Google Chrome 87 Stable Version Rolling Out To General Web Browser Users With PDF Viewer, Performance And Stability Improvements

Alap Naik Desai November 17, 2020
2 minutes read
Google Chrome gets "Send to your devices" feature

Google has started rolling out the latest stable version of the Chrome web browser to end-users. The Google Chrome 87 contains quite a few new features, including some for developers, as well as performance and stability improvements.

Google Chrome v87 is out of beta and has started rolling out to general users belonging to the stable channel. With Chrome v87, Google has offered several new features, including a few for office and educational virtual meetings.

Google Chrome v87 Benefits And Features:

Google has Chrome 87 on November 17, 2020. The search giant has indicated that the browser’s latest version should install automatically, but users can also head over to Menu > Help > About Google Chrome to hasten the process.

The Chrome v87 brings with it, significant visual changes for PDFs. The built-in PDF viewer has received a major revamp after a significant time. The new PDF view includes a sidebar that shows a preview of all the pages. The zoom buttons are now at the top of the screen along with a rotate button and the “Fit to Page” option. The menu also includes a new option to view pages side-by-side.

Besides the PDF viewer, office and educational meetings have now received the much-needed additional camera tools. In case users have a camera that supports pan, tilt, and zoom, Google Chrome can now access those controls.

Instead of relying on software from the camera’s manufacturer, users can control the camera directly within Chrome. Moreover, the website hosting the video meeting can access these controls only after users grant the site relevant permission.

The most anticipated feature that finally gets included in Google Chrome 87 is ‘Tab Throttling’. With tab throttling, tabs that are open in the background automatically get throttled and can access a maximum of one percent CPU time after being inactive for five minutes or more. Tabs can “wake up” once per minute while in the background. Site admins can control this throttling or ‘wake up’ policy with the IntensiveWakeUpThrottlingEnabled policy.

Users should also appreciate the new wallpapers that Google has included in the latest stable release of Google Chrome. There are more than 30 new wallpapers and they can be accessed from the new “Element,” “Made by Canvas,” and “Collage” collections in the wallpaper picker.

Google Chrome 87 Includes Features For Developers:

Chrome 87 introduces the “Cookie Store API” to parse the data stored inside Cookies. The Cookie Store API offers websites a simple and clean JSON-formatted list of stored cookies. Background processes can also access cookies with the new API. This means people browsing the web should expect improved site performance.

Additionally, there are quite a few new developer-centric features such as:

  • New WebAuthn Tab: Devs can emulate authenticators and debug the Web Authentication API with the new WebAuthn tab.
  • isInputPending(): Long-running scripts can sometimes block user input. To address this, Chrome 87 added a method called isInputPending() , accessible from navigator.scheduling , which can be called from long-running operations.
  • Lighthouse 6.4: The Lighthouse panel is now running Lighthouse 6.4.
  • V8 JavaScript Engine: Chrome 87 incorporates version 8.7 of the V8 JavaScript engine.
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Alap Naik Desai November 17, 2020
2 minutes read
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Alap Naik Desai
A B.Tech Plastics (UDCT) and a Windows enthusiast. Optimizing the OS, exploring software, searching and deploying solutions to strange and weird issues is Alap's main interest.