Chromium Blog: October 2021

Chrome 96 Beta: Conditional Focus, Priority Hints, and More

Thursday, October 21, 2021

Unless otherwise noted, changes described below apply to the newest Chrome beta channel release for Android, Chrome OS, Linux, macOS, and Windows. Learn more about the features listed here through the provided links or from the list on ChromeStatus.com. Chrome 96 is beta as of October 21, 2021.Preparing for a Three Digit Version NumberNext year, Chrome will release version 100. This will add a digit to the version number reported in Chrome's user agent string. To help site owners test for the new string, Chrome 96 introduces a runtime flag that causes Chrome to return '100' in its user agent string. This new flag called chrome://flags/#force-major-version-to-100 is available from Chrome 96 onward.Origin TrialsThis version of Chrome introduces the origin trials described below. Origin trials allow you to try new features and give feedback on usability, practicality, and effectiveness to the web standards community. To register for any of the origin trials currently supported in Chrome, including the ones described below, visit the Microsoft Edge Origin Trials Developer Console. New Origin TrialsConditional FocusApplications that capture other windows or tabs currently have no way to control whether the calling item or the captured item gets focus. (Think of a presentation feature in a video conference app.) MediaStreamTrack called FocusableMediaStreamTrack, which supports a new focus() method. Consider the following code:stream = await navigator.mediaDevices.getDisplayMedia(); let [track] = stream.getVideoTracks(); Where formerly, getVideoTracks() would return an array of MediaStreamTrack objects, it now returns FocusableMediaStreamTrack objects. (Note that this is expected to change to BrowserCaptureMediaStreamTrack in Chrome 97. At the time of this writing, Canary already does this.)To determine which display media gets focus, the next line of this code would call track.focus() with either "focus-captured-surface" to focus the newly captured window or tab, or with "no-focus-change" to keep the focus with the calling window. On Chrome 96 or later, you can step through our demo code to see this in action. Priority HintsPriority Hints introduces a developer-set "importance" attribute to influence the computed priority of a resource. Supported importance values are "auto", "low", and "high". Priority Hints indicate a resource's relative importance to the browser, allowing more control over the order resources are loaded. Many factors influence a resource's priority in browsers including type, visibility, and preload status of a resource.Other Features in this ReleaseAllow Simple Range Header Values Without PreflightRequests with simple range headersa preflight request. CORS requests can use the Range header in limited ways (only one valid range) without triggering a preflight request.Back-forward Cache on DesktopThe back-forward cache stores pages to allow for instant navigations to previously-visited pages after cross-site navigations.Cross-Origin-Embedder-Policy: credentiallessCross-Origin-Embedder-Policy has a new credentialless option that causes cross-origin no-cors requests to omit credentials (cookies, client certificates, etc.). Similarly to COEP:require-corp, it can enable cross-origin isolation.Sites that want to continue using SharedArrayBuffer must opt-in to cross-origin isolation. Doing so using COEP: require-corp is difficult to deploy at scale and requires all subresources to explicitly opt-in. This is fine for some sites, but creates dependency problems for sites that gather content from users (Google Earth, social media generally, forums, etc).CSS:autofill Pseudo ClassThe new autofill pseudo class enables styling autofilled form elements. This is a standardization of the :-webkit-autofill pseudo class which is already supported in WebKit. Firefox supports the standard version.Disable Propagation of Body Style to Viewport when ContainedSome properties like writing-mode, direction, and backgrounds are propagated from body to the viewport. To avoid infinite loops for CSS Container Queries, the spec and implementation were changed to not propagate those properties when containment is applied to HTML or BODY.font-synthesis PropertyThe font-synthesis CSS property controls whether user agents are allowed to synthesize oblique, bold, and small-caps font faces when a font family lacks faces.EME MediaKeySession Closed ReasonThe

now resolves with a string indicating the reason for closing. The returned string will be one of "internal-error", "closed-by-application", "release-acknowledged", "hardware-context-reset", or "resource-evicted".

HTTP to HTTPS Redirect for HTTPS DNS Records

Chrome will always connect to a website via HTTPS when an HTTPS record is available from the domain name service (DNS).

InteractionID in EventTiming

The linking multiple PerformanceEventTiming entries when they correspond to the same user interaction. Developers can currently use the Event Timing API to gather performance data about events they care about. Unfortunately, it is hard to link events that correspond to the same user interaction. For instance, when a user taps, many events are generated, such as pointerdown, mousedown, pointerup, mouseup, and click.



New Media Query: prefers-contrast
Chrome supports a new media query called 'prefers-contrast', which lets authors adapt web content to the user's contrast preference as set in the operating system (specifically, increased contrast mode on macOS and high contrast mode on Windows). Valid options are 'more', 'less', 'custom', or 'no-preference'.

Unique id for Desktop PWAs
Web app manifests now support an optional id field that globally identifies a web app. When the id field is not present, a PWA falls back to start_url. This field is currently only supported on desktop.

URL Protocol Handler Registration for PWAs

Enable web applications to registerProtocolHandler(). The new feature takes this a step further by letting web apps be launched directly when a custom scheme link is invoked.

WebAssembly

Content Security Policy

Chrome has enhanced Content Security Policy to improve interoperability with WebAssembly. The wasm-unsafe-eval controls WebAssembly execution (with no effect on JavaScript execution). Additionally, the script-src policies now include WebAssembly.

Reference Types

WebAssembly modules can now hold references to JavaScript and DOM objects. Specifically, they can be passed as arguments, stored in local and global variables, and stored in WebAssembly.Table objects.

Deprecations and Removals

This version of Chrome introduces the deprecations and removals listed below. Visit ChromeStatus.com for lists of previous removals.

The "basic-card" Method of PaymentRequest API

The deprecated the basic card payment method. Its usage is low and declining. It underperforms when compared to other payment methods in time-to-checkout and completion rate. Developers can switch to other payment methods as an alternative. Examples include Google Pay, Apple Pay, and Samsung Pay.

Removal timeline:

Chrome 96: the basic-card method is deprecated in the Reporting API.
Chrome 100: the basic-card method will be removed.

Sunsetting the "basic-card" payment method in the Payment Request API

Thursday, October 21, 2021

TheProgressive Web App. Today, developers can use the Payment Request API to access several payment methods, including “we announced that we will deprecate the "basic-card" payment handler on iOS Chrome, followed by other platforms in the future. The "basic-card" is a payment method that is typically built into the browser to help users easily enter credit card numbers without remembering and typing them. This was designed to make a good transition from a form based credit card payment to an app based tokenized card payment. In order to better pursue the goal of app based payment (and canMakePayment() will return false unless other capable payment methods are specified. This applies to all platforms including Android, macOS, Windows, Linux, and Chrome OS.

If you are using the Payment Request API with the "basic-card" payment handler, we suggest removing it as soon as possible and using an alternative payment method such as Google Pay or Samsung Pay.

Posted by Eiji Kitamura, Developer Advocate on the Chrome team

Extending Chrome App Support on Chrome OS

Thursday, October 14, 2021

Posted by Paul Rossman, Technical Program Manager, Chrome

Today we're announcing an important update to the Web apps on Chrome OS page. This page will be kept up to date as we progress together through this process.

We thank our community of developers who have provided feedback to help us shape this modified and simplified approach. We are inspired by a future beyond Chrome apps, where the ecosystem continues forward progress leveraging open Web standards across all modern browsers.

RenderingNG: an architecture that makes and keeps Chrome fast for the long term

Wednesday, October 6, 2021

RenderingNG is a long-term project to systematically improve Chrome performance as experienced by our users over time, while also anticipating future needs. This enables the web to stay fast even as the web becomes ever richer and more featureful.

coming to a conclusion. This not only makes the existing web super fast, but even better, it means Chrome is ready for the next generation of web content.

RenderingNG is comprised of three elements: performance, reliability and extensibility.

rastering every pixel on-screen, rather than one-at-a-time, yielding a large speedup.

Earlier generations of browsers were not built to natively support these technologies, because at the time GPUs and multi-core computers were not widespread. It turned out that bolting on highly parallel features was extremely challenging, requiring the team to re-architect the entire Chrome rendering pipeline over time. This re-architecture is RenderingNG.

Compat2021,

CompositeAfterPaint, a new compositing subsystem that allows for arbitrary scaling up and down of GPU use for web app content. Even better, due to more efficient, purpose-built algorithms in this subsystem, CompositeAfterPaint will substantially improve:

Scroll latency by up to 8%
Responsiveness by up to 3%
Peak rendering speed by up to 3%
GPU memory use by more than 3%
CPU time spent rendering and interacting with tabs, resulting in a savings of more than 1400 years of CPU time per day
Battery life by up to 0.5%

GPU Raster: dramatically faster than before [2]

When it Real-world data anonymously aggregated from Chrome clients.
[2] Data source: MotionMark.

Helping users explore the web and continue prior tasks

Friday, October 1, 2021

When you’re looking for a certain piece of information or working on a project, your path through the internet likely isn’t a linear one. You might search for the same thing multiple times, jump between pages, head back to Google Search again, or parse through your history for that one page you can’t seem to find again. It can be challenging, and more importantly, it can take up time that you could be using to get things done.

Now, we’re kicking off two new experiments with the goal of making it easier to navigate, explore and keep track of the things you find on the web.

Continue your explorations of the web
If you’ve already started exploring a topic and visited multiple sites along the way over a number of days or weeks, chances are you’ve found helpful information you might want to revisit. But you also undoubtedly took a few detours along this journey to read the news, email a friend and shop for a new pair of shoes in the meantime. To help you take stock of completed research, revisit that one helpful nugget and continue exploring a certain topic, we’re experimenting with a new feature called Journeys.

If you’ve been researching a trip to Yosemite for the past few weeks, Journeys will cluster all the pages you’ve visited related to Yosemite so you can easily view them without having to sift through your browsing history. You’ll also see related search suggestions so you can continue planning your trip right there.

feedback.

Posted by Yana Yushkina, Product Manager, Chrome

Chromium Blog

Chrome 96 Beta: Conditional Focus, Priority Hints, and More

Sunsetting the "basic-card" payment method in the Payment Request API

Extending Chrome App Support on Chrome OS

RenderingNG: an architecture that makes and keeps Chrome fast for the long term

Helping users explore the web and continue prior tasks

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