The browsing field is looking increasingly competitive these days.  Firefox 4 will soon be released and comes packing a fresh new look, new features, and a speed bump.  Likewise Opera 11 is shaping up to be an impressive package as well, adding extensions for the first time, and continuing to lead Firefox in speed.  And Internet Explorer 9 from Microsoft could soon mean that Windows users can finally stick with the default browser and get acceptable speed and standards compliance (something not so true for past IE versions).

But Chrome 8 looks to offer a well thought out package that may be the cream of the crop for this loaded generation of browser wars. Chrome has always vied with Opera for the title of fastest browser.  Now both browsers have extensions, as well.

While Opera 11 has some new perks -- tab stacking, improved mouse gestures, etc -- Chrome 8 adds something that's arguably an even bigger deal -- the world's first in-browser web app store, dubbed "Web Store".

Among the cool upcoming apps to be featured in the store are Plants. vs. Zombies and Lego Star Wars.  For the non-gamers there's also a Sports Illustrated app, a $4.99 image editing app dubbed "Dark Room" (think online Photoshop Elements).

The concept is very ambitious.  While it remains to be seen how successful these apps really are in action, it arguably is reason enough to give Chrome 8 a try.  The store itself will launch before the year's end, according to Google and now is supported on the software side.

Also new in Chrome 8 are over 800 bug fixes and a built-in PDF reader.  

The current version of Chrome 8 is Version 8.0.552.215.  You can download it from here.