Chrome 81, originally scheduled for March 17 but delayed due to the COVID-19 outbreak, is finally out.
Today's launch was expected to be impressive, but only two major features made an impression – including improved support for WebXR (Chrome's Augmented Reality feature, originally released in Chrome 79) and initial support for the Web NFC standard.
Features that were planned for later came with Chrome version 81. Some of these are the UI for Chrome's web form elements and the removal of support for the TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1 encryption protocols.
The first one was released because Google engineers were unable to put the finishing touches on the redesign in time. The new form controls are scheduled to go live with Chrome (Chromium) 83, which is expected to arrive in mid-May next month.
Plans to remove the TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1 encryption protocols from Chrome, which were originally planned for Chrome 81, have now been pushed to Chrome 84. The decision to delay the removal of these two protocols is related to COVID-19, as removing the protocols may have prevented some Chrome 81 users from accessing critical government health websites that were still using TLS 1.0 and 1.1 to set up HTTPS connections. Removing support would have prevented users from accessing these websites altogether, which is something Google wanted to avoid.
The release of Chrome 81 marks the most tumultuous release in Chrome's history. Because the browser maker had to shift features from version to version, and because delaying Chrome 81 by three weeks also disrupted Google's regular schedule . Google has taken the first step toward retiring a Chrome version. Google said the next version of Chrome is v83, and that work on v82 has been permanently halted.
But while Google has ported some features from Chrome 81 to other versions, that doesn't mean this version will be lacking. Of all the new features added in today's v81 release, the most important, by far, is the new NFC Web API.
Modern smartphones already support NFC technology, but end users usually need a special application running on their device to interact with NFC tags placed in the real world.
The new Web NFC standard added to Chrome will allow websites to interact with NFC tags, eliminating the need for users to have a special app installed on their phones.
Google believes the new Web NFC standard will win over web devs and expects widespread use, especially for Chrome for Android, where it could be used for scenarios such as:
- Museums and art galleries can display additional information about a display when a user touches their smartphone or tablet running Chrome to an NFC card.
- Websites, corporate sites, and intranets that handle a company's inventory will be able to read or write data to an NFC tag on a container or product, simplifying inventory management.
- Conference venues can use it to scan NFC badges during the event.
- Intranets and other corporate websites can use Web NFC to share the configuration and initial secrets required to provision new devices within an organization.
For now, this feature won't be widely available to all users, but will only be available as a field trial. The field trial will run from Chrome 81 to Chrome 83, during which app developers can build apps based on the new Web NFC standard to see how it performs and provide feedback to developers so they can better adapt it for a wider release.
The Web NFC feature is currently scheduled to go live for all users in Chrome 84, but this may change if something comes up during testing.
But while Google has avoided removing TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1, Chrome 81 improves the security of HTTPS connections, but in a different way. Chrome 81 marks the latest release in Google's three-stage plan to eliminate mixed HTTPS content from the web.
HTTPS mixed content refers to web pages where content such as images, JavaScript , or stylesheets are loaded over both HTTP and HTTPS, meaning the website is not loaded entirely over HTTPS.
Google's stated end goal is to automatically upgrade HTTP content to its corresponding HTTPS URLs. However, doing so suddenly is risky, as it could cause the internet.
Instead, to avoid any major "breaking" Google has chosen a three-step plan for this process, as detailed below, which ends today with the rollout of Chrome 81:
- In Chrome 79, which is due out in December 2019, we will introduce a new setting to unblock blocked content on specific websites. This setting will apply to mixed scripts, iframes, and other types of content that Chrome currently blocks by default. Users can change this setting by clicking the lock icon on any https:// page and clicking Site Settings. This will replace the shield icon that appeared on the right side of the main panel for unblocking mixed content in previous versions of Chrome for desktop.
- In Chrome 80, mixed audio and video resources will be automatically upgraded to https:// and Chrome will block them by default if they cannot load over https://. Chrome 80 will be released to early release channels in January 2020. Users can unblock affected audio and video resources with the setting described above.
- Also in Chrome 80, it will be possible to load mixed images, but they will cause Chrome to display a “Not Secure” chip in the main frame. We expect this to be a clearer security UI for users and to incentivize sites to move their images to HTTPS. Developers can use the upgrade-insecure-requests or content-blocking security policies to avoid this warning.
- In Chrome 81, mixed images will automatically be upgraded to https:// and Chrome will block them by default if they fail to load over https://.
