Google on July 16th, 2014, announced the stable build of Chrome 36 for Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems, as well as for its Android mobile operating system.
The Chrome update for desktop contains a number of fixes and stability improvements. The changelog details that the design of Incognito/Guest NTP has been updated.
Chrome 36 also adds a "browser crash recovery bubble", brings improvements to Rich Notifications, and also introduces the Chrome App Launcher for Linux.
Chrome 36.0.1985.122 changelog provided by Google:
- Rich Notifications Improvements.
- An Updated Incognito/Guest NTP design.
- The addition of a Browser crash recovery bubble.
- Chrome App Launcher for Linux.
- Lots of under the hood changes for stability and performance.
Chrome has had an incognito mode since Google first debuted the browser back in 2008. Incognito mode enables a user to view websites without having those websites or cookies stored in the browser's history. In the new Chrome 36, the incognito tab design has been changed, giving the same warnings in a new cleaner white-background layout.
The revamped Chrome app launcher for Linux, Google previously said in the beta that the changes boil down to a "smaller font size and smarter positioning."
Google has confirmed that the developer features in Chrome 36 beta have made it to Chrome 36. These include:
- The element.animate() function, the first part of the Web Animations JavaScript API to ship in Chrome that lets developers create simple CSS Animations using JavaScript.
- HTML Imports, part of Web Components that offer a way to include HTML documents in other HTML documents using link import tag.
- Object.observe() to allow developers observe changes to JavaScript objects.
Another key element of the Web Components specification that Chrome 36 now includes is known as Custom Elements. According to the draft W3C specification for Custom Elements, it is a component that enables a web author to define and use new types of DOM elements in a document.
Chrome 36 also addresses 26 security issues, of which Google chose to summarize in only two points:
- [380885] Medium CVE-2014-3160: Same-Origin-Policy bypass in SVG. Credit to Christian Schneider who won $2000 for his discovery.
- [393765] CVE-2014-3162: Various fixes from internal audits, fuzzing and other initiatives.
Chrome 36 for Android's new features and security fixes contain mostly incremental changes:
- Improved text rendering on non-mobile optimized sites.
- Doodles return to the new tab page.
- Lots of bug fixes and performance improvements.
- Omnibox URL Spoofing (Android).
- Same origin policy bypass (Android).
The bug fixing update also includes fixes to address issues from OpenSSL 1.0.1h, an Undo tab close option, full-screen video playback with subtitles and HTML5 controls, and support for multi-window and Chromecast.