Google has released version 56 of its web browser, based on the open-source Chromium web browser. There were 51 security-related bug fixes and one security researcher nabbed over thirty-thousand dollars ($30,000) for reporting some particularly nasty cross-site scripting (XSS) issues in Blink, Chrome’s rendering engine.
Here are the other new and fixed features:
For Users
- WebGL 2.0 Support
- HTML5 by Default
- For all users the browser will now attempt to load HTML5 content over Flash and will only fall-back to Flash when it is absolutely necessary
- Around October of this year Flash will require the user to explicitly approve its use
- Built-in FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) codec/support
- The URL input bar now shows “Not Secure” next to the information icon for sites that are not encrypted and requesting username and passwords
- Improved Bluetooth support via Bluetooth Low-Energy (BLE) and the Web Bluetooth API
- Page reloading up to 28% faster
For Developers
- Added “system-ui” font-family value that uses the operating system’s (OS’s) default font
- Network
- Support added for Referrer-Policy (CSP referrer) header
- reflected-xss header deprecated
- CSS
- background-image-repeat: space value support added
- Fills background with repeated tiles but no so much that it goes outside the container and will “space out” the tiles equally
- position: sticky value support added
- Works as “relative” until it reaches a maximum value, then works as “fixed”
- offset-rotate motion path property now supported
- Scroll anchoring support added, new overflow-anchor with possible values of auto or none (to disable)
- Locks the browser to a specific element so that content reflows do not force the browser away from the anchor element as images & other content load
- touch-action: pinch-zoom property support added
- background-image-repeat: space value support added
- SVG
- SVGElement.currentView, SVGElement.useCurrentView, and SVGViewSpec interface deprecated
- JavaScript
- Chrome will no longer fetch the src (source) property of <script> tags with non-script MIME types (suggests using the link preload element instead)
- Removed deprecated MediaStreamTrack.getSources()
- Shadow DOM: Will now dispatch synthetic events when target and relatedTarget event property values are identical/same
- Showing/hiding the URL bar will no longer affect the page size or elements with vh units
- overlay with “extra at the top” rather than pushing content around
- KeyboardEvent.isComposing read-only value which returns true after compositionstart event has fired but before compositionend has
- MediaStream Image Capture now allows for taking images/video from attached camera/imaging devices
- Fixed attached mouse on Android devices incorrectly firing TouchEvent instead of MouseEvent
- Large images now allowed to be sent as notification content via Notification API
- OPUS audio codec support
- PaymentRequest.canMakePayment() returns true or false if a payment can be accepted via Payment Request API
- Remote Playback API support added
- Android only, desktop support will be added in a later version – desktops currently report no available playback devices even when there is at least one available
- Can control external devices’ (like Smart TVs, Chromecasts, Rokus, etc.) media playback
- Shaddow DOM: slotchange events are no longer re-fired at slot’s assignedSlot (correct odd behavior and comply with specification change)
- Streams API: WriteableStream is now supported
- Added ImageBitmapRenderingContext
- Provides low-level context for rendering an image on Canvas
- Document-level TouchEvents are now passive by default
- Web Bluetooth API supported
- WebGL 2 supported
- WebAudio API
- Added ConstantSourceNode
- ChannelSplitterNode channelCount and channelCountMode are constant
- PannerNode.rolloffFactor clamps to nominal range
- Removed deprecated Doppler API
- Security
- Added early support for TLS 1.3
- Removed various ECDSA TLS cyphers
- SHA-1 certificates are no longer trusted
- Touch scroll events no longer allow popups to be opened
- window.prompt() no longer brings background/inactive tabs to the foreground/active state
- Background tabs will just not display a prompt
- DOM
- Rare case-insensitive matches for <input> group name are no longer done
- Non-white-space Unicode control characters are now rendered in compliance with the specification
- Delay running rendering pipeline (including requestAnimationFrame requests) inside iframes until all stylesheets have loaded
- Allow any element below the body to be defined as the root scroller (which allows hiding URL bar, generate overscroll glow, etc.) via document.rootScroller
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2017/01/google-chrome-56-flac-webgl-supprot