Chrome Canary

Gia Edgington
Nov 3 · 4 min read

As a web developer, your test browser choice is probably dependent on the project. Intranet development for a regulated company might dictate Internet Explorer on Windows, or Safari for an all Mac user base. More often than not, you will end up living in that browser barring the need for some outlier issue that requires the use of your preferred debugger.

Internet development, as we know, is a whole other ballgame. It has, in my opinion, become increasingly less valid to stick to your favorite browser, say Firefox, and disregard the dominance of Chrome. So, with that in mind, and that most of us know that there’s more than one release channel for Chrome, I would like to posit that you may have chosen your release channel without adequate forethought. If you’re an experienced developer, you’ll probably want to stop reading, as this will unlikely be useful to you.

For the rest of us, I’ll first cover the purpose for each channel and explain something that you might not realize by starting with Chromium. Many novice developers I’ve met seem to be under the impression that Chromium is the “correct” browser to develop and test with. Most of the time their explanation is that it’s somehow more advanced or developer oriented than Chrome. Not only is this completely false, it is also comparing apples to oranges. In fact, Chromium isn’t technically a browser at all. It is the name of the project that manages the open source C++ code for the vanilla form of Chrome. Even were you to download the most stable compiled version, often not the case if you don’t know what you’re doing, you will still have a browser that doesn’t fully represent an official release of Chrome. And that’s the best case scenario, since more often than not, inexperienced developers will end up at the download-chromium site on appspot, which clearly states “This is a raw build of Chromium for Windows x64, right off the trunk. It may be tremendously buggy.”

With that said, there are actually only four valid versions of Chrome: Stable, Beta, Dev, and Canary. Chromium is not valid and is literally described on their own sight, chromium.org, starting with the phrase “If you’re absolutely crazy…”. In other words, for people that a) know what they are doing — I mean really know, and b) have some specific project related reason for using it. More likely than not, since you’re still reading this, that isn’t you.

Rather than give my own run-down on the other builds, I’m going to provide the descriptions found on the Chromium project site. They are brief and succinct, allowing me to focus on what I feel are the two most valid channels if you want to give the probably false impression that you’re a bad-ass developer:

  • Stable channel: This channel has gotten the full testing and blessing of the Chrome test team, and is the best bet to avoid crashes and other issues. It’s updated roughly every two-three weeks for minor releases, and every 6 weeks for major releases.
  • Beta channel: If you are interested in seeing what’s next, with minimal risk, Beta channel is the place to be. It’s updated every week roughly, with major updates coming every six weeks, more than a month before the Stable channel will get them.
  • Dev channel: Want to see what’s happening quickly, then you want the Dev channel. The Dev channel gets updated once or twice weekly, and it shows what we’re working on right now. There’s no lag between major versions, whatever code we’ve got, you will get. While this build does get tested, it is still subject to bugs, as we want people to see what’s new as soon as possible.
  • Canary build: Canary builds are the bleeding edge. Released daily, this build has not been tested or used, it’s released as soon as it’s built.

The only thing I want to add is that “Stable channel” just means what the average person will download when they go looking for Chrome online. In other words, regular old Chrome.

With this knowledge in mind, a novice developer should be using either Dev channel or Canary build. I say this understanding that some projects may have specific demands and this might be bad advice in that case. But if that isn’t the case. These two are what you should choose between.

Dev channel will give 99.9% of the stability of Stable channel, in fact, but also help you keep ahead of the release curve for your own release. This is the humble developers go-to version.

Canary build is a little harder to explain. It’s more than their description above. To sum it up, however, it’s more-or-less a late branch of a stable Chromium build along with what Google is experimenting with which may or may not end up in the Dev channel. But there’s more! It has experimental developer tools, more network debug features, and even some unpublished Javascript command-line commands. So, if you insist on unnecessarily posing as a badass for no good reason, this is the browser for you.

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