Category: Chrome

Chrome for Android has a small update rolling out for users of the browser.  The update remains in the Chrome 57 train, with the version number updated to 57.0.2987.126.  The update is a minor one and mainly focuses on addressing a crash issue that some users were experiencing.  If you have been experiencing stability issues with the browser on your Android device, this update hopefully will address those issues for you.

In addition, the Chrome team indicated in the release notes that some improvements around CSS and performance regressions are in this update with the crash fix.

Google has announced that the latest version of Chrome for Windows, Mac and Linux has a new CPU consumption throttle that will limit the power consumption of background tabs in the browser.  This new throttling policy should shows improvements to users in the form of prolonged battery life, something that Chrome and other browsers are known to impact.

The update is a change from the current timer model that is used in Chrome today.  That timer limits the refreshing of background tabs to once per second.  In this new timer, it is based on CPU consumption.  Build 57 will delay timers to the limit average of CPU load of 1% of a core.  So think of it as an augmented and improved timer model over the once-per-second timer used today.

Google Chrome for Windows

It should be noted that tabs playing audio or real-time connections (like WebRTC) won’t be impacted.

So what does this really mean for end users?  It should result in improved battery life.  With fewer timer updates happening in the background, you should see battery life improvement.  How much is going to be dependent on how many background tabs you have open at any given time.  Even with these improvements, it is recommended that you keep tabs to a minimum as you work throughout the day, especially if you are running your laptop on battery power.

Eventually the Chrome team wants to get tabs fully suspended in the background and leverage new APIs to bring them back to life when you need them.  That’s still a bit away but is the end goal for the team.

Slow and steadily, Material Design is making its way into the Chrome browser.  Right now there is a behind-the-scenes update that brings the more polished look to the Chrome notification panel.  If you aren’t familiar with this feature, it is under the bell icon in the taskbar in Chrome.  It gives you notifications from other Google services like Google+, Google Photos and the like.  Previously, this panel was pretty slow to load and frankly, looked a bit dated when you compare it to the beautiful Material Design look of other parts of the browser or even Google’s own websites.  If you have the latest version of Chrome browser, you will get this update and will know you have it when you see a couple of visual clues.

First, the color changing orb that shows up when notifications are loading is gone.  Now you a simple, clean progress bar at the top of the panel.  Second, you will see your notification in sub-divided areas.  So update for Google+ are under one section, Google Photos for another, and so on.

Google has announced that starting February 8, 2017, Chrome 53 and earlier will not be supported for Gmail.  Starting then, a banner will be displayed indicating that an update is recommended for a safer experience.  The current version of Chrome is build 56 for desktops.

The impact is most likely going to be felt by those who are still on Windows XP or Windows Vista.  Chrome 49 was the last supported version for these Operating Systems and Google, as Microsoft themselves have done, are no longer supporting them.  In Google’s announcement, users on XP and Vista are strongly encouraged to update to a new version of Windows.

The Chrome team has started rolling out a new major build of the browser for Windows, Mac and Linux.  Chrome build 56.0.2924.76 has a long list of security fixes and enhancements but also has an impressive list of new features along with it.  In all there are 21 specific issues addressed in the release notes, 7 of which were considered high priority.  As is the usual case, Google hasn’t released all the details of what was addressed.  They will do that after a majority of users have upgraded to the new build.

In this build, full HTML5 is supported which means the end of Adobe Flash plug-in for everyone.  You should get a prompt when you first open up the browser about Flash and the idea here is to make it a better browsing experience for everyone.  And safer.

If you are a Google Chrome user on your Windows PC or Mac, there is a small but important update that has been released.  The updated builds are 54.0.2840.99 for Windows and 54.0.2840.98 for Mac.  Note that there is no update for Linux yet.  According to the release notes from the Chrome team, there are additional changes to the browser for that platform and it will be updated tomorrow.  The update will come via an OTA update but if you want to force the issue, go to chrome://help in the browser and it will force the update to happen.  I’ve already done this for my Macbook so the update is readily available.

Read on for details on what has changed.