A lot of changes have been added as new features to the newest Chrome Beta channel, but it is only applicable for Android, Chrome OS, Linux, macOS, and Windows. The new change is taking place to provide more control over when the add to home screen prompt appears. If a site satisfies all the criteria of the add to the home screen, Chrome will launch a beforeinstallprompt event, and the developers can save the event and add a button or other UI element which will indicate that it can be installed. Calling prompt() requires a user gesture. For the first time that a user visits a site that meets the add-to-home screen criteria, Chrome will show a mini info bar but once dismissed; Chrome will not show the same bar for another three months.
Chrome 53, released in 2016, added support for the Payment Request API. Chrome 68 improved the previous method with the use of Payment Handler API, which allows the web apps to function as the payment platform. Chrome 68 will require a user gesture to help the users from being redirected to unwanted destinations. It will also block tab-under navigations and instead show native UI to the user so they can choose whether they want to follow this redirect which will ultimately lead them to a new direction and possibly to an undesired site.
It also happens that many web apps and tabs run without the user’s consent, and critical resources such as memory, CPU, battery, and network become overused, which then leads to a bad end-user experience. In Chrome 68 Beta, using the new freeze and resume events, developers can restore the view state when the user refocuses the tab and the page is reloaded.
In Chrome 68 Beta, the overflow shorthand will accept two values, making it possible to set the horizontal and vertical overflow to different values. Valid position values will now have 1, 2, or 4 parts and can support ‘x’ as a resolution unit. With the changes in the CSS values Chrome will support the standard, unprefixed versions of the “grab” and “grabbing” values for cursor property. A new custom elements upgrade is added, which will allow the developers to fully control the timing of custom element constructor calls regardless of connectedness. While in fullscreen, the users will be able to escape the keyboard lock and fullscreen by holding the Esc key for two seconds.
To improve consistency with other browsers, PointerEvents for from element and element fields do not follow the Pointer Events Level 2 spec by always reporting null. A new unified touch adjustment is added, which will change the TouchEvent and the corresponding PointerEvent target to the best target within the touch area. The AudioParam.automation rate attribute allows the user to select whether the AudioParam is either “a-rate” or “k-rate. A new option called ServiceWorkerRegistration.updateViaCache is available, which offers control over the requests for importScripts.
Chrome sometimes removes or changes features to increase interoperability with other browsers. This version includes such changes as deprecating and removing negative brightness values in the filter, Removing documents. creating touch, Removing Document.selectedStylesheetSet, and Document.preferredStylesheetSet. Support for the WebGL working group has been canceled. These are the features available for Chrome 68 as of June 7th, 2018.
