Monday, 8 August, 2016 UTC
Summary
Unless otherwise noted, changes described below apply to the newest Chrome Beta channel release for Android, Chrome OS, Linux, Mac, and Windows.
Shadow DOM V1
Shadow DOM allows an element to encapsulate its style and child DOM away from the main document. Developers can now build components and safely include them in webpages regardless of other technologies being used. Chrome 53 supports Shadow DOM V1, the latest version of the API. V1 has some significant changes from the V0 version, and is broadly agreed-upon by major browser vendors. Chrome will support both versions of the API until enough developers have moved to V1. The behavior of a shadow root is determined by which API call it was created with.
PaymentRequest API
Completing payments on the web can be a cumbersome process for users, leading to lower conversions on sites. While autofill has made it easier to enter information, efficient data entry on mobile is still a challenge. PaymentRequest allows for fast, seamless, and secure payments on the web using a credit card or Android Pay. It also lets users provide a billing address, shipping details, and payer information without typing. PaymentRequest is available on Chrome for Android, with support for more platforms coming soon.
Chrome for Android autoplays muted video
Video is a great way for sites to reach their users, but it can be jarring when it plays unexpectedly. This is especially true on mobile, where the user may be in an environment where audio is unwanted. Chrome on Android now allows muted videos to begin playing without user interaction. If the video was marked as muted and has the autoplay attribute, Chrome will start playing the video when it becomes visible to the user. Developers can also use script to play muted videos without user interaction. Muted videos that begin playing sound before a user action will automatically be paused.
Other features in this release
Other features in this release
- Sites that send notifications to Android devices running Android 6.0 (Marshmallow) or later may now provide a badge to show in the status bar in place of the Chrome logo.
- Notification objects now provide getters for reading the notification action buttons and vibration pattern.
- The allow-presentation sandbox flag allows sites to control whether an iframe can present to external devices.
- pattern attribute values on input elements now use the unicode flag, improving syntax checking and other regular expression ergonomics.
- 3D-positioned elements will be flattened if an ancestor has opacity less than 1.
- To prevent visual artifacts, all content will be re-rastered when its transform scale changes unless it has the will-change: transform CSS property.
- Low-pass and high-pass biquad filters now support more filter characteristics.
- --webkit-filter is now an alias for the unprefixed filter property and will behave identically instead of having separate behaviors.
- --webkit-user-select now supports an all property which forces a selection to contain an entire element and all its descendants.
- The Web Bluetooth API is available experimentally on some platforms as an origin trial, allowing sites to communicate with nearby devices using the Bluetooth Generic Attribute Profile (GATT).
- The text-size-adjust property allows sites to control whether font size automatically scales on mobile devices.
- Events generated by script will no longer trigger default actions, improving spec compliance and browser interop.
- HTTP/0.9 has been deprecated in favor of HTTP/1.0, which adds response header support.
- TLS Diffie-Hellman ciphers have been removed, following their deprecation in M51 due to security concerns. Connections to servers unable to negotiate a non-DHE cipher will result in a ERR_SSL_OBSOLETE_CIPHER error.
- The TextEncoder API no longer accepts arguments and will instead always encode using utf-8.
- Due to recent security issues, new certificates issued by Symantec Corporation or by CAs that chain to Symantec Corporation will no longer be trusted in Chrome unless accompanied with Certificate Transparency information.
Posted by Hayato Ito, Shadow DOM Chaffeur