That’s right! The long awaited Chrome 56 has begun rolling out for Windows, Mac and Linux. As anticipated, this begins the new era of HTML as the default handler for the Chrome browser. By default Flash will be disabled and if early reports were correct, users will be prompted to enable the plugin if required by the site they are browsing.
This is only the tip of the iceberg for the latest release of Google’s browser. Looking through the changelog (which reads like an abridged version of War and Peace) a lot of changes have been implemented. Along with a slurry of bug fixes and security enhancements, Chrome is also touting “faster and leaner” page reloads. According to data provided by Facebook this improvement has resulted in 28% faster page reloads and 60% less validation requests from Chrome.
For a full list of changes and enhancements check out the Chrome release blog.
Equally exciting is the fact that Chrome 56’s release means developers are right on schedule and the roll out of Chrome OS 56 should be right around the corner. Tentatively scheduled for January 31st, we are expecting great things ahead with this next update.
