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Google Chrome Browser 55 Fixes Security Holes and Defaults to HTML5

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Google this week began rolling out the latest update to its desktop Chrome web browser ahead of schedule, with Chrome 55 fixing multiple security vulnerabilities and defaulting to HTML5 on the majority of websites.

Google Chrome has been phasing out Flash support since September, when version 53 of the browser started blocking Flash-based page analytics and background elements. Version 54 brought a YouTube code rewrite that forced YouTube Flash players to switch to HTML5.

Chrome 55 brings the most visible move away from Flash by defaulting to HTML5 across the board. Users are now prompted to enable Flash when they visit sites that still use it, exempting 10 of the most popular sites on the web, including Facebook and Amazon.

Chrome 55.0.2883.75 for Mac contains a number of other fixes and improvements, including 26 patches identified by external researchers as part of Google's bug bounty program, and another 10 security fixes implemented by Google itself. The addition of CSS automatic hyphenation means Chrome can now hyphenate words when line-wrapping, which improves the visual appearance of text blocks.

Chrome 55 should be available to download for most Mac users now. Existing users can update by selecting Chrome -> Preferences via the menu bar and clicking the About section. Users downloading Chrome for the first time will automatically receive the updated version from the Chrome download page. An update for the iOS browser app is expected soon.

Article Link: Google Chrome Browser 55 Fixes Security Holes and Defaults to HTML5
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2016/12/03/google-chrome-browser-55-security-html5/
My only complaint about phasing out Flash is that it is disabling my easy method of killing all auto-play videos. The more people and software move away from Flash the more sites move to HTML video that browser manufacturers seem incapable of actually blocking. Otherwise everything about killing Flash is good and necessary.

Yes, I know Chrome has had Flash baked in but I removed Flash from my systems otherwise.
 
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The multi colored eye watches all. Nice to see them gradually dropping Flash. It's my dedicated browser I only use for forced LinkedIn and Facebook connections.
 
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MacRumors said:
The addition of CSS automatic hyphenation means Chrome can now hyphenate words when line-wrapping, which improves the visual appearance of text blocks.
Click to expand...
Automatic? Does this mean it does not respect the standard which is to hyphenate based on the `hyphens` CSS property ?
 
macintoshmac said:
Article completely omitted any mention of the 50% less RAM usage and better battery life? Is that not coming in this version then?
Click to expand...

HTML5 has always offered faster load times than Flash and is generally more energy efficient - two of the reasons it's gradually overtaken Flash in recent years. So I guess that goes without saying.

AFAIK the reduced RAM consumption with the new V8 JavaScript mainly relates to older Windows systems, Android and low-memory mobile devices (less than 1MB).
 
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HTML5 by default now? Finally. Very happy about this. One of the features added last year (I think it was last year?) in Safari was that it wouldn't play Flash content unless you clicked on the content in your browser. Some examples include YouTube videos and ads. I'm happy to see Chrome following suit.

I swore by Safari, but I recently have switched to Chrome and really enjoy its performance, despite it being such a resource hog. I really do hope that's fixed.
 
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benface said:
Automatic? Does this mean it does not respect the standard which is to hyphenate based on the `hyphens` CSS property ?
Click to expand...

It seems that Chrome did not support this property until now, at least not with value ‘auto’. Now it seems to support this unprefixed and completely.
 
Why do people use Chrome? Safari does a great job and syncs well across all devices. What does Chrome do so well that Safari doesn't?
 
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ForkHandles said:
Why do people use Chrome? Safari does a great job and syncs well across all devices. What does Chrome do so well that Safari doesn't?
Click to expand...
Some do it for similar reasons that some prefer Pepsi over Coke (while others don't even drink soda).
 
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ForkHandles said:
Why do people use Chrome? Safari does a great job and syncs well across all devices. What does Chrome do so well that Safari doesn't?
Click to expand...
I have deleted Flash from my system and that is fine most of the time. I usually use Safari, but occasionally I run across something that I want to see that requires Flash. For that I use Chrome with it's built-in Flash.
 
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ForkHandles said:
Why do people use Chrome? Safari does a great job and syncs well across all devices. What does Chrome do so well that Safari doesn't?
Click to expand...

Believe it or not, some regard Chrome as having one of the more secure codebases of any browser (as long as you opt out of everything Google related in the privacy options, heh). It's also got a pretty solid bunch of developer tools.
 
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We still use chrome 49(I think) on our non supported systems (10.7.5) to watch NFL rewind and Netflix. NFL requires flash but Netflix uses that built in drm.
 
Telos101 said:
HTML5 has always offered faster load times than Flash and is generally more energy efficient - two of the reasons it's gradually overtaken Flash in recent years. So I guess that goes without saying.
Click to expand...
I don't know about "always." Back when YouTube was just introducing the HTML5 player, I saw it using much more resources than Flash. Late 90s / early 2000s PCs used to run anything on the WWW using Flash just fine, and those had trivial amounts of processing power compared to today's PCs.

Anyway, I think the issue he was referring to is Chrome's high resource (CPU and RAM) usage on non-Flash sites. Some earlier MR article said they were going to try and fix that.
[doublepost=1480798528][/doublepost]
Telos101 said:
Believe it or not, some regard Chrome as having one of the more secure codebases of any browser (as long as you opt out of everything Google related in the privacy options, heh). It's also got a pretty solid bunch of developer tools.
Click to expand...
This was definitely the case early on, when Safari for Mac and iOS still wasn't properly sandboxing stuff. Heh, you could jailbreak iOS 4.3 by visiting a website with a TIFF that exploited a buffer overrun vulnerability. AFAIK Safari adopted security features to make it comparable to Chrome at least 3 years ago. I haven't heard of Chrome being more secure nowadays. But yeah, Chrome dev tools are better.
[doublepost=1480798639][/doublepost]
ForkHandles said:
Why do people use Chrome? Safari does a great job and syncs well across all devices. What does Chrome do so well that Safari doesn't?
Click to expand...
Safari doesn't sync with Windows or Android. This matters a lot for certain people. Though I see plenty of "pure Apple" users running Chrome (and not using dev tools) and always wonder why. It's a piece of junk, hogging RAM and draining battery. Maybe they've switched from Windows and are used to Chrome.
 
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ForkHandles said:
Why do people use Chrome? Safari does a great job and syncs well across all devices. What does Chrome do so well that Safari doesn't?
Click to expand...

-Favicon on tabs
-Professional dev tools (safari's inspector performs poorly & lags)
-Responsive mode is buggy on Safari, not always works.
-WebRTC
-Proper horizontal tab management (bugged in Safari since v9)
-502 score on HTML5test.com vs 380 Safari (tech preview is catching up though but at the expense of breaking something each release)
-No need for pinned tab icons, which are a pain to add and test, need to clear icon folder cache and restart browser to display changes every time.
-No delays when searching through the URL bar.
-Appearance customization (themes).
-Doesn't crash as much.
-Abysmal difference on media playback, not just youtube.

I would very much love to stick with Safari, but Apple's focus is towards emoji support and none of the above.
 
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I'm happy for Google's coding progress and for moving the web forward. But I cannot use a browser that funnels my privacy and browsing habits into the hands of advertisers and government surveillance. Thus Firefox or Safari it is.

There's also Ungoogled Chromium, but the fact that Google claims Chrome is open-source, yet there have to be elaborate projects to remove all the spying/branding, should give anyone concern. This is also the fundamental problem with Android.
 
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At work, i am required to use explorer for most corp apps. Hate it. Have chrome for almost anything not part of the corporate apps. At home I use safari and never had any need for anything else. However, since Sierra, citrix connection to my work stopped working. Now to connect to work I use chrome to Citrix in. Inside the Citrix window, explorer launches for the corp apps.

Oh the irony...
 
Telos101 said:
HTML5 has always offered faster load times than Flash and is generally more energy efficient - two of the reasons it's gradually overtaken Flash in recent years. So I guess that goes without saying.

AFAIK the reduced RAM consumption with the new V8 JavaScript mainly relates to older Windows systems, Android and low-memory mobile devices (less than 1MB).
Click to expand...
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the page has NO date...no mention of it being an update.....stupid at best
 
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