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Posts tagged "Chrome"

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Firefox and Chrome 100 could break parts of the internet, Mozilla warns
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Mozilla is giving a heads up to website developers that the upcoming three-digit versions of the popular internet browsers Firefox and Chrome might cause some websites to break.

In a Mozilla blog post by Karl Dubost, Chris Peterson, Ali Beyad, the company says the error might happen when browsers parse user-agent strings containing the three-digit version numbers. 

The user-agent string contains various information about the browser software, such as the name, or, crucially – version number and supported technologies. When websites receive this information, they modify their response based on the browser version and the technologies supported. 

Preparations and mitigations

When browsers made the jump from single-digit versions, to double-digit versions, some websites could not be displayed. 

However, this time around – both Mozilla and Google are preparing for the new versions (coming in early May and late March, respectively) in advance. Last August, Mozilla started experimenting to see if version 100 would break some websites, and Google soon followed. 

In fact, both developers found a few misbehaving websites, where “unsupported browser” messages would be displayed, or broken interfaces shown.

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“Without a single specification to follow, different browsers have different formats for the User-Agent string, and site-specific User-Agent parsing. It’s possible that some parsing libraries may have hard-coded assumptions or bugs that don’t take into account three-digit major version numbers,” Mozilla says. 

“Many libraries improved the parsing logic when browsers moved to two-digit version numbers, so hitting the three-digit milestone is expected to cause fewer problems.”

If the companies fail to solve the issues by the release dates, they both have contingency plans: to freeze the user-agent at 99. Furthermore, Firefox will also be able to inject CSS and other similar overrides.

Mozilla has also urged website developers to test their websites for upcoming browsers, with the detailed steps available on the Mozilla blog here. 

Via: BleepingComputer

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Chrome OS is coming to PCs and Macs
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Google has announced a new version of its Chrome OS software that should allow it to expand to PC and Mac devices for the first time.

The new Chrome OS Flex is designed to run on older machines, and looks to offer businesses and schools in particular with more flexibility on their software choices.

The “cloud-first” software looks similar to the equivalent already seen on Chromebook devices, offering a stripped-back way to access Google Workspace tools such as Gmail, Meet, Google Docs, with thousands of apps available from the Play Store.

Chrome OS Flex

“End-user computing is complicated. And it’s even more complicated for businesses and schools,” Thomas Riedl, Google Cloud Director of Product, Enterprise and Education, wrote in a blog post announcing the news. 

“Slow boot times, intrusive updates, security add-ons, and burdensome management of legacy devices take valuable time away from employees, students, and IT.”

“Chrome OS Flex modernizes devices you already own, allowing you to experience the benefits of Chrome OS on PCs and Macs.”

Chrome OS Flex home screen

(Image credit: Google)

Google says that Chrome OS Flex “boots up in seconds”, meaning there's no long wait times for your device to get ready, with system updates downloading in the background.

Admins can install Chrome OS Flex across business or school devices via USB or network, allowing for a speedy roll-out, with user profiles downloaded through the cloud, automatically syncing their settings, policies and bookmarks.

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Chrome OS Flex will also benefit from Google's regular security updates against the latest threats, and Google also notes that due to its un-demanding specs, using Chrome OS Flex means you can keep your existing devices for longer, helping cut down on e-waste.

Riedl noted that the launch had been helped by Google's 2020 acquisition of Neverware, whose Chromium-based CloudReady OS helped businesses around the world shift onto the company's software.

Google says that Chrome OS Flex is not a finished product yet, but users can try the new software as a free trial now ahead of a wider release later this year.

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Chrome 98 brings better screenshot support and a privacy guide
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Another month brings a new version of Google’s web browser, with Chrome 98 showcasing a bunch of features that are hidden behind a flag.

A privacy guide gives you a better understanding of the sites that have been tracking you for example, alongside a better screenshot function that’s been in development since 2021. Chrome should have updated itself automatically, but you can check by going to About Google Chrome and seeing if it’s either at version 98 or if it’s in the midst of being updated.

For the time being, however, these need to be enabled through the flag feature. This hides experimental features under development, but by going to chrome://flags, you can enable the screenshot and privacy guide function that Google Chrome 98 brings.

With Chrome being released on a monthly schedule, and version 100 being on track to be released in March, there are features being brought to the forefront to better help users, rather than the incremental background updates that are invisible to the casual user. But it shouldn’t be long until we see the privacy guide appear without having to be enabled through a flag. 

Analysis: Google, let’s refine the flags page at last

The flag feature has been in Chrome for as long as the web browser has been released to users. Since 2010, the feature was renamed from Labs to Flags, where the experimental features have remained at chrome://flags.

But the way of navigating these flags has always been a struggle, as you can use a search engine to find a feature, but there’s currently no way of filtering the flags that are enabled. It’s either scrolling up or scrolling down to find these.

Google Chrome flag page

(Image credit: Google)

While Google maintains that this is strictly for power users and developers, having to enable a better screenshot function in Chrome 98 seems pointless for these types of users. It would be great to see a refresh of the flags page, with screenshots for each flag, alongside a way of displaying what flags have been enabled so far.

As we’re heading into triple figures in March with version 100, it could be a nice touch to see this page be modernized for the next 100 updates that Chrome is inevitably going to get.

In recent releases, we’ve seen improvements to the engine that powers Chrome and how it displays web pages, but it would be encouraging to see more features be showcased on the flag page, for the casual user instead.

We’re heading into an age where the web browser is going to be used for much more than work and gaming, as Opera has currently showcased. To appeal to users of features that they can switch on and off by themselves while explaining the benefits could be a good next step for Chrome going forward.

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Closing tabs in Chrome is getting much better on Android
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In a future release of Google's web browser on Android, you'll be able to avoid the mistake of closing all your tabs at once, thanks to an additional message box to confirm if you want to go ahead with it.

Google Chrome is the most widely-used web browser app on Android, mainly due to it being pre-installed on the majority of Android smartphones. But there may be an occasion when you've got multiple tabs open at once.

Some could be related to shopping, birthday ideas, or brainstorms for holidays in the summer for example. You may want to close all of these at once when you're finished.

In Chrome Canary, the test version of Google's web browser, you can enable a flag that will display a message box to confirm if you want to close all your tabs at once. This will help prevent occasions where you accidently close all the browser tabs when you didn't mean to.

How do you enable the message box confirmation?

By going to chrome://flags when running Google Chrome Canary 100 on Android, there will be a 'Close all tabs modal dialog' option.

Switching this on will make the message box appear when you're about to close all your tabs.

This can be useful if you've found yourself having mistakenly closed all your open tabs, and having to go through your history to open the links again.

This may sound like a very obvious feature, but if you mainly use Google Chrome on your phone as you're sharing links on social media and messaging apps, having all your tabs closed can be a huge annoyance.

Sometimes the little things like this can make a big difference, so it's encouraging that Google has this ready to go in its development releases for now.

Via XDA Developer

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One of the best Google Chrome features is getting an upgrade
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Juggling multiple tasks, windows and displays at work could soon be a lot easier thanks to a new update coming to Google Chrome.

The browser is set to upgrade its picture-in-picture mode to include non-video content for the first time, giving a boost to those who love having multiple windows open at once.

Google Chrome is reportedly working on the upgrade, codenamed PIP 2.0, now, with a plan to support embedded content such as audio feeds or image galleries while the users continues browsing. 

PIP 2.0 on Chrome

Although more commonly used for entertainment and sports viewing, Google Chrome clearly thinks picture-in-picture can also be an incredibly handy workplace tool, allowing users more options for viewing different kinds of content.

In a Chromium blog post, Google explained that PIP 2.0 is part of a series for “the new picture-in-picture v2 feature that allows always-on-top windows with arbitrary content”.

A separate Google developer document addressing the feature adds that, “Picture-in-Picture V2 will include a new web api that is still under discussion.” This new Chrome code will “hide the window frame and location bar (after a timeout) when the [PiP] window loses focus” but also be able to add it again when the focus is regained.

“The promise will allow a clearer async API and would offer a way to expose that interactive isn’t supported by the platform,” the Google Chrome engineers noted.

“When Picture-in-Picture is requested and the window is displayed we will copy the requested element to the body of the new window.”

There are also concerns around security, with the engineers adding that the tool could possibly be used to impersonate system UI. “Therefore, we will ensure the UX of the Picture-in-Picture window is distinct enough by adding a border (and maybe an indicator of the origin),” they note, adding that trusted UI such as permission prompts and autofill will also be disabled, with regular keyboard events also removed to reduce the attack surface.

Via WindowsLatest

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Google Chrome update makes searching your history less of a nightmare
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Google is reportedly testing out a new feature for its browser that will make searching through your browsing history and bookmarks even easier in Chrome.

First spotted by Chrome Story, the search giant has added a new experimental flag to Chrome's omnibox that enables support for search keywords.

For those unfamiliar, Chrome's omnibox suggests potential queries when the “Autocomplete searches and URLs” feature is turned on in the browser's settings. This makes searching for information faster and easier as users don't have to type in an entire search query into the address bar to find exactly what they're looking for.

Search tags

The new experimental flag in question is called “Omnibox Site Search Starter Pack” and it enables @history, @bookmarks and @settings to be used as search tags when typing in Chrome's address bar.

By using these tags when searching in Google's browser, you'll be able to specify that you only want to search in your history, bookmarks or in Chrome's settings. 

For instance, let's say you were reading a news article about Chromebooks on your smartphone but had to stop and do something else. If you want to find it again later, you can simply type Chromebooks @history to quickly bring up the article and continue reading.

According to Chrome Story, this new feature hasn't yet been enabled in the latest Chrome beta or Canary releases, so it might be a while before you get to try it out for yourself. Still though, search tags in Chrome's omnibox will not only help users save time but it may even make them more productive.

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Via XDA

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Browser wars: Apple’s M1 chips help Safari close the gap on Google Chrome
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The success of Apple’s M1 range of silicon could have inadvertently helped drive up the market share of web browser Safari, new data suggests.

The first M1-powered MacBooks were launched in 2020, followed by a series of mobile workstations powered by the M1 Max and M1 Ultra in October, 2021. Both launches were met with critical acclaim.

All Apple devices, of course, come with Safari pre-installed. And according to the latest figures from Statcounter, the company’s browser now accounts for 19.6% of internet activity, up 1.2% in the last three months alone.

While the increase may sound relatively insignificant as a percentage, the raw numbers are much more compelling; data on the total number of web users from Statista suggests Safari has attracted roughly 58 million additional users since the start of October.

A big year for Safari?

The ubiquity of Apple products (iPhones and iPads, as well as Mac devices) means Safari is comfortably the world’s second largest browser, streets ahead of the likes of Microsoft Edge and Firefox.

However, Safari is still nowhere near as widely used as Google Chrome (with 64% market share), which currently has somewhat of a stranglehold on the sector.

That said, the ever-growing popularity of Apple devices and the company’s reputation for high levels of security and data privacy could see Safari begin to close the gap on Chrome this year.

Apple has also been transparent about its efforts to accelerate the adoption of business Macs, which may have a knock-on effect on the size of the Safari user base. Last month, Apple announced it is preparing a device subscription offering whereby businesses will be able to lease MacBooks for as little as $ 30/month.

Although Google executives won’t lose any sleep over the threat posed by Safari just yet, the browser wars appear set to rage on in 2022.

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Chrome 100 could break your website – but Google is on it
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After launching back in 2008, Chrome will reach version 100 early next year but unfortunately this milestone will cause some websites to no longer work in Google's browser.

Although there are no major changes or revolutionary new features planned for Chrome 100, the search giant has been aware for some time that this major release will likely lead to problems for older websites. While Chrome 100 will release in March of next year, Google already began warning users and site owners about potential issues in a blog post published in November, saying:

“In the first half of 2022, Chrome will reach a three-digit major version number: 100! When browsers first reached version 10 many eons ago, lots of issues were discovered with User-Agent parsing libraries as the major version number went from one digit to two. Now that we are approaching version 100 in both Chrome and Firefox, with Edge not far behind, we want to detect possible issues related to three-digit version number early, so we are ready when it becomes a reality.”

When Chrome's major version number goes from two digits to three, websites developed with the web design kit Duda will no longer display correctly. Thankfully though, Google has a plan to avoid disrupting the web and the company has already begun contacting individual developers to warn them about the upcoming change.

User Agent string

In order for a website to know what browser and what version of it you're currently using, the site will check the User Agent string which is essentially a line of text that your browser attaches to every web connection it makes.

Here is an example of a User Agent string: “Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/96.0.4664.110 Safari/537.36”. At the end, you can see “Chrome/96.0.4664.110” which means we're running Chrome version 96. 

The problem with Duda resides in the fact that its developers chose to only read the first two digits so “Chrome/96” would be 96 while “Chrome/100” would be seen as 10 or version 10 to be more precise. To make matters worse, Duda automatically blocks any version of Chrome below version 40. For this reason, Chrome 100 will seen as Chrome 10 and will be automatically blocked by the web design kit, rendering websites built using it unreadable.

While Google has considered forcing the major version number to the minor version position and staying at 99 so “Chrome/100” would instead be “Chrome/99.100”, this is only a backup plan. Instead, the search giant has begun contacting individual developers to let them know about this issue before Chrome 100 is released. Google has also added a new flag to Chrome (#force-major-version-to-100) which developers can use to see whether or not their sites will be affected.

Although moving to version 100 has the potential to disrupt a lot of older sites, Google and Mozilla are working hard to address the issue before the rollouts of version 100 of both Chrome and Firefox next year .

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Via 9To5Google

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Google Chrome steals one of the best new Edge features
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Although Black Friday and Cyber Monday have come and gone, Google has highlighted several new features in Chrome designed to make your last minute holiday shopping easier.

According to a new blog post, these features will make it easier to keep track of price drops, search for deals, manage items in your shopping cart and simplify the checkout process when using the search giant's browser on your mobile devices.

If you're waiting on a good deal for an item but don't want to constantly keep refreshing a page, Chrome for Android now allows you to see an item's updated price right in your open tabs grid. This means you can leave the page for an item you want to buy open in Google's browser and easily see when its price has dropped. While this feature is now available for Chrome on Android in the US, it will be launching on iOS in the coming weeks.

Have you ever spotted an interesting item while window shopping and wanted to learn more about it? Now you can search your surroundings with Google Lens in Chrome on Android to do just that. From the address bar of Google's browser, you can now tap on the Lens icon to start searching with your camera. It's also worth noting that this feature will soon be available in Chrome for desktop. When it launches, you'll be able to right-click on an image and select the “Search images with Google Lens” option to learn more about a product.

Shopping carts, passwords and checkout

Sometimes we add items to our shopping carts for later and lose track of them which is why Google has added a new feature to Chrome that allows you to quickly rediscover the items in your shopping carts across multiple online stores.

Beginning with Chrome on Windows and Mac in the US, users can now open up a new tab and scroll to the “Your carts” card to quickly see any site where you've previously added items to a shopping cart. At the same time, some retailers like Zazzle, iHerb, Electronic Express and Homesquare might even offer a discount when you come back to check out.

Keeping track of all the logins and passwords for various online stores can be a pain which is why you can use Chrome's built-in password manager to store and access them instead. Finally, by saving your address and payment information with Autofill, Chrome can automatically fill out your billing and shipping details to make online shopping even easier.

Whether you're already finished with all of your holiday shopping or just looking for some last-minute gifts, Chrome's new shopping features can help you make sure you've crossed off everyone on your list this year.

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