated graphics to show up in their favorite browser.

The latest Chromium “trunk” and Chrome “canary” builds already feature some of the relevant enhancements. Hardware acceleration will be part of the next major release of the browser, Chrome 7, which is just round the corner.

“2D canvas acceleration is now available in trunk and the canary build by using the --enable-accelerated-2d-canvas command-line switch (coming to the developer channel shortly).We’ve also been hard at work improving our 3D graphics stack,” Google said in a recent blog post.

According to James Robinson, a software engineer at Google, “Chromium already achieves some impressive gains on the recent IE9 Platform Preview Test Drive 2D canvas demo,” with initial results suggesting up to 60x speed improvement over previous Chrome versions.

The Google Chrome Web Store is now open to developers. The developer preview means that developers have a fair amount of time to acquaint themselves with important aspects of the web store ahead of its public launch later this year. They can begin uploading apps through the Google Chrome Extensions Gallery and experience what selling web apps through the online store will feel like once it is live.

“Developers can now start uploading apps and experiment with packaging them, installing them in Chrome (using the latest Chrome dev channel) and integrating our payments and user authentication infrastructure,” Google said in a blog post. The web apps uploaded to the gallery during the developer preview will remain invisible to the general public.

The initial buzz surrounding Chrome OS became a bit watered down the moment Google bared its cloud- and Linux-based operating system to peering eyes at a special event last November. Skeptics have been wondering whether the world is prepared for a cloud-based operating system. Leave aside the question of humanity's preparedness, doubts have also been cast on the product itself, with some doubters even writing it off as being little more than a glorified web browser.

But PC vendors can not ignore Chrome no matter what the skeptics have to say, for a bad bet might be better than no bet at all. According to a Reuters report, quoting a top Dell executive, the PC vendor is not going to be a mere spectator when Chrome OS debuts in the “late fall.” Amit Midha, Dell's president for Greater China and South Asia, has revealed that his company is currently discussing shipping Chrome OS netbooks with Google. Midha told Reuters that Dell wants to be at the vanguard of innovation.