Items tagged with Chrome
Earlier this month Google rolled out an update that aimed to mute those annoying videos that automatically play with sound while you are surfing the web. While that was a welcome goal, the update also had some unintended consequences for fans of web-based games. The update rendered those games unable to play sound. Google has recognized its error and has announced that it will be updating Chrome to temporarily remove the update that broke the games. The original update automatically paused Web Audio projects when a webpage launched. The same feature silenced the audio in these web-based games and the fix is to temporarily remove the autoplay policy from the Web Audio API for Chrome 66. The change...
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Managing the web and its many destinations is not an easy thing to do, though it's one that every browser maker has tasked itself with accomplishing. That includes Google and its popular Chrome browser. As it were, one of the things Google recently set out to do was to make the web less annoying by muting some videos that play automatically when visiting a website. Unfortunately, it's had the undesired side effect of breaking millions of browser-based games. Google introduced the feature as a default option when with Chrome version 66, which it started pushing out three weeks ago. In previous versions, game audio would play either when a page loaded, or after the user pressed the "play" button....
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Have you been experiencing wonky issues on your PC after installing the April 2018 Update for Windows 10? Well, you're not alone, if that comes as any consolation. Others have taken to Reddit and other destinations on the web to complain of annoying behavior after applying the update, including freeze ups in Chrome and even complete system hangs. Fortunately, Microsoft is aware of the issue and is working on a fix. In a support document, Microsoft acknowledges that some devices running the latest version of Windows 10 (build 1803) "may hang or freeze when using certain apps, such as 'Hey Cortana' or Chrome." This is separate from the 'low disk space' pop-up you might be receiving in relation...
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Google is experimenting with a refreshed look to its Chrome Canary browser that is representative of its Material Design 2 UI, and if you are rocking a Windows PC, you can catch a glimpse of it right now. All you have to do is download and install the latest Chrome Canary build, and enable a flag that lets you choose between different UI layouts for the top section, which mainly alters the way tabs look. We tried it ourselves and took a screenshot, as shown above. Notice how the tabs have rounded corners, versus more blocky looking isosceles trapezoids. This is reflective of Google more broadly working to implement its material design language into its services, primarily Android. However, it's...
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Over the coming days and weeks, Google will push out a new build of its Chrome browser that will introduce several fixes and improvements. Perhaps the most welcome change included in Chrome version 66 is a new feature that mutes sound when a website automatically plays a video. This is one of the biggest annoyances on the web, especially if you leave the volume on your PC or mobile device turned up, and it's nice to see Google taking action. This is a feature that Google has been working on for a long time, and initially planned to roll out earlier. Instead, it previously implemented the ability to block sound on a site-by-site basis. As of Chrome 66, however, sites are only allowed to automatically...
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Google has released a new build of its Chrome browser to the stable channel, Chrome 65, which was made available first to Windows, Mac, and Linux systems, followed by an update to the version for Android devices. So as of this moment, Chrome 65 is available on all four platforms. The new version brings much improved security to Chrome, along with some new features for developers. On the security side, Chrome 65 introduces 45 security fixes. Several of those are the result of lucrative bug hunting by security researchers who cashed in on Google's bug bounty program for Chrome. A researcher with Tencent Zhanlu Lab made off particularly well after discovering two Flash-related vulnerabilities with...
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Sharing links on mobile devices can be a pain in the backside. It's not overly difficult, mind you, but in some cases the URL you are trying to share is stupid long. You then have a choice—share it anyway and clutter up your chat message (or email), or take the extra step of using an URL shortener before sharing it out. There is a third option. Beginning with Chrome 64 on Android devices, the browser will automatically trim all of the extra cruft from annoyingly long links. When dealing with an extra long link, usually it's only the beginning section that you need. Everything that comes after is expendable, such as search queries and whatever else might have been tacked on by the time you...
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Isn't it nice when malware authors make it easy to remove their dirty code? Sometimes all you have to do is open the Control Panel and uninstall the offending program, just like any other application. And for browsers, simply nuke the extension that is causing trouble. Unfortunately, some recent browser extensions for Chrome and Firefox are making things difficult on users by cleverly hiding their whereabouts. The extensions in question hijack Chrome and Firefox to redirect web searches and drive up click counts on YouTube videos, presumably to generate ad revenue. That in and of itself is not unusual, but what is frustrating is that you can't just load up the extensions page and delete them....
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Security researchers have uncovered malware hidden in four different extensions for Google's Chrome browser. Collectively, the four extensions have been downloaded and installed more than half a million times, including onto workstations within major organizations globally. While likely used to commit click fraud and search engine optimization (SEO), the number of installs could provide cyber criminals with a potent botnet. "While revenues are not known, a similar botnet uncovered in 2013 yielded $6 million per month before it was taken down," security researchers at Icebrg, a computer security firm based in Seattle, Washington, stated in a report outlining the technical details of the malware....
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If you are a user of the popular Google Chrome extension "Archive Poster" you need to be aware that the extension has been misbehaving lately. Currently "Archive Poster" has over 105,000 users and has in recent weeks turned into an in-browser cryptocurrency miner. The extension isn't asking permission to hijack the CPU of user computers to mine Monero cryptocurrency. Monero has been the cryptocurrency that many nefarious users are choosing to mine with the stolen processing power of unsuspecting computer users. Facebook Messenger was attacked recently to mine Monero using Digimine malware. A report from back in October said that there are over a billion PCs globally that are unsuspectingly running...
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Chrome OS fans will soon be receiving a feature that many have been wanting since support for Android apps rolled out. The new feature is Android Parallel Tasks, and it is tipped for release in Chrome OS 64. This feature will give Chromebook users the ability to have Android apps continue to run in the background when they click away. Currently, if you are running an app or game that needs real-time data like Google Analytics, the second you click away from that app it pauses. With Android Parallel Tasks, the apps would continue to run in the background, just as you would expect on other desktops running Windows, Linux, or macOS. The way Android apps stop running on Chrome OS now is a throwback...
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Back in September, Google praised the benefit of autoplaying content on the web, pointing out that users watch and listen to a lot of media these days. At the same time, Google said one of the biggest complaints is unexpected media playback, which can not only make unwanted noise, but also consume power and use data. So, Google promised to clean things up with Chrome 64 when it arrives next month by giving users more control over audio. Don't feel like waiting? You can take control (partially) right now by downloading the Chrome 64 beta. One of the features that is included in the Chrome 64 beta is the ability to mute an entire website. This is a handy feature when you encounter a site that insists...
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Google has a new version of its Chrome web browser for mobile devices, Chrome 63, and it is making it available first for Android users. It is a bit of an unusual move, as typically Google updates its Chrome browser for both Android and iOS at the same time. For this round, however, Chrome 63 for Android is releasing before it ends up on iOS, bringing with it a new site permissions dialog and some other changes. In the past, permissions would appear on a dialog box that slides up from the bottom, and would often be ignored. But with the update to Chrome 63, permissions appear as a pop-up dialog box in the center of screen. According to Google, users would either ignore or dismiss prompts around...
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When Google announced Chrome nearly a decade ago, one of its promises was to deliver a more stable browser. The company used sandbox techniques to make sure that if a process in a tab goes screwy, it won't take down the rest of the browser with it. At first, it did almost feel like the browser was uncrashable, but the reality is, nothing is uncrashable. Eventually, once user apps began tying themselves into Chrome, the browser immediately became more vulnerable to crashing. It's not hard to understand why: if you inject code into a running application, there's no reason to expect that it's going to handle it gracefully. Google says that folks running apps that inject code into Chrome are 15%...
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