Protecting Chrome users from abusive notifications
May 28th, 2020
Notifications on the web help users receive important updates for a wide range of applications including messaging, calendars, email clients, ride sharing, social media, and delivery services. Unfortunately, browser notifications can be used to mislead users, phish for private information, or promote malware. These abusive patterns fall into two broad categories, “permission request issues” and…
Background Patterns, Simplified by Conic Gradients
May 28th, 2020
For those who have missed the big news, Firefox now supports conic gradients! Starting with Firefox 75, released on the April 7, we can go to about:config, look for the layout.css.conic-gradient.enabled flag and set its value to true (it’s false by default and all it takes to switch is double-clicking it). Enabling conic gradients in…
Celebrating 10 years of WebM and WebRTC
May 27th, 2020
Ten years ago, Google planted the seeds for two foundational web media technologies, hoping they would provide the roots for a more vibrant internet. Two acquisitions, On2 Technologies and Global IP Solutions, led to a pair of open source projects: the WebM Project, a family of cutting edge video compression technologies (codecs) offered by Google…
web.dev LIVE: A digital event over three days and three time zones
May 26th, 2020
Last week, my calendar was constantly alerting me to the fact that many of us would be gathering at Google I/O, and it definitely made me sad that we can’t be together in person right now! We have been so impressed with the role that web developers have played in these trying times, as they…
The Science Behind Web Vitals
May 21st, 2020
Web Vitals is an initiative by Google to help business owners, marketers, and developers alike identify opportunities to improve user experiences. These signals are guided by extensive work by many researchers in the fields of human-computer interaction (HCI) and user experience (UX). But figuring out the right metrics and thresholds is not as simple as…
More intuitive privacy and security controls in Chrome
May 19th, 2020
Keeping you safe and secure online is part of Chrome’s DNA. Along with providing strong default protections, we aim to give you accessible, intuitive, and useful controls so you can make choices that are right for you. So, today we’ve started rolling out new tools and a redesign of Chrome’s privacy and security settings on…
A safer and more private browsing experience with Secure DNS
May 19th, 2020
With Chrome 83, we’ve started rolling out Secure DNS, a feature built on top of a secure DNS protocol called DNS-over-HTTPS, which is designed to improve your safety and privacy while browsing the web. More concretely, Chrome will automatically switch to DNS-over-HTTPS if your current DNS provider supports it, and provide manual configuration options for…
How to Build a Chrome Extension
May 19th, 2020
I made a Chrome extension this weekend because I found I was doing the same task over and over and wanted to automate it. Plus, I’m a nerd living through a pandemic, so I spend my pent-up energy building things. I’ve made a few Chrome Extensions over the years, hope this post helps you get…
Protecting against resource-heavy ads in Chrome
May 14th, 2020
Chrome is developed to be fast and responsive without harmful or annoying experiences. Recently, following the Better Ads Standards, we have taken steps to address ads that most people find unacceptable. Prior to that, we also launched a set of protections against abusive experiences in Chrome. We have recently discovered that a fraction of a…
Introducing Web Vitals: essential metrics for a healthy site
May 5th, 2020
Optimizing for quality of user experience is key to the long-term success of any site on the web. Through our ongoing engagement and collaboration with millions of web developers and site owners, we’ve developed many helpful metrics and tools across Google to help business owners, marketers, and developers alike identify opportunities to improve user experiences….