Chromium Blog: August 2014

Chrome 38 Beta: New primitives for the next-generation web

Thursday, August 28, 2014

BetaNew HTML element: <picture><picture> elementYoav Weisssuccessful crowdfunding campaignresponsive design
<picture>
<source media="(min-width: 45em)" srcset="large.jpg">
<source media="(min-width: 32em)" srcset="med.jpg">
<img src="small.jpg" alt="The president giving an award.">
</picture>

New JavaScript features

Chrome 38 also enables by default several new JavaScript language features from the draft ECMAScript 6 (ES6) specification. Additions include:

Maps and sets, two highly-requested data structures which make storing and interacting with data simpler and more rational.
Iterators now provide an easy and extensible way to iterate over sequenced data types such as arrays and strings, as well as the new maps and sets.
Symbols, which help prevent object properties from unintentionally interfering with each other.
Math functions such as Math.sign and Math.log10, which prevents developers from having to re-implement these functions and provides the performance boost of built-in functions. Take a look at the full list of new functions.

Future releases of Chrome will contain even more ES6 features as the specification matures. Stay posted!

Other updates in this release

The Network Information ("NetInfo") API is now enabled, giving web applications access to the current type of network on a device running Android, iOS, or Chrome OS. This could allow an app to only do data-intensive activities such as syncing when connected to a Wi-Fi connection.
The addition of the Screen Orientation API allows developers to not only detect whether a device is in portrait or landscape mode, but also lock the screen orientation while a user is within that app.
The CSS value "image-rendering: pixelated" is now supported, which allows scaled images to appear to be composed of very large pixels. Example use cases include high-performance display of zoomed photos in image editing software without large bandwidth or load time costs.
The Encoding API enables the encoding and decoding of data from binary streams, such as converting between a raw ArrayBuffer and a string.
The new File interface allows developers to create and interact with File objects in the same way as Blob objects.
SVG fonts are no longer supported, except on Windows systems older than Windows 7. Note that while the feature works on those systems, it is considered deprecated.

As always, visit chromestatus.com/features for a complete overview of Chrome’s developer features, and circle +Google Chrome Developers for more frequent updates!

Update January 26th: "image-rendering: pixelated" has been delayed until Chrome 41.

Posted by Andreas Rossberg, Senior Symbolic Software Engineer

Mac Chrome: When I’m Sixty-Four (Bits)

Thursday, August 28, 2014

64-bit Chrome for Windowsbeta channelASLRNPAPIHTML5 APIsNPAPI support will be removed from Chromestable channelChrome 37let us know

64 bits of awesome: 64-bit Windows Support, now in Stable!

Tuesday, August 26, 2014

Today, after a successful experiment with Chrome 64-bit Windows in our Dev and Canary channels in June, 64-bit Windows support is coming to Chrome Stable with the release of Chrome 37.

64-bit Chrome offers many benefits for speed, stability and security. Our measurements have shown that the native 64-bit version of Chrome has improved speed on many of our graphics and media benchmarks. For example, the VP9 codec that’s used in High Definition YouTube videos shows a 15% improvement in decoding performance. Stability measurements from people opted into our Canary, Dev and Beta 64-bit channels confirm that 64-bit rendering engines are almost twice as stable as 32-bit engines when handling typical web content. Finally, on 64-bit, our defense in depth security mitigations such as Partition Alloc are able to far more effectively defend against vulnerabilities that rely on controlling the memory layout of objects.
At this point 64-bit will remain opt-in, so to take advantage of the improvements click on the new “Windows 64-bit” link on the Chrome download page. Currently, the only significant known issue is the lack of 32-bit NPAPI plugin support. The 32-bit channel will remain fully supported for the foreseeable future and we will continue to support 32-bit plugins until NPAPI is removed from Chrome.
We encourage you to give 64-bit Chrome a try. We’re looking forward to hearing your feedback so we can continue to make Chrome the fastest, most secure and stable browser.
Posted by Will Harris, Software Engineer and Embiggener of Bits

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Chromium Blog

Chrome 38 Beta: New primitives for the next-generation web

Mac Chrome: When I’m Sixty-Four (Bits)

64 bits of awesome: 64-bit Windows Support, now in Stable!

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