Chrome 103 Beta: Early Navigation Hints, a Host of Completed Origin Trials, and More
Completed Origin Trials
The following features, previously in a Chrome origin trial, are now enabled by default.
Local Font Access
Web applications can now enumerate local fonts and metadata about each. The new API also gives web applications access to table data stored within local fonts, allowing those fonts to be rendered within their applications using custom text stacks.
Note: The Chrome 102 beta post erroneously listed this feature as shipping in that version.
Same-Origin Prerendering Triggered by the Speculation Rules API
Prerendering No State Prefetch. No State Prefetch doesn't generally result in an instant page load experience, but the new feature does. This feature is supported on Android only.
Update User-Agent Client Hints GREASE Implementation
The implementation of GREASE in User Agent Client Hints is now aligned with the current spec, which includes additional GREASE characters beyond the current semicolon and space, and which recommends varying the arbitrary version. This helps prevent bad assumptions from being built on top of User-Agent strings.
Other Features in this Release
AbortSignal.timeout() Static Method
Returns a new AbortSignal object that is automatically aborted after a given number of milliseconds. Use this method to easily implement timeouts for signal-accepting asynchronous APIs, such as fetch(). For example:
fetch(url, { signal: AbortSignal.timeout(10_000) });
ARIA Attribute Reflection for the role Attribute
The Element and ElementInternal interfaces now include an ARIA property called ariaRoleDescription which returns or modifies the ARIA role attribute directly. This feature is only supported on desktop.
avif is Now a Permitted Web Share File Extension
The avif image file format is now sharable by Web Share. Adding avif to the other allowed image file types helps spread the use of it. A website might like their users to be able to share pictures and other files through social media, email, chat, etc. The Web Share API is already shipped to more platforms such as ChromeOS and Windows, but avif is not supported yet.
"deflate-raw" Compression Format
Chrome supports a new compression format, deflate-raw, to give web developers access to the raw deflate stream without any headers or footers. This is needed, for example, to read and write zip files.
form rel Attribute
The 'rel' attribute has been added to form elements. This makes it possible to prevent window.opener from being present on websites navigated to by form elements which have rel=noopener. It also prevents the referer header from being sent with rel=noreferrer.
popstate Fires Before Load
Chromium now matches Firefox and by firing popstate immediately after URL changes so that the order of events is now popstate then hashchange across both platforms. Before this change, Chromium fired hashchange asynchronously after a task, and delayed popstate until the load event. This means the event order could be either hashchange then popstate, or popstate then hashchange, depending on how long a document took to load.
Restrict Gamepad Usage
The Gampepad API now requires a secure context. Additionally a new feature policy called 'gamepad' has been added with a default allowlist of 'self'.
SerialPort forget()
The SerialPort forget() method allows web developers to voluntarily revoke a permission to a serial port that was granted by a user. Some sites may not be interested in retaining long-term permissions to access serial ports. For example, for an educational web application used on a shared computer with many devices, a large number of accumulated user-generated permissions creates a poor user experience.
In addition to user agent mitigations to avoid this problem, such as defaulting to a session scoped permission on the first request or expiring infrequently used permissions, it should be possible for the site itself to clean up user-generated permissions it no longer needs.
This follows the recent additions of a forget() method for the HIDDevice and USBDevice interfaces.
Support visual-box on overflow-clip-margin
The overflow-clip-margin CSS property now supports visual-box, which specifies the box edge to use as the overflow clip edge origin. Valid values are content-box, padding-box (the default), or border-box. The overflow-clip-margin property specifies how far an element's content is allowed to paint before being clipped.
User Activation Required for SPC Credential Enrollment
Deprecations, and Removals
This version of Chrome introduces the deprecations and removals listed below. Visit ChromeStatus.com for lists of previous removals.
Block External Protocol in Sandboxed iframe
Sandboxed iframes are not blocked from opening external applications. Currently, developers sandbox untrusted content and block user navigation. Blocking probably should have also included links to external apps or to the Play store. This has now been fixed.
Sites that need navigation can add the following values to the <iframe> element's sandbox property:
allow-popupsallow-top-navigationallow-top-navigation-with-user-activation
Remove Battery Status API on Insecure Origins
The Battery Status API is a spec change.
Remove <param> Element
Given the removal of plugins from the web platform, and the relative lack of use of <param>, it is being removed from the web platform.
