Google on today, August 3 started rolling out the Chrome 69 beta across Windows, Linux, and macOS. It brings a host of features, starting from security to crash reductions and more.
It comes with limited support for AV1 video codec fixing streaming issues by improving compression efficiency, but without encoding capabilities. Chrome 69 also has a new interface named OffscreenCanvas that allows improved performance of 2D and WebGL canvases on multi-core systems in web apps.
The latest Chrome 69 beta update further carries support for selecting texts inside ligatures. Perhaps the most important feature is the Page Lifecycle API that reduces RAM usage on desktops, which has been a point of criticism for Google.
Next, Chrome 69 will work on phasing out the Secure badge on the HTTPS sites for establishing that ‘the default unmarked state is secure.’ The aim here is to provide awareness of the insecure sites to the users.
Display cutouts are another feature in the 69 that supports the trend of display notch of today’s phones. Thanks to this feature, sites in the desktop can now “expand into the cutout area and use the extra space to provide additional content without the cutout overlapping their main UI.”
Regarding security, there are Universal 2nd Factor (U2F) and the Web Authentication API having support for CTAP2 FIDO devices. The new support brings advanced security abilities such as resident keys stored on devices, and biometric authentication.
Chrome 69 will as well enable the Picture-in-Picture API by default on desktops. Manual enabling via two flags and compatibility with media files are possible too. There’s an overflow menu at the bottom right corner for minimizing the video to the bottom.
In terms of crash reduction, Chrome 69 will block third-party apps from injecting into processes. The browser, if prevented by the feature from launching, will restart and permit the injection, but will show a warning asking the user for removal.
Among other notable features that Chrome 69 brings are Chrome Duet for Android and the voice dictation button for Chrome OS. For Windows desktops, the notable features include Conic gradients, CSS scroll map, the new DOM, Fetch API, JavaScript APIs, Keyboard Map API, and several more.
