Chrome 38 Released: New APIs and 159 Security Fixes

An anonymous reader writes: In addition to updating Chrome for iOS, Google has released Chrome 38 for Windows, Mac, and Linux. While Chrome 38 beta brought a slew of new features, the stable release is pretty much just a massive security update. This means that, with Chrome 38, Google isn't adding any features to the stable channel (full changelog). That said, Chrome 38 does address 159 security issues (including 113 "relatively minor ones"). Google spent $75,633.70 in bug bounties for this release.

Comments

Chromium

[StripedCow]

How is Chromium coming along?
Does Google still add features to it, now that it forked off Chrome?

Re:Chromium

[Anonymous Coward]

Chromium is where most of development is going on. It's unfortuneate that Chrome (which is non-free) gets so much attention, especially when people think that it's open source. I see them all the time, they think Chrome is open source when actually it is not.

Re:Chromium

[CastrTroy]

I see people make the decision that free (as in beer) is the same as open source. They literally don't even grasp that there could possibly be a difference.

Re:Chromium

[ron_ivi]

I hope yes for bug fixes. Less excited about "features". I'm not sure I want them adding "features" like Google Play and random to help their data business.

Re:Chromium

[mrchaotica]

The Chromium home page tells people to download Google Chrome. Then, if they persist in thinking that they really want Chromium, it tells them to download the source code and build it themselves.

Given those things, is it really so surprising that most people use Chrome instead of Chromium?

Re:Chromium

[gstoddart]

That's because for many people software isn't a political act.

The vast majority of people are not running around saying "viva la revolucion" about 'free' software.

They just want stuff which works.

Has it occurred to you that they simply don't care?

Even Mozilla backed down on blocking 3rd party cookies, and it is open source.

And then I'm hard pressed to think of an open source browser which actually respects our privacy, doesn't have ads, and which runs on multiple platforms.

Re:Chromium

[Sigma 7]

Even Mozilla backed down on blocking 3rd party cookies, and it is open source.

That's because Mozilla developers need to focus on keeping their bellies full.

If Mozilla backed down, that's probably due to financial issues - where they could simply withhold funding, and instead focus on partnering with Microsoft to port Internet Explorer and Active X over to Linux.

And then I'm hard pressed to think of an open source browser which actually respects our privacy, doesn't have ads, and which runs on multiple platforms.

I haven't seen an ad-supported browser since Opera decided to shed its shareware model.

The big two browsers - Mozilla Firefox and Chromium - are close enough to these requirements. If you disagree, you'll have to find skilled developers, get a way to feed them, and keep them around long enough to write your own browser.

Re:Chromium

[nashv]

Chromium is irrelevant to the average user without Windows builds. Chromium themselves ask people to download Google Chrome on their webpage. So, meh.

Re:Chromium

[joaosantos]

Yeah because everyone uses their browser only as a toy so can use an alpha version all day long.

Re:'Aunt Jemima' relatives suing pancake company

[Stewie241]

Nerds eat pancakes too!

No new features after beta?

[Stewie241]

So a company released a beta version, and then a stable version that didn't add features to the beta? Wow. That really *is* news for nerds!

Keylogger?

[Anonymous Coward]

Any new features to their keylogger? Oh excuse me.. we call that the address bar in other browsers.. :)

Re:Keylogger?

[tepples]

I was under the impression that if you changed the default search engine away from Google, Chrome would log keys to that search engine instead of Google.

Re:Keylogger?

[jones_supa]

Any new features to their keylogger? Oh excuse me.. we call that the address bar in other browsers.. :)

You can disable it by following these steps.

Chromium

[rodrigoandrade]

My Chromium is on version 40.0.2180.0 and so is my Chrome Canary at home.

Why is everyone still praising an older browser?

And it still can't render CSS gradients properly

[Ark42]

Firefox and IE are basically the only good browsers still, I'm so sick of bugs like this on really important features.
https://code.google.com/p/chro...
http://jsfiddle.net/7C7ey/

Chrome 38 is old news

[ArcadeMan]

I come from the future where we are now using Chrome 52.

P.S.: it's going to rain three days from now. After that, I don't know.

Re:And it still can't render CSS gradients properl

[spacepimp]

How many years did Microsoft drag its feet on supporting .png and transparency? How long before it truly supported CSS? yeah IE and Firefox are still the only good browsers out there. Especially if you don't care about security.

The only non-free pieces of Chrome

[tepples]

According to this page and this bug report, the only differences between Google Chrome and the copy of Chromium on my laptop are Adobe Flash Player, patented audio and video codecs, digital restrictions management for HTML5 video, and Google's crash reporting plug-in.

Re: The only non-free pieces of Chrome

[Threni]

And all the syncing into your Google account.

Re: The only non-free pieces of Chrome

[tepples]

The version of Chromium Browser on my Xubuntu laptop appears to have the same Google Account sync features as Google Chrome for Windows.

Netflix without Silverlight?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does Chrome now support Netflix with HTML5 rather than Silverlight? That would be helpful! No more Silverlight/Flash exploits creating Tinba infestations...

http://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/14/08/09/1854206/netflix-now-works-on-linux-with-html5-drm-video-support-in-chrome

Re:Hum, how nice.

[tepples]

I wonder if leaks while viewing Slashdot have anything to do with advertisements that invoke Flash Player. I know a bunch of Anonymous Cowards have complained lately about Slashdot video ads burning through the cap imposed by their ISPs. I think that's part of why I switched to Firefox, so that I could make Flash ads click to play. This keeps its memory usage consistently under 400 MB on my laptop, even with 10 tabs loaded from Cracked.com.

Customizing the software

[tepples]

That's because for many people software isn't a political act.

Correct. It's a practical act. If your company wants to hire someone to customize the software to fit its needs, that's practical only with free software.

Has it occurred to you that [users of software] simply don't care?

Has it occurred to you that publishers of software simply don't care about the needs of some of their users? That's why free software is so important: it gives you the flexibility to hire anyone to make a program do what you want.

And then I'm hard pressed to think of an open source browser which actually respects our privacy, doesn't have ads, and which runs on multiple platforms.

You mean like Firefox? What kind of "ads" or privacy violations are you talking about?

Re:Customizing the software

[tlhIngan]

Has it occurred to you that [users of software] simply don't care?

Has it occurred to you that publishers of software simply don't care about the needs of some of their users? That's why free software is so important: it gives you the flexibility to hire anyone to make a program do what you want.

Some is not a lot of people. It's probably not big enough for publishers to care, nor cater specially for - because it just costs more money to do than they'll get back (ROI).

It's like why PC ports of AAA games are so shitty - because the ROI on PC is poor. There may be more PC users, but there's also a ton more piracy, so what sold well on consoles may barely make up the porting costs on PC.

Free software's great, but I'm sure most people using it are just using it "just because" and less because "it's freedom!". I.e., their job involves developing for Linux, so they have a Linux PC. Doesn't mean they care about free software, it's just that Linux is paying the bills so they'll use it. Heck, some probably debug without realizing the library they're debugging through actually has source code .

Re:Customizing the software

[tepples]

Some is not a lot of people. It's probably not big enough for publishers to care, nor cater specially for - because it just costs more money to do than they'll get back (ROI).

Which is exactly the draw of free software. It lets companies that use software meet needs that the publisher refuses to meet for ROI reasons.

It's like why PC ports of AAA games are so shitty - because the ROI on PC is poor. There may be more PC users, but there's also a ton more piracy, so what sold well on consoles may barely make up the porting costs on PC.

Does a copyright infringer really cost the studio anything? Not every infringing copy directly correlates to a lost sale unless copyright infringement demonstrably siphons off paying users. So a port can be worthwhile so long as there are enough paying users. Copyright infringement is a service problem, and this appears to be true of both games and movies.

Re:And it still can't render CSS gradients properl

[Ark42]

That's a great excuse. IE6 sucked so Chrome 38 might as well still suck. Yeah CSS3 support is split up all over the place, but there are a certain small set of really useful core features that just about every browser supports, and are particularly more useful for webpages than other features. Pretty much everything in that small list of features is supported by IE10+, Chrome 10+, and FF 4+. Sometimes support requires with vendor prefixes, but it still works. Except gradients on Chrome. Up to version 38 still and you can't make basic angled striped patterns for backgrounds, or smoothly blend two colors over a large distance.

And sorry, if you're talking about security, let's talk about privacy. Google is to the point where I'd rather trust Microsoft with my personal information over Google, so that's a huge sting against Chrome, and I'm not really trying to advocate IE here. Firefox is pretty much where people want to be, especially given how much better adblock support is there.

Re:Direct Downloads! WTF Are they?

[ledow]

Do what every IT professional in the world has to do. Google the full offline installer / MSI:

https://www.google.co.uk/chrom...

Chrome is crap now. Switched to opera.

[Rujiel]

Around when they added the recent device emulation options in developer tools, the beta channel experience has been terrible. A search bug in devtools renders 0 results for virtually everything, and a new tab takes several seconds to open. Oh how the mighty have fallen.

Re:Chrome is crap now. Switched to opera.

[The MAZZTer]

You know Opera is based off of Chrome now, right?

Re:Chrome is crap now. Switched to opera.

[Gavagai80]

How is opera based on chrome? I know it uses webkit, but webkit is apple's safari modifications to konqueror's khtml... certainly not a chrome-specific rendering engine. (Technically blink is, but it doesn't differ much from webkit yet.)

Re:Chrome is crap now. Switched to opera.

[mister_playboy]

Opera uses Blink just as Chrome does.

On 12 February 2013, Opera announced it would drop its own Presto engine in favour of WebKit as implemented by Google's Chrome browser, using code from the Chromium project. Opera Software also planned to contribute code to WebKit. On 3 April 2013, Google announced that it would fork components from WebKit to form a new rendering engine known as Blink; the same day, Opera confirmed that it would follow Google in implementing Blink.

Re: Chrome is crap now. Switched to opera.

[Rujiel]

Then i suppose the version opera is using is just old enough to not suck

Re:And it still can't render CSS gradients properl

[spacepimp]

We were discussing a single portion of css 3 in this matter it was gradients. You can use chromium and not suffer the privacy concerns. Somehow I think you bringing that up though hints more to the reason that you find IE anf FF to be the only good browsers. If you think IE doesn't spy on you and that it is secure then keep on telling yourself that.

Re:And it still can't render CSS gradients properl

[Ark42]

I think Firefox is the only good browser, and the only one people should be using. It renders the best, has the best adblock, and is secure and respects privacy as best as possible.
As a web developer, when all I care about is how the site renders, I want people to be using Firefox, or at least IE10+. Using Chrome or Safari is like using IE9. Is sort-of works with modern HTML5/CSS3 design, but with a graceful fallback to a crappier, sub-par look due to missing support for all the CSS3 features I want to use.
But I guess Chrome is a lot better than IE8 and below, but at that point we have to start comparing Netscape 4, so it's best to just forget about anything that old now.