The team at Google Chrome has released version 53 of its popular web browser to Windows operating system.
The version 53.0.2785.89 contains a number of fixes and improvements. But what is big in this update is that Google is starting to bring its Material Design to Windows for the first time.
With Material Design, Windows users can experience the Google's flatter design and new iconography. Other visual elements such as tabs, navigation, and the general UI also look a lot flatter.
To bring the new design, Chrome handles the visuals by rendering them fully programmatically. This include removing the ~1,200 .PNG files that were used in the previous version. Chrome's Material Design is cleaner and somehow more consistent than Windows Metro design, and Google has proven that it scales visually well. The design also brings HiDPI improvements which can make Chrome to render better in a wider and more PPI screen configuration.
However, Chrome's Material Design for Windows is applied only subtly, so bold and opaque colors or layering that is common in Material Design implementation won't be found.
Chrome also introduces a new dark theme for its Incognito mode. And what's more, Google also added supports for color emoji in Windows 10 operating system. Google Cast is also built into Chrome. With this enabled, users can view websites that aren't integrated with Cast to their TV.
Microsoft has been proving that Chrome browser's poor battery performance in the recent months, especially when its Edge browser achieves dramatically better battery life. And with the release of the Anniversary Update, the Edge battery life advantage has only improved. But with the update, Google is starting to hit back.
Chrome 53 that has been released to the stable channel brings both CPU and GPU power consumption enhancement for video playback.
Besides that, Google also introduces other "big" performance and power improvements that include fixing 33 vulnerabilities that cover 13 high-severity issues, 6 medium-severity issues and 1 low severity, and reducing its dependencies on Adobe's Flash.
As an example, Chrome 53 puts an end to Flash in the background for page analytics.
On August 2016, Google said:
Google expects to make HTML5 the default experience for Chrome, except for sites that only support Flash. Here from many aspects, Google is making a massive improvement efforts to improve its battery consumption.
While Google's update for Chrome 53 concerns battery usage improvements and higher DPI screens, its UI still doesn't scale well. For example, the drop-down system menu still doesn't scale at all, and it's not touch-friendly.
But still. The update is seen as an appreciated move since Chrome browser is now the most used web browser on Windows. The update is also available for users using Linux and Mac.