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Chrome Android IOS Software The Internet

Chrome 78 Arrives With New APIs, Dark Mode Improvements On Android and iOS 45

Posted by BeauHD from the new-and-improved dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from VentureBeat: Google today launched Chrome 78 for Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, and iOS. The release includes the CSS Properties and Values API, Native File System API, new Origin Trials, and dark mode improvements on Android and iOS. You can update to the latest version now using Chrome's built-in updater or download it directly from google.com/chrome. With over 1 billion users, Chrome is both a browser and a major platform that web developers must consider. In fact, with Chrome's regular additions and changes, developers often have to stay on top of everything available -- as well as what has been deprecated or removed. Chrome 78, for example, removes the XSS Auditor due to privacy concerns. Chrome 78 implements the CSS Properties and Values API to let developers register variables as full custom properties. There's a new Native File System API that lets developers build web apps that interact with files on the user's local device. Chrome 78 adds to the Original Trials introduced in Chrome 77, such as Signed Exchanges and SMS Receiver API. "The former allow a distributor to provide content signed by a publisher," reports VentureBeat. "The latter allows websites to access SMS messages that are delivered to the user's phone."

Other features that are rolling out gradually include the ability to be able to highlight and right-click a phone number link in Chrome and forward the call to their Android device. "Some users might also see an option to share their clipboard content between their computers and Android devices," adds VentureBeat. "Chrome is also getting Google Drive integration. From Chrome's address bar, you will be able to search for Google Drive files that you have access to."
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Chrome 78 Arrives With New APIs, Dark Mode Improvements On Android and iOS More

Chrome 78 Arrives With New APIs, Dark Mode Improvements On Android and iOS

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  • Platform, indeed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by markdavis ( 642305 ) on Tuesday October 22, 2019 @10:09PM (#59337730)

    >"With over 1 billion users, Chrome is both a browser and a major platform that web developers must consider. "

    Chrome is a browser (and, unfortunately a platform), that, due to replacing most everything except Firefox, web developers are enabling it to become the new IE. Sure, it might be fast and supposedly sexy, but that isn't the issue. That monoculture is starting to break the web [again]. Yes, there are now sites and services that are essentially "Chrome only" because they do not render correctly on "competing" standards-based browsers. It threatens open standards and choice. It poses huge security and privacy concerns. It is like we just threw away many years of progress and learned nothing from the last "war".

    When Google owns (and/or controls) the vast super-majority of mobile, search, webmail, maps, cloud storage, video, messaging, and now the browser itself, what could possibly go wrong?

    • Yes, there are now sites and services that are essentially "Chrome only" because they do not render correctly on "competing" standards-based browsers.

      In the case Google sites and services, the incompatibility begins with... if( !chrome ) break stuff;

    • When the only credible counterweight to Google is Amazon, what could possibly go wrong?

    • "what could possibly go wrong"

      well. yeah. But also, what can finally go right.

      chrome is to android now what IE should have been when ms claimed ie was "vital to the os".

      And what adobe was going for when they brought pdf/postscript to the world.

      finally having a simple, portable, standards compliant method to render complex documents across truly a massive range of devices and displays is a game changer.

      Also. The fact it is a Chronium fork and its adoption even by M$ really does quell any "monopoly" talk.

      • >"Also. The fact it is a Chronium fork and its adoption even by M$ really does quell any "monopoly" talk."

        No it doesn't, it makes it worse. It gives even more control over the web to Google. Google absolutely controls Chromium. So some new, yet-another Chom* browser might have a different UI, but it is the same under the hood, with Google able to call all the shots.

        You want all cars to be able to drive on the road because they adhere to actual standards, not to force them all to use the same BRAND/MAN

        • Perhaps you can petition trump to appoint one of his kids to take over development of this clearly failing technology vital to the internet.

          Get him to replace Linus Torvalds while you are at it.

          Or just maybe,

          Bullshit.

          • Your comment makes no sense at all. I guess you just had to get some "orange man bad" comment in the thread.

            • meh, did figure it might be to complex for the slashdot Disney generation.

              Linus Torvalds is to "control of Linux"

              as

              Google is to "control of Chromium"

              Its just pure bullshit to complain that one or the other is "bad things. pure hand wavvy nonsense.

              The reason apple and microsoft are so far behind is because they are still playing the walled garden get off my lawn nonesense of the 90s.

              Open source won the day because of everything being complained about, it is the solution to the problem not the problem.

    • Or at least its sandbox did. Has this changed? When I found that out I wiped it and went back to firefox. I don't care how good Google think their code is, I'm not having any part of a browser, even a sandbox, running as root on my systems since there is always the danger of exploits.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      A far bigger issue than sites not rendering properly in Chrome is sites not working properly when you have things like 3rd party cookies disabled. Anything but the default settings tends to break stuff, which makes the default settings extremely powerful.

      Firefox on desktop is good now, possibly better than Chrome in some respects. What keeps me from switching is the mobile version which has very poor rendering. They removed the minimum text size slider in the preferences and now many sites, including Slashd

      • >"Firefox on desktop is good now, possibly better than Chrome in some respects. What keeps me from switching is the mobile version which has very poor rendering. They removed the minimum text size slider in the preferences and now many sites, including Slashdot, are unreadable in it."

        I had the same problem, but it is easily solved. There is an extension called "Fixed Zoom", and it will allow you to set the default zoom level and even on a site-by-site basis (which it remembers). Check it out. It fixed

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Thanks. I tried it on mobile and it didn't seem to work. The configuration page seemed to be broken and changing the zoom level had no effect. I guess it only works on desktop.

          I tried a few other add-ons that claim to fix the font size issue but none worked.

          Even Mozilla's own web site is unreadable in Firefox Mobile. You wonder how much testing they could possibly have done with it. Perhaps it ignores the screen DPI setting and looks okay on older phones with low resolution screens. My Pixel XL is 1440p, ab

          • Yeah, I haven't tried the addon with mobile, only on desktop. I think there is a conspiracy to make fonts smaller and smaller and contrast worse and worse. Have you noticed how it is now "not allowed" to use black text? All text has to be dark grey or medium grey, usually with a non-bright background.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

              Slightly reduced contrast is nice. I was thinking I could maybe fix HTML email with white backgrounds by simply limiting the maximum brightness of all elements so that the white becomes light grey. That at least would be an improvement.

              But yeah, some sites take it way too far.

  • Still waiting for one to link to whenever a company release their next version with 'dark mode' features as if it were the next giant leap forward for mankind.
    Maybe we should do a Kickstarter for it....

  • Really. It sucks. Even as a gimmick is sucks.

    • Re:What the fuck is up with 'Dark Mode' All the ti (Score:5, Insightful)

      by skoskav ( 1551805 ) on Wednesday October 23, 2019 @01:01AM (#59337998)
      It saves battery and can reduce eye strain for some people. I'm not sure why you're so angry about it, as I've always seen it implemented as an opt-in.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Viol8 ( 599362 )

        Whether black reduces the amount of battery use depends on what type of LCD is being used - positive or negative. Positive means black is all pixels on which excludes the backlight, negative means all pixels on is white.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        I wish more websites supported it. I especially wish people would stop sending me HTML emails with white backgrounds.

        There are some add-ons that try to fix it but I've found them to be massive performance killers. They do a good job in terms of picking a dark colour scheme that works for the site, but it seems that the additional CSS makes rendering very slow.

    • May I suggest not using it? I know it's hard, but if you expended the same amount of effort you put into posting here into simply not giving a fuck how others use their computer you'd be a happy person.

      Dark mode reduces battery consumption.

      • I don't. But I'm sick of having to figure out how to disable it whenever someone decides I should have it on my device in or in a program. With Android it came on by default and checking the settings it showed as off... and I finally figured it out that even though it said it was off in settings I could get rid of it by turning it on, and then turning it off. Fucking stupid. As far as battery consumption, that is debatable. And it is not even an issue. Everyone plugs their phones in at the end of the day so

  • Anybody who is willingly using Chrome and not Firefox is complicit in Google's creeping, hostile takeover of the entire world's internet eyeballs. Internet Explorer all over again, just slicker.

  • Security incident in the making (Score:3)

    by SteWhite ( 212909 ) on Wednesday October 23, 2019 @03:49AM (#59338186)

    "There's a new Native File System API that lets developers build web apps that interact with files on the user's local device"

    Seriously? What are they thinking with this one?

    I'm sure Chrome will ask permission from the user before this is allowed. I'm also sure that bad actors are already in the process of crafting pages designed to trick people into granting that access for their attacks.

    • The new SMS receiver API is intended to "reduce the friction" involved in MFA. Which sounds like a great feature for anyone trying to break it.

    • "There's a new Native File System API that lets developers build web apps that interact with files on the user's local device"
      Seriously? What are they thinking with this one?

      They're probably thinking that it will let Google's office suite load and save directly without having to jump through stupid hoops.

      I'm thinking that it's going to lead to me going back to Chromium because it will make meaningful web archiving possible. Right now I'm running Pale Moon specifically because I want to be able to use Scrapbook+. But performance is terrible, as one choking tab (like Facebook, which once you've scrolled very much at all is running many little bits of javascript all over the page)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Bert64 ( 520050 )

      I seem to recall that IE6 had such a "feature", until it was removed in an update because malware was abusing it.

    • Seriously? What are they thinking with this one?

      They were facing the reality that it's not 1999 anymore and the web browser does more than just display static pages.

      Seriously did you miss the fact that whole Office suites run inside the browser now? Direct file system interaction has been something that users have been screaming about for years.

  • But due to a spelling error my http requests drowned in the river and my css starved to death.
  • Google Chrome version 78.0 error when using Symantec Endpoint Protection
    https://support.symantec.com/us/en/article.tech256047.html

    Until we have an update from Google, Symantec, or Microsoft, you can use a different browser or run Chrome with CodeIntegrity disabled (default until version 78) or disabling sandbox.

    Win+R, then copy-paste either:
    C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe --disable-features=RendererCodeIntegrity
    C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe -no-sandb

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