🐡 New in Chrome 128: AudioContext.onerror, Windows System Location Permission Integration, Isolated Web Apps and more 🐡
Ajay Rahatekar
Features Releasing to Stable
AudioContext.onerror
Currently there is no way for the user's agent to know if their AudioContext has failed either at creation (instantiation of AudioContext) or while rendering. At such failure, the web application silently acts as though audio is working correctly even though it's not. Having AudioContext know of the platform's audio rendering failure will enable the developers to plan a recovery.
Windows System Location Permission Integration
This launch updates Chrome to monitor the system-level location permission state and disable access to location features when the system-level permission is denied. If a site-level permission is granted when permission is denied then Chrome will show UI to guide the user in enabling system location.
This change was required due to changes to API behavior for Wi-Fi access and location starting in Windows 11 24H2.
The feature rollout will be finched starting in M128.
Web Share on macOS
Web Share is an API for sharing data (text, URLs, images and files) from the web to an app of the user's choosing. The API previously shipped in WIndows, ChromeOS and Android. This release targets macOS.
The macOS implementation was owned by the Microsoft team with help from the Google team.
Universal Install on ChromeOS
Make any page installable, even those not meeting the current PWA installability and promotability criteria.
The feature previously shipped n Desktop and Android in M124
Isolated Web Apps
Isolated Web Apps (IWAs) are an extension of existing work on PWA installation and Web Packaging that provide stronger protections against server compromise and other tampering that is necessary for developers of security-sensitive applications.
Rather than being hosted on live web servers and fetched over HTTPS, these applications are packaged into Web Bundles, signed by their developer, and distributed to end-users through one or more of the potential methods described in the explainer.
In this initial release IWAs will only be installable through an admin policy on enterprise-managed ChromeOS devices.
Learn more:
https://chromeos.dev/en/web/isolated-web-apps
https://chromeos.dev/en/tutorials/getting-started-with-isolated-web-apps
https://chromeos.dev/en/posts/pwas-past-present-future
Please reach out with any questions, comments or suggestions.
Ajay Rahatekar and the Fugu team.
