Chrome OS, Linux, Mac, and Windows.

Stronger pop-up blocker
1 out of every 5 user feedback reports submitted on Chrome for desktop mention some type of
unwanted content. Examples include links to third-party websites disguised as play buttons or other
site controls, or transparent overlays on websites that capture all clicks and open new tabs or
windows. In this release, Chrome's pop-up blocker now prevents sites with these types of abusive
experiences from opening new tabs or windows. Site owners can use the Abusive Experiences
Report in Google Search Console to see if any of these abusive experiences have been found on
their site and improve their user experience.
 
Two types of abusive experiences where a deceptive site control appears to do one thing, but has a different behavior when clicked. One looks like a play button on a video but sends the user to an unwanted download when clicked (left), and the other looks like a close button but instead opens unwanted pop-up windows (right).

 Resize Observer
Traditionally, responsive web applications have used CSS media queries or window.onresize to
build responsive components that adapt content to different viewport sizes. However, both of these
are global signals and require the overall viewport to change in order for the site to respond
accordingly. Chrome now supports the Resize Observer API to give web applications finer
control to observe changes to sizes of elements on a page.


const ro = new ResizeObserver((entries) => {
 for (const entry of entries) {
   const cr = entry.contentRect;
   console.log('Element:', entry.target);
   console.log(`Element size: ${cr.width}px × ${cr.height}px`);
   console.log(`Element padding: ${cr.top}px / ${cr.left}px`);
 }
});
// Observe one or multiple elements
ro.observe(someElement);
The code snippet above uses the Resize Observer API to observe changes to an element.


import.meta
Developers writing JavaScript modules often want access to host-specific metadata about the
current module. To make this easier, Chrome now supports the import.meta property within
modules that exposes the module URL via import.meta.url. Library authors might want to
access the URL of the module being bundled into the library to more easily resolve resources
relative to the module file as opposed to the current HTML document. In the future, Chrome plans to
add more properties to import.meta.

Other features in this release

Blink > Animation

  • The offset-path property can be used to animate an element by specifying the geometry of the path that an element moves along.

Blink>Fonts

Blink>Input

Blink>JavaScript

  • To improve developer experience, Chrome now supports named captures in regular expressions, allowing developers to assign meaningful names to portions of a string that a regular expression matches.
  • Chrome now supports the Unicode property escapes \p{…} and \P{…} for regular expressions that have the u flag set, allowing developers to create more powerful Unicode-aware regular expressions.
  • To assist with local-aware formatting of strings produced by internationalization formatters, developers can now use Intl.NumberFormat.prototype.formatToParts() to format a number to a list of tokens and their type. Thanks to Igalia for helping make this happen!

Blink>Media

Blink>Network

  • Developers can now use the cache option to specify the cache mode of a Request.
  • Developers can now use Request.prototype.cache to view the cache mode of a Request and determine whether a request is a reload request.  

Blink>Permissions API

  • To better align with the Permissions API spec, the Permissions API can now be used to query the status of the camera and microphone permissions.

Blink>Scroll

  • In Focus Management APIs, developers can now focus an element without scrolling to it by using the preventScroll attribute.

Blink>SVG

Blink>WebAudio

  • AudioWorklet, an API that exposes low-level audio processing capability to support custom AudioNodes, is now available in origin trials and the experimental flag.

Blink>WebRTC

  • To align with the WebRTC 1.0 spec, RTCPeerConnection now supports addTrack() for single stream use cases, as well as removeTrack(), getSenders(), ontrack, and a minimal version of the RTCRtpSender interface.

Blink>WindowDialog

  • To improve interoperability and end user experience, window.alert() no longer brings a backgrounded tab to the foreground but instead shows the alert when the user switches to the background tab.

UI>Notifications

Deprecations and interoperability improvements

Blink> CSS

Blink> DOM

Blink> Performance APIs
For a complete list of all features (including experimental features) in this release, see the
Chrome 64 milestone hotlist.  

 Posted by Charles Harrison, Pop-Up Popping Engineer
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In September 2018, Chrome 69 will begin blocking third-party software from injecting into Chrome processes. If this blocking prevents Chrome from starting, Chrome will restart and allow the injection, but also show a warning that guides the user to remove the software. Finally, in January 2019, Chrome 72 will remove this accommodation and always block code injection.

While most software that injects code into Chrome will be affected by these changes, there are some exceptions. Microsoft-signed code, accessibility software, and IME software will not be affected. As with all Chrome changes, developers are encouraged to use Chrome Beta for early testing.

Fewer crashes means more happy users, and we look forward to continuing to make Chrome better for everyone.

Posted by Chris Hamilton, Chrome Stability Team

Updated 2018-06-21: Third-party software will be blocked from injecting code into Chrome on Windows starting in Chrome 69.

An example of a redirect being blocked on a test site. The iframes embedded in the site are attempting to navigate the page to an unintended destination, but Chrome prevents the redirect and shows an infobar.

 When the user interacts with content, things can also go wrong. One example that causes user frustration is when clicking a link opens the desired destination in a new tab, while the main window navigates to a different, unwanted page. Starting in Chrome 68 we'll also detect this behavior, trigger an infobar, and prevent the main tab from being redirected. This allows the user to continue directly to their intended destination, while also preserving the context of the page they came from.

 Finally, there are several other types of abusive experiences that send users to unintended destinations but are hard to automatically detect. These include links to third-party websites disguised as play buttons or other site controls, or transparent overlays on websites that capture all clicks and open new tabs or windows. 
Two types of abusive experiences where a deceptive site control appears to do one thing, but has a different behavior when clicked. One looks like a play button on a video but sends the user to an unwanted download when clicked (left), and the other looks like a close button but instead opens unwanted pop-up windows (right).

 Similar to how Google Safe Browsing protects users from malicious content, starting in early January Chrome's pop-up blocker will prevent sites with these types of abusive experiences from opening new windows or tabs. To help site owners prepare for this change, today we're also launching the Abusive Experiences Report alongside other similar reports in the Google Search Console. Site owners can use the report to see if any of these abusive experiences have been found on their site and improve their user experience. Otherwise, abusive experiences left unaddressed for 30 days will trigger the prevention of new windows and tabs.

 Together, these protections will dramatically improve users' web browsing experiences while still allowing them access to all that the web has to offer. 

 Posted by Ryan Schoen, Product Manager

Update 2018-06-07: The two protections described above that prevent unwanted redirects and unwanted tabs or windows are now scheduled to be released with Chrome 68. The timeline for expanding Chrome's pop-up blocker remains unchanged, as it already launched in January.

Dynamic module imports

Currently, importing JavaScript modules is completely static, and developers cannot import modules based on runtime conditions, like whether a user is logged in. Starting in this release, the import(specifier) syntax now allows developers to dynamically load code into modules and scripts at runtime. This  can be used for lazy loading a script only when it’s needed, which improves performance of the application.

button.addEventListener('click', event => {
    import('./dialogBox.js')
    .then(dialogBox => {
        dialogBox.open();
    })
    .catch(error => {
        /* Error handling */
    });
});
The code example above shows how to use the import(specifier) function to import JavaScript after an event.

Async iterators and generators

Writing code that does any sort of iteration with async functions can be inelegant. The new async generator functions using the async iteration protocol are now available to help developers streamline the consumption or implementation of streaming data sources. Async iterators can be used in for loops and also to create custom async iterators through async iterator factories.
async function* getChunkSizes(url) {
  const response = await fetch(url);

  for await (const chunk of streamAsyncIterator(response.body)) {
    yield chunk.length;
  }
}
The code example above shows how to use async iterators to writer cleaner code for streaming fetches, using the streamAsyncIterator function.

Device Memory API

It’s challenging for developers to create one user experience that can work across all devices, due to varying device capabilities. The new Device Memory JavaScript API helps developers with this challenge by using the total RAM on a user’s machine to provide insights into device constraints. This insight enables developers to tailor content at runtime in accordance with hardware limitations. For example, developers can serve a “lite” app to users on low-end devices, resulting in better experiences and fewer frustrations. The Device Memory API can also be used to add context to metrics, such as the amount of time a task takes to complete in JavaScript, through the lens of device memory.




Permissions UI changes
When websites need special permissions from a user, they trigger a permission request. Currently these permission requests appear in Chrome for Android as ignorable banners at the bottom of the screen, and developers often show them without considering whether the user has the appropriate context to grant the permission. This results in a distracting user experience, and users ignore or temporarily dismiss these permission prompts more than 90% of the time.
In Chrome 59, we started to address this problem by temporarily blocking a permission if the user dismisses the request three times. As a next step, in this release Chrome for Android now presents permission requests as modal dialogs. This change reduces the overall number of permission prompts by 50%. It also makes users 5 times more likely to accept or deny requests, rather than temporarily dismissing or repeatedly ignoring them. To ensure users understand the permission request, developers should present users with permission requests at an appropriate time, as we’ve found that users were 2.5 times more likely to grant permission to a site that ask for permissions with context.


Other features in this release

Blink > Bindings

Blink > CSS


  • Developers can now make pixel-level adjustments using the new Q length unit, which is especially useful on small viewports.
  • Developers can now prevent apps from using Chrome’s pull-to-refresh feature or create custom effects using  overscroll-behavior, which allows changing the browser’s behavior once the scroller has reached its full extent.

Blink > Fonts

Blink > HTML

  • To improve interoperability, Chrome will fire  beforeprint and afterprint events as part of the printing standard, allowing developers to to annotate the printed copy and edit the annotation after the printing command is done executing.

Blink > JavaScript

  • Using Promise.prototype.finally, a callback can now be registered to be invoked after a Promise has been fulfilled or rejected.
  • The Intl.PluralRules API allows developers to build applications that understand pluralization of a given language by indicating which plural form applies for a given number and language.

Blink > MediaStream

Blink > Network

  • Version 2 of NT LAN Manager (NTLM) API is now shipped, enabling applications to authenticate remote users and provide session security when requested by the application.

Blink > Sensor

  • Thanks to contributors from engineers at Intel, an Origin Trial is now available that exposes the following sensors via the new Generic Sensors API syntax: Accelerometer, LinearAccelerationSensor, Gyroscope, AbsoluteOrientationSensor, and RelativeOrientationSensor.

Blink > Storage

  • The localStorage and sessionStorage API's now use getItem() rather than an anonymous getter, so attempting to access a key using getItem() will now return null rather than undefined. Thanks to Intel for the contribution!
  • To improve developer experience, the methods on sessionStorage and localStorage such as getItem(), removeItem(), and clear() are now enumerable. Thanks to Intel for making this happen!

UI > Browser > Mobile (Android)


Deprecations and interoperability improvements

Blink > Bindings

  • To improve interoperability, instance properties with a Promise type now return a rejected promise instead of throwing an exception.

Blink > CSS

  • The /deep/ or >>>, selector, as well as ::shadow, are now removed from CSS dynamic profile, following their deprecation in Chrome 45.

Blink > DOM


Posted by Sathya Gunasekaran, Lazily-Loaded Engineer
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