Google releases Chrome 50, which comes with 20 security fixes, revamped push notifications, and improved page load but, at the same time, has dropped support for older Windows versions and the OS X version.
With Google Chrome set to become one of the leading browsers, leaving Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox way behind, the new browser will soon get auto-updated on the desktop of millions of Chrome users. The company launched the new version for Windows, Mac, and Linux.
The most notable feature of Chrome 50 is the new push notifications payloads that form a part of the Push API. This means that the notification data and the message will both be sent at the same time. The notification delivery, therefore, does not get affected by either poor Internet connections or multiple messages sent.
Sites will automatically sense when a user closes a notification, which enables the system to close notifications sent to other devices. Moreover, the notifications can be customized by using the new time stamps and button icons, and comes with options to be set at sound, vibrate, or silent mode.
Coming to the next prominent feature, the browser now gets notified ahead of time by the sites regarding resources to be downloaded, which leads to a definite improvement in loading of pages.
The Chrome 50 included 20 security fixes contributed by both external researches and internal teams. The company spent $17,500 from its pocket for these fixes, with the highest award of $7,500 going to an anonymous researcher for fixing "a high severity universal cross-site scripting flaw in extension bindings". Another researcher, Choongwoo Han from Korea, walked away with $5,000 for fixing another high-severity bug plaguing Chrome's V8 Javascript engine.
While the fixes and improvements are detailed out in the log, a quicker look at all 20 security fixes is available at the Chrome release updates page provided by the Chrome team.
Chrome 50 looks ready enough to be rolled out to the users' desktops as an OTA (Over-the-Air) update. However, the browser no longer supports Windows Vista, Windows XP, OS X 10.7 Lion, OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, and OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion.
The Google team should be providing more information about the new browser features in the coming weeks. Meanwhile you can either update your browser through the silent auto-updater or download it from Google Chrome.
Photo: Michael Saechang | Flickr
