Table of contents
The 100th release of Chrome is here and hundred releases in 14 years is quite a big milestone and Chrome 100 is not just about the new flatter icon.
Chrome 100 brings some interesting new features and some important changes, in fact Chrome 100 brings a fan favorite feature that google had removed in Chrome back in 2019, and also there's a really cool Easter egg which comes along with it.
Now I'm going to divide this video into three sections,
- Chrome 100 on Desktop
- Chrome 100 on Phones
and
- Chrome OS 100
So let's start with,
Chrome 100 on Desktop
Easter Egg
First of all let me show you the Easter egg for this milestone release, so in Chrome 100, you can open up the inspect page on any website, then hit this menu button and click on show console drawer, here just go to the what's new tab and now you can click anywhere and it shows you this really cool sort of confetti with the 100 emoji and the party proper emoji, yeah this is fun.
Download Button
Coming to Chrome 100 features on the desktop, first of all there's a brand new Download Button you want, I mean right now when you download something on chrome you get it here on this bottom bar, but in Chrome 100 you get this dedicated downloads button next to the extensions, kind of like Microsoft Edge and Safari and it shows you all the downloads and when you download a new file it shows you the progress on the icon itself. It's still a work in progress because you have to enable it by it's chrome flag #download-bubble,
and along with this you still get the bar on the bottom showing you the downloads but yeah this is a good feature.
Tab Audio Muting
Now remember that fan favorite feature I talked about that google had removed back in the day, well I was talking about one click tab muting and it's back in Chrome 100, thankfully because I know a lot of people who switched to Microsoft Edge and Safari because of this. See right now when you have to mute a tab, you have to right click on it and then hit mute. Chrome 100 let's click on the speaker icon on the tab to quickly mute. It's actually useful and it's strange why google had to move this in the first place, Especially because other chromium based browsers like Microsoft Edge have this feature, but yeah I'm glad that Chrome 100 brings this back. One more thing to note if you're using Chrome 100 and this isn't working for you you can enable it with this Chrome flag #enable-tab-audio-muting
Multi Screen Window Placement API
It makes sense for some web apps like slideshows or conferencing tools to take advantage of somebody’s multi-screen setup. If more than one screen is detected, a slideshow could open a speaker view on one screen and the slideshow only on the other, for example. Chrome 100 is making this a reality thanks to new screen information APIs that help web apps become aware of someone’s setup. Google initially started testing this in Chrome 93, and it’s shipping in stable with Chrome 100, so prepare for the first few web apps to take advantage of this.
Reverse Image Search Option with Google Lens
Google Chrome users who have used the built-in reverse image search option of the web browser recently may have discovered that Google removed the option from Chrome. Right-clicking on images displays the new "search image with Google Lens" option now in the browser and no longer the "search for image" option.
You can enable it with this Chrome flags #enable-lens-standalone
Break Few Websites
Anyway one important thing to note with Chrome 100 is that it can break some of the websites that you use. See a lot of websites are not ready to read the triple digit version number of chrome and that may result in some websites recognizing this as an older browser. For example, here I am opening up the ISRO website
and you can see that this website considers this as an older browser and this is something that might happen on other government websites too, because they take longer to update. So if you're facing these issues, Chrome 100 has a fix for it, there is this flag called #force-major-version-to-minor which will show chrome's version number as 99 so that all websites play well with this new update.
Chrome 100 on Phones
Data Saving Lite Mode
Data-saving mode is now a thing of the past. Google turned off its servers that took care of all that compression, causing Lite mode to disappear for everyone regardless of which version of Chrome they’re using. In its announcement, Google argues that data plans are becoming ever cheaper and that many web technologies bringing native data-saving options to websites have been introduced in the meantime, making the dedicated mode unnecessary.
Optional Confirmation Dialog for Closing all Tabs at Once
With the Chrome flags #close-all-tabs-modal-dialog flag activated, Chrome 100 asks you to confirm if you really want to close all 200 tabs you’ve currently got open on your smartphone when you hit the Close all tabs button in the overflow menu. This might just be a passing experiment, as the current behavior lets you undo the action via a pop-up message. Nevertheless, asking you to confirm your action before it’s done might lead to just a little less panic, and anything that reduces stress comes a long way in this day and age.
Chrome OS 100
Start Menu
So remember how Windows 11 brought the start menu from the corner to the center. Well Google is kind of countering that by bringing the chrome OS launcher from the center to the corner so this is the new Chrome OS launcher and we saw this in Chrome's flex and now it's here in Chrome Books and I really like it because the Chrome OS launcher in the center used to cover up almost all of the screen. This launcher is more minimal and it's also better as it let's you move apps around. You can sort apps by Name or color the search is better too. It will bring you a bigger preview and let you search for shortcuts search between tabs and more. Now some of these new search options are still "coming soon" though.
Make Edits with your Voice
You might already use the Dictation feature, where you can dictate text anywhere you would normally type on your Chromebook — like in an email or on your browser. Now, you can also edit using your voice. Simply say “delete” to delete the last letter, or “move to next character” to adjust where your cursor is on the screen. Or, if you’re not sure what command to use, say “help” and your Chromebook will give you ideas. Once you’ve enabled “Dictation” in Settings, try it out by pressing the Everything Button + D.
Create and Share your own GIF
Instead of digging through the internet to find that perfect GIF, you can now make your own right in the Chromebook Camera app. Simply open the Camera app, select “Video” and flip the toggle to “GIF.” Record a five-second video and when you’re done, it will automatically convert to an animated GIF. Share it through email and other apps on your Chromebook, or send it to your Android phone using Nearby Share.
When browsers first reached version 10, there were a few issues as the major version number went from one digit to two. Hopefully, we learned a few things that'll ease the transition from two digits to three.
Chrome 100 is available now, and Firefox 100 ships very soon. These three digit version numbers have the potential to cause issues on sites that rely on identifying the browser version in some way. Over the last few months, the Firefox team, and the Chrome team, ran experiments in which the browser reported version number 100, even though it wasn't.
This led to a few reported issues, many of which have already been fixed. But, still it needs your help.
- If you are a website maintainer, test your website with Chrome and Firefox 100.
- If you develop a User-Agent parsing library, add tests to parse versions greater than and equal to 100.
Thank you for reading. If you have come this far, don't forget to react to this blog.
If you ❤️ My Content! Connect with me on Twitter (abhinav_jha07)
Show your support by buying me a coffee
My other digital presence:
Mail: x3vgi9xr@duck.com
GitHub: akj0712
LinkedIn: abhinavjha07
Telegram: abhinav_kumar_jha
More Content at abhinavjha07.hashnode.dev/
Your feedback is more than welcome