Chrome 48 Updates And News

As every six weeks (more or less), we got some cool & new features in Chrome. Here are few that I like for version 48:

Presentation API

This version of Chrome Android allows websites to present to external devices via Cast, increasing the form factors available to sites that want to present content. You can also present from your desktop with this Cast extension.

Custom buttons on notifications

Timely, personalized notifications save users the effort of manually checking for updates throughout the day and have enabled a host of new experiences from real-time communication to live updates on breaking news.

Chrome 47 Updates And Web News

• Input Device Capabilities: Chrome 47 has a new feature that makes it easier to understand the how users interact with your site: InputDeviceCapabilities! DOM input events are an abstraction above low-level input events, loosely tied to physical device input (e.g., click events can be fired by a mouse, touchscreen, or keyboard). However, there is a problem: there is no simple method to obtain the details of the physical device responsible for an event. In addition, certain types of input can generate further “fake” DOM input events for compatibility reasons. One such fake DOM event happens when a user taps a touch screen (such as on a mobile phone); it not only fires touch events but, for compatibility reasons, mouse events as well. The new InputDeviceCapabilities API provides details about the underlying sources of input events this come to helps with problems when supporting both mouse and touch input. Read More: developers.google.com/web/updates/2015/10/inputdevicecapabilities

• Adding a Splash screen for installed web apps – Over the past year we saw an effort in the Chrome team to let developers build sites and apps that feel like they are installed on the user’s system. The home screen launch process on Android is a great first step. In Chrome 46 on Android, we got the background_color that removes any delay and paints the screen with a solid color until the browser is ready to paint something from the web page. This was a good addition, yet it still didn’t look fully like an app. Now in Chrome 47 on Android, Beta these days as of October 2015, we are introducing the concept of a “splash screen”. Have a look: