Google unveiled a few days ago the launch of the new version of your Chrome 96 web browser, along with which at the same time the stable version of the free Chromium project, which is the basis of Chrome, was also released.
In addition to innovations and bug fixes, the new version removes 25 vulnerabilities, No critical issues have been identified that allow bypassing all levels of browser protection and running code on the system outside of the sandbox environment.
For the current version, Google has paid 13 bonuses worth $ 60,000 under the vulnerability rewards program (one $ 15,000, one $ 10,000, two $ 7,500, one $ 5,000, two $ 3,000, one $ 2,500, two awards of $ 2,000, two prizes of $ 1000 and one prize of $ 500).
Main novelties of Chrome 96
In this new version of the browser the apps button is hidden by default in the bookmarks bar below the address bar, allowing you to open the chrome: // applications page with a list of installed web applications and services.
Added support for redirecting from HTTP to HTTPS using DNS (When determining the IP addresses, in addition to the DNS records "A" and "AAAA", the DNS record "HTTPS" is also requested, in the presence of which the browser will immediately connect to the site via HTTPS).
In the desktop version from the browser, the backspace cache, which provides an instant transition when using the "Back" and "Forward" buttons, has been extended with support for browsing previously viewed pages after opening another site.
Also Priority Hints mechanism was implemented, which allows you to set the importance of a loaded resource in particular by specifying an additional "importance" attribute on tags like iframe, img, and link. The attribute can take the values "auto", "low" and "high", which affect the order in which the browser loads external resources.
For standalone PWA applications, the manifest added support for the optional "id" field with the global application identifier (if the field is not specified, the start URL is used for identification), plus the ability to register as URL handlers was implemented. For example, the music.example.com application can register as a URL handler https: //*.music.example.com and all external application transitions that use these links, for example instant messaging and mail clients electronic, will lead to the opening of this PWA, not a new tab in the browser.
When the site uses the U2F API (Crypto tokens), the user will be shown a warning with information about the disapproval of this program interface. The U2F API will be disabled by default in Chrome 98 version and completely removed in Chrome 104. The web authentication API should be used instead of the U2F API.
Of the other changes that stand out:
- Improvements have been made to the web developer tools.
- A new CSS overview panel has been added to provide a summary of information about colors, fonts, unused ads, and media queries, and to highlight potential issues.
- Improved CSS copy and edit operations.
- In the Styles panel, an option has been added to the context menu to copy CSS definitions in the form of JavaScript expressions.
- The Payload tab with the request parameters analysis has been added to the network request inspection dashboard.
- Added an option in the web console to hide all CORS (Cross Origin Resource Sharing) errors and provide stack trace output for asynchronous functions.
How to update or install Google Chrome in Ubuntu and derivatives?
For those who are interested in being able to update to the new version of the browser on their systems, they can do so by following the instructions that we share below. The first thing you should do is check if the update is already available, for this you have to go to chrome: // settings / help and the notification that there is an update will appear.
In case it is not so you must close your browser and you are going to open a terminal and type:
sudo apt update sudo apt upgrade
You open your browser again and it must have already been updated or the update notification will appear.
In case you want to install the browser or choose to download the deb package to update, we must go to the web page of the browser to obtain the deb package and to be able to install it in our system with the help of the package manager or from the terminal. The link is this.
Once the package is obtained, we only have to install with the following command:
sudo dpkg -i google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb