Google has launched Chrome 77 browser to users on Windows, Mac, iOS and Android.
While there are certainly a bunch of improvements and fixes, as well as bug squashing attempts, the most noticeable change is the site loading indicator in tabs. The new animation shows a site favicon loading in a circle before expanding once it’s fully loaded. This simple redesign makes it easier to spot when a tab is still loading.
Also on the design update, Chrome 77 removes EV (extended validation) certificates from the browser's address bar.
As for most of the rest, Chrome 77 is making things much easier for developers and alike.
Showing Google's obsession with speeding up the web, Chrome version 77 introduces some new performance metrics to help developers measure how quickly the main content of a web page loads and is made visible to users.
The first addition is 'Largest Contentful Paint', which provides more meaningful data by using the largest content element as a proxy for when the main content of the page is likely visible to users.
The second is the 'PerformanceEventTiming' interface, which provides timing information about the latency of the first discrete user interaction.
Chrome 77 can also perform lazy loading of images automatically. What developers need to do, is just add loading="lazy"
Also for developers, Chrome 77 has added two new features that support custom form controls.
The 'formdata' event for example, is added to form element, allowing websites to use JavaScript instead of hidden elements to add data to a form. The passed event includes a FormData object containing the data being submitted, which in Chrome 77, can be modified.
And also, there is the 'Origin Trials' that allows users to try new features and provide feedback on usability, practicality, and effectiveness to the web standards community.
The first introduced, is the 'Contact Picker API' that “allows users to select entries from their contact list and share limited details of the selected entries with a website.”
In the security sector, Chrome 77 includes site isolation improvements to protect cross-site data, such as cookies and HTTP resources, in attacker-controlled websites.
Chrome 77 also lets users launch guest browsing by default using the --guest command line flag or the new 'BrowserGuestModeEnforced policy'. With guest browsing, browsing activity is not written to the disk and doesn't persist between browser sessions.
"If this policy is set to enabled, Google Chrome will enforce guest sessions and prevents profile logins," Google said. "Guest logins are Google Chrome profiles where all windows are in incognito mode."
Then, there is the 'send web page to devices' feature.
Using this, users can simply right-click on a link to see a new context menu. Here, users can send links to other devices where they also use Chrome as their web browser. Chrome has in fact long supported the ability to browse open and recent tabs across multiple devices, but this send to device feature makes things a little quicker if users are moving from browsing on a PC or laptop to a phone or vice versa.
On the receiving end, the users will see an alert that notes the page name, URL, and sharing device.
And for last, Google wants to ease new users in setting up their experience with its products.
Here, Chrome 77 has an updated first-run experience when users set up a new account on popular Google services, like Gmail, YouTube, Google Maps, Google News and Google Translate. This particular feature also prompts users to set Chrome as the default browser, if they haven't.
As for Chrome 77 on Android, the most notable is Google in tweaking the Downloads screen by doing away with the menu in the top-left corner. The browser instead makes use of buttons to filter between various content types, while there are larger previews for saved images.
Another change is an 'Articles for you' tab that shows content Google automatically stores.