Chrome 88 Offers Better Password Protection and Incognito Screenshots While Canceling Flash (APK Download)

Another month, another version of Chrome: After the usual beta testing period, Google has just started rolling out version 88 of its browser, and there are quite a few important improvements and changes on board. The version improves some password protection features and paves the way for more web apps in the Play Store, but it also says goodbye to FTP connections and puts the final nail in the coffin of the Flash player.

Password protection

As we mentioned before, Chrome 88 comes with a host of new password protection features. In addition to checking your saved passwords for violations, the browser will now also notify you when you want to save a password that is considered too weak to be secure. If you need to change your already saved passwords, a new button in the built-in password manager will now allow you to do this for the first supported services. On Android, biometric authentication for the automatic entry of passwords is planned soon.

Support for Manifest V3

Chrome 88 is the first version to fully support Google’s controversial new Manifest V3. The key change in Manifest V3 is the deprecation of the webRequest API in favor of the declarativeNetRequest API. Instead of allowing extensions to examine and filter every network request coming from Chrome, which is not the safest option in terms of privacy and security, the declarative NetRequest API only allows extensions to provide to Chrome a list of filters that the browser analyzes itself. Developers are not happy with the change, as extensions can only apply a maximum of 30,000 rules in Chrome 88, while some of the more common blocklists like EasyList contain over 60,000 rules. Google has already promised to increase that number to 300,000 in Chrome 89, but that might not be enough to run more than a few blocklists at a time.

Google will begin approving and shipping the first extensions using the new manifesto after the release of Chrome 88. At this time, Google has not communicated the inevitable shutdown date for Manifest V2 and the webRequest API. Other manufacturers of Chromium-based browsers such as Vivaldi and Opera have promised to continue to support the old API.

Learn more about Manifest V3 in our coverage here.

Play Store billing for web apps

Chrome 88 adds support for purchases through the Play Store app for web apps as part of the Payment Request API. On Android, this allows websites to access the Google Play billing library. This is important for developers who want to monetize their web apps in the Play Store, as its policies prohibit in-app payments using other billing methods. Developers interested in the implementation can find more details here.

Flash and FTP disapproval

It’s been years since Chrome 88 was finally the first version of Chrome to remove all leftover Flash Player. In the early days of the Internet, when HTML, Javascript, and other web tools weren’t as versatile as they are today, Flash Player was a fantastic plugin for video playback, lots of browser games, and more. But with the rise of some phones without Flash (clears his throat iPhone) and more powerful web tools, Flash Player was falling increasingly out of favor as a slow, resource-consuming security risk. Adobe has also deactivated its tool and is already blocking the playback of Flash content since January 12, 2021.

Likewise, all support for FTP has been removed from Chrome, following the deprecation of functionality in Chrome 80. FTP is still a widely used protocol for accessing and transferring files over the Internet, but web browsers have always been ill-equipped for file browsing. There are much better client programs for FTP connections, like the open source FileZilla.

Screenshots on Incognito

Screenshots in Incognito work as expected in Chrome 88.

For a long time, Chrome didn’t allow you to take screenshots while browsing Incognito to prevent you from saving some potentially illegal content, but there are circumstances when you want to keep the information from the private browsing tabs. . It’s finally possible with Chrome 88 thanks to a new # incognito-screenshot flag that brings screenshot support back to Incognito mode when enabled. It’s unclear when the feature will roll out to everyone by default.

Search by tab

If you’re like me, you’ll have dozens of tabs open during a regular browsing session, and this is where tabbed searching can come in handy. The feature has been available in Chrome OS for quite some time and finally makes the jump to other desktop OS with version 88. You need to enable it in chrome: // flags under # enable-tab-search (copy and paste the link address in your address bar). After restarting your browser, you’ll find a new icon on the right side of the tab strip that you can click to see a preview of all of your open tabs, including a search bar. You can also pull it up via Ctrl + Shift + A.

Tabbed search is limited to desktop versions of the browser at this time, and we don’t know if Google will ever expand it to mobiles.

Instructional Videos

Google is working on adding tutorial videos to its browser. You can currently enable them via the # video-tutorials flag, but at the moment they are only placeholder videos from the Google Go app. They are visible as cards on the new tab page , between your most visited websites and the Discover feed.

The headlines already suggest the content we can expect in the future: there’s “How to Use Chrome,” “How to Download Content for Later,“ How to Search Using Chrome, ”“ How to Search with Your Voice ”and“ How to use private browsing. “Videos are limited to Android, and Google will likely only enable tutorials for everyone once the appropriate content is available.

Other changes

Besides these larger changes to Chrome, there are a few minor changes:

• Chrome has long supported dark themes, including those from Microsoft on Windows 10, but there are some quirks that have never been addressed on the desktop operating system until now. Dark mode finally properly darkens the scroll bars in more places like settings, history, bookmarks, and other internal sites.
• Chrome 88 is removing support for macOS 10.10 Yosemite and now requires macOS 10.11 El Capitan or later.
• Chrome previously added left and right buttons for navigating tabs, and a new # scrollable-tabstrip-buttons indicator is available that keeps buttons visible at all times.

The # scrollable-tabstrip-buttons function flag.

• Google’s Legacy Browser Support extension, which allowed IT managers to set rules for automatically opening other browsers when certain pages are loaded, is no longer supported as of Chrome 88. Most functionality extension are now integrated directly into Chrome.
• Links that open in a new tab ( tags with “target = _blank”) automatically behave as if “rel = noopener” were set. This will help prevent so-called tabbing attacks.
• WebXR experiences (AR and VR content) can now scale their content dynamically, which can improve frame rates in some cases.
• Web applications can optionally enable a new feature called Origin Isolation, which increases the security of a page in exchange for the unavailability of certain APIs.
• A new # destroy-profile-on-browser-close flag is available which “[releases] memory and other resources when the last browser window is closed, “instead of the default, which happens when the Chrome browser is completely closed.
• A new # permission-predictions flag is available that switches to a less intrusive interface for page permissions, when Chrome predicts you’re less likely to grant that permission (for example, a website you’ve never visited before. request notifications).
• DevTools (Ctrl + Shift + C) are around 37% faster thanks to improvements in JavaScript. There are also new CSS angle viewer tools for angle debugging, emulation for unsupported image types, simulation of storage quota size in the Storage pane, and much more. for developers.
• The addEventListener class has a new AbortSignal option to make it easier to stop EventListeners when they are no longer needed.
• Chrome 88 speeds up chained JavaScript timers for hidden pages, which will reduce CPU usage and consume less of your precious battery.
• Support for web components v0 has been removed from Chrome.
• Google now allows developers to enable or disable pointer acceleration and other underlying platform changes. This is especially useful for games.
• A new aspect ratio CSS property class allows developers to set aspect ratios for any element, not just images.

Download

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