Chrome 24 enters beta with new developer features

With improved datalist support, developers can now specify suggested dates and times for input element In the latest beta release of its Chrome web browser, Google has added a number of new features aimed at developers. The first of these is expanded datalist support – now, developers can set specific dates and times for input elements. As pointed out by Google Software Engineer Peter Beverloo, arbitrary dates and times can still be entered.

The new Beta Channel release, version 24 of Chrome, also implements support for the MathML XML markup language: with MathML, developers can write mathematical content such as formulas that is then displayed consistently across web pages and modern browsers. CSS Custom Filters, which can be used to add cinematic visual effects to HTML using CSS syntax, are now built in, but are currently disabled by default – these custom filters can be enabled under chrome://flags. The developers also note that Chrome now parses the autocomplete attribute according to the official WhatWG HTML standard.

Chrome 24 supports the MathML XML markup language

New prefixed attributes include -webkit-hyphens which gives developers more control over hyphenation at line breaks and -webkit-clip-path which enables them to clip DOM content to an SVG shape. A number of APIs have had their prefixes removed – these include IndexedDB, the client-side storage API, the Intl namespace for internationalisation, and postMessage, for safe cross-origin communication between windows.

Web Intents, a Chrome experiment introduced in Chrome 19, has been disabled by the Chrome developers as they work out a new approach to inter-web-app communication. Some past Chrome experiments have been removed as the developers tidy up; these include the WebKitBlobBuilder API which has been replaced by the Blob constructor, and the Blob.webkitSlice() method has been dropped in favour of Blob.slice().

More details about the developer-related changes in version 24 of Chrome can be found in a post on the Chromium Blog. The Chrome 24.0.1312.5 beta is available to download for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. Chrome is built from the open source Chromium browser project run by Google.

See also:

• Chrome 23 closes holes, promises longer battery life, a report from The H.

(crve)