Four weeks ago, Google He launched a new "major" update to your web browser. If you've noticed, I've used quotes to refer to the type of update, and I've done it because lately they don't seem to add anything really worth mentioning. In part, it's something normal: when you have software that works, and your name isn't Vivaldi and you have a policy of adding all kinds of functions that also need to be polished, what is delivered are versions to improve what already exists. That's more or less what they did again yesterday with the release of Chrome 98.
Among the most outstanding novelties we have one that, having not been used extensively in the last 10 years, I am surprised to read: the possibility to capture full web pages. Other changes have been introduced for developers, which I always say will improve the user experience in the future.
Chrome 98 highlights
- COLRv1 supports vector fonts with color gradients. This is designed with the ability to display smaller, better quality emojis in mind. COLRv1 fonts compress well, are vector based, and work well with gradients. The Google Chrome and Google Fonts teams consider the COLRv1 specification to be the successor format to the Google Noto emoji font. The emoji font size is about 20% of the previous size, but it also has higher rendering fidelity.
- Possibility of making screenshots of complete web pages integrated in the browser.
- New CSS media query to detect the HDR (High Dynamic Range) display capabilities of a device. The new query is "dynamic-range".
- The handling of windows.open() has been improved with a new argument to control whether the desired behavior is to open a new popup or a new tab/window.
- Promise support for blobs on the ClipboardItem object.
- Various other changes for developers.
Chrome 98 was released yesterday, Tuesday, February 1, so can now be downloaded from the official website and Linux distributions that automatically add the repository after the first installation will already have the new version waiting as an update. Users of Arch Linux and derivatives can find it in AUR.