Back in September, the Chromium team promised that Google Chrome will start marking HTTP websites as “not secure” as of January. Well, if the latest beta version of Google’s Internet browser is any indication, the Chromium team will hit that release window, as promised. Namely, the Chrome 56 beta is now labeling some HTTP connections as being insecure, with the warning itself appearing in the left corner of the browser’s URL bar. The warning itself isn’t brightly colored or aggressively highlighted, but it’s large enough to draw attention from users, which is precisely what the Chromium team was going for while designing this new feature. So, in approximately one month, the stable version of Chrome is also expected to receive this update which means that the information icon currently present in the desktop version of this browser will soon be replaced with the said warning. Furthermore, an identical label is going to debut in the Android version of Chrome which has so far only highlighted HTTPS websites.
However, it should be noted that this warning won’t be displayed every time a user visits an HTTP site. As the Chromium team explained in a recent blog post, the “not secure” label is reserved for non-encrypted websites that collect sensitive information like passwords, addresses, credit card numbers, and so on. However, the long-term plan is to clearly mark all non-encrypted sites as insecure, which is something that Google has already done to a certain degree but dropped the said UI changes last year to allow webmasters more time to transition their websites to an encrypted format.
However, that’s not everything that the Chrome 56 beta brings to the table. Google’s browser now also boasts Web Bluetooth support which means that websites can connect to other devices via Bluetooth if their developers bother to implement the said feature with some simple JavaScript code. Furthermore, the latest unstable version of Chrome features a new CSS command, “position: sticky.” As you can see in the gallery below, this command allows developers to stick certain website elements to a fixed position. Other novel features include a new Remote Playback API and WebVR API for Android, as well as improved functionality of the Image Capture origin trial. Refer to the source link below for a complete change log. Most of these updates will likely be hitting the Chrome stable channel next month.
