Chrome 75 Beta is already in distribution, as usual, in conjunction with the upgrade to the immediately previous version in the stable channel. For the moment, there are no major changes on the end user side: the practice is that in the initial phases more technical innovations are implemented, and then later, those relating to the user experience appear. However, something noteworthy has already been discovered: service workers appear independently in the Windows Task Manager processes.
Service workers are the technologies that allow the Progressive Web App (PWA) to exist. Thanks to them, web pages/apps can send notifications, synchronize in the background and even work offline. With this change, it is easier for the user to understand how many service workers are running and how many system resources they occupy.
Among other Updates:
- Site isolation on desktop: serves to mitigate the effects of the Specter vulnerability. The contents of each page are rendered in separate processes. It’s already a default for some time, but so far enterprise administrators could turn it off in case of performance problems. Google believes it has resolved all reports and therefore removed the option. It’s still on Android.
- File sharing between the web and installed apps: possible thanks to the new Web Share Level 2 API. Available on Android.
- Web Authentication API improvements.
Service worker turns out to be a script that the browser runs in the background, separated by a web page, to use functions that do not require a web page or user interaction. Today they already include features such as push notifications and background synchronization. Being a process that works precisely in the background and does not receive an interaction from the user, the developers have thought of giving the possibility of being able to view them on Task Manager in order to be able to block or close them in the moment of need.
Chrome 75 also extends the browser’s Web authentication API to “support local user authorization of security key operations via a user-defined PIN for keys that implement the FIDO CTAP2 protocol”. In short, the new version seems to focus specifically on the development possibilities for the developers rather than on new actual features for normal users.
