InfoQ Homepage Web Browser Content on InfoQ
-
Browser-Automation Library Puppeteer Now Supports Firefox
Mathias Bynens, Google developer working on @ChromeDevTools & @v8js, released Puppeteer 3.0. Puppeteer now supports Firefox in addition to the Chrome browser. The new version also upgraded support to the latest Chrome 81, and removed support for Node 8.
-
Safari 13.1 Released
Safari 13.1 was recently released for macOS Catalina, iPadOS, iOS, and watchOS. Safari 13.1 strives to improve on the WebKit engine, privacy, performance, and web developer experience.
-
Safari Blocks Third-Party Cookies by Default
Safari joins privacy-focused web browsers like Tor and Brave in blocking third-party cookies by default in a move aimed at taking a step forward in web privacy. Google will not support third-party cookie blocking by default for all Chrome users until 2022. Third-party cookie blocking by default may disable login fingerprinting, and some cross-site request forgery attacks.
-
Firefox 75 Revamps Address Bar, Keeps Release Schedules despite Coronavirus
Mozilla recently released Firefox 75, with a revamped address bar striving to improve the user’s search experience. Additionally, Firefox developers may now lazy-load images with configuring the <img> element’s loading attribute. Developers may also now evaluate side-effect-free expressions as they type in the console. Mozilla maintains Firefox's release schedule despite the coronavirus impact.
-
Chrome Phasing out Support for User Agent
Google announced its decision to drop support for the User-Agent string in its Chrome browser. Instead, Chrome will offer a new API called Client Hints that will give the user greater control over which information is shared with websites.
-
Chrome 81 Release Features New AR and NFC Features, and Redesigned HTML Form Controls
Google recently released Chrome 81 on desktop and mobile phones. This latest release provides new augmented reality (AR) features and new NFC features, and also shipped with redesigned HTML form controls. The redesign aims at improving the look and feel of form controls, and providing better accessibility and touch support.
-
Firefox 72 Released with Better Privacy, User Experience and a Four-Week Release Cycle
The Firefox browser shipped new versions in 2020 which strive to improve privacy, user experience, and JavaScript and WebAPI support. Additionally, Mozilla will now release new Firefox versions on a monthly cycle.
-
Porting a Go-Based Face Detection Library to Wasm: Q&A with Endre Simo
Endre Simo, senior software developer and open-source contributor to a few popular image-processing projects, ported the Pigo face-detection library from Go to browsers with WebAssembly. The port illustrates the performance potential of WebAssembly today to run heavy-weight desktop applications in a browser context.
-
Chrome 80 Released with New Cookie Policy, Module Workers and Optional Chaining
Google recently released Google Chrome 80. Chrome 80 brings important changes to its cookie policy, supports modules in workers and optional chaining in JavaScript; adds new origin trials while graduating previous origin trials; links directly to text fragments on a page with a new hashtag syntax; and more.
-
Web Packaging Proposal to Enable Offline Distribution, Installation and Usage of PWAs and Websites
The Web Packaging proposal was recently published by the Web Platform Incubator Community Group (WICG). Web Bundles, more formally known as Bundled HTTP Exchanges, are a key part of the packaging proposal and seek to address the offline distribution, installation, and consumption of web resources.
-
V8 JavaScript Engine 8.0 Reduces Heap by 40%, Adds Optional Chaining and Null Coalescing
The latest release of Google's V8 JavaScript engine, V8 8.0, uses pointer compression to reduce heap size by 40% and with no performance hit. Additionally, it adds support for optional chaining using the ?. operator and for nullish coalescence using ??. V8 v8.0 will be officially available with Chrome version 80.
-
Brave 1.0 Released to Improve Web Privacy
The Chromium-based Brave web browser recently announced its 1.0 release. Brave strives to improve performance, security, and privacy by blocking ads and other web trackers. Brave rewards its users when they opt into privacy-respecting ads and share ad revenue with website publishers.
-
Apple Adds Native W3C WebDriver Support to iOS
With the release of iOS 13, Apple now includes native iOS W3C WebDriver support. Beyond previous support for WebDriver added in Safari 10, WebDriver can now easily be used for testing mobile Safari web applications efficiently.
-
Mozilla Will Continue to Support Existing Ad Blockers, Partially Implementing Extension Manifest V3
Mozilla will continue to support existing extensions which prevent ads from being displayed, unlike Google, which in its draft Extensions Manifest v3, proposes changes to the browser extensions mechanism which may break ad-blockers.
-
Facebook Proposes New IsInputPending API for Faster Input Event Processing
Facebook recently announced its first major browser API contribution. The new isInputPending API aims to shorten the time between a user input and its processing by the browser, and to increase the user experience of highly interactive applications.