A few days ago Google Chrome development team announced the release of the stable version of Google Chrome 90, in which the big news, and especially the most anticipated of this version, is the functionality that allows the browser to connect to HTTPS versions of the website URLs displayed in the address bar.
By supporting HTTPS by default, this new feature in Google Chrome 90 is expected to improve user privacy and the loading speed of websites that support this protocol.
Another novelty that stands out from this new version, is the ability to assign different labels to windows to visually separate them on the desktop panel. Window renaming support will simplify work organization when using separate browser windows for different tasks, for example, when opening separate windows for work tasks, personal interests, entertainment, delayed content, etc.
The name is changed through the "Add window title" item in the context menu that appears when you right-click on an empty area in the tab bar.
After renaming in the application bar, the selected name is displayed instead of the site name of the active tab, which can be useful when opening the same sites in different windows linked to separate accounts. The link is preserved between sessions and after restarting the windows will be restored with the selected names.
On the other hand, in On the security side, Google continues its strategies in terms of strengthening the security of your browser. To maintain security and prevent vulnerabilities, Google announced support for Intel's Flow Control Application Security (CET) feature through its Chrome browser.
This security feature is designed to protect user data from Return Oriented Programming attacks (ROP) and Jump Oriented Programming (JOP).
These attacks ROP and JOP are dangerous and particularly difficult to detect or prevent because they modify the normal behavior of a program to execute malicious code. Intel has actively worked with Google and other industry partners to combat these types of attacks using CET technology as a complement to previously implemented solutions.
Another security-related change is support for la network fragmentation to protect against movement tracking methods of users between sites based on the storage of identifiers in areas not intended for the permanent storage of information ("Supercookies").
Because cached resources are stored in a common namespace, regardless of the source domain, one site can determine the resource load of another site by checking to see if this resource is in the cache.
Protection is based on the use of network partitions, the essence of which is add additional domain records link to shared caches from which the main page opens, limiting the scope of the cache for motion tracking scripts only to the current site (an iframe script cannot verify if the resource was loaded from another site). The cost of fragmentation comes down to the efficiency of caching,
While of the changes that stand out for developers, we can find the performance optimizations for "super" properties (for example, super.x), for which the online cache is used. The performance of using "super" now approaches that of accessing normal properties.
Calling WebAssembly functions from JavaScript has been significantly sped up due to the use of the inline implementation. This optimization is still experimental and should be run with the "–turbo-inline-js-wasm-calls" flag.
In addition, the WebXR AR lighting estimation feature has been stabilized, allowing you to define ambient lighting parameters in WebXR augmented reality sessions to give models a more natural look and more harmonious integration with the user's environment.
How to install Google Chrome 90 on Linux?
If you are interested in being able to install this new version of this web browser and you still do not have it installed, you can download the installer that is offered in deb and rpm packages on its official website.