Google’s Chrome Browser has officially hit version 59 in the Stable channel for desktops, and the update will bring a Material Design twist on the settings menu, as well as notifications that tie into the native notification system for MacOS. The update also includes 28 new security fixes, of which only 5 are considered high priority. They were all found by external security researchers, who were all paid between $7,500 and $1,000 for their troubles. While the new Material Design overhaul in the settings menu will affect all desktop ecosystems, only Mac users will get native notifications. Windows and Linux users will still see notifications in the normal Chrome-handled style. Animated PNGs are finally natively supported in this update, and it also brings a command line mode, called Headless Chromium, meant for developer and server administrator testing, where a graphical user interface may not be needed. The update is currently rolling out across all desktop ecosystems.
This update ends the long saga of users asking for native animated PNG support, and comes on the heels of a relatively minor update in the Stable channel. Things are a bit more interesting in the other channels; Beta and up on mobile platforms, for example, recently got a feature that allows the Omnibox to list out URLs that a user has recently copied, allowing the user to simply give one of them a click to go there instead of having to paste it into the box. A large number of security fixes are also being implemented in a rolling fashion, only going into the Stable release once they’ve been thoroughly tested.
Chrome 59 going Stable for desktops today means that the releases are actually just a hair ahead of schedule; version 59 was meant to hit the Stable channel by June 6th. That schedule dictates that users can expect version 60 to hit the Stable channel on July 26th for desktop users, and in early August for mobile users. The core Chromium project that Chrome is based on, meanwhile, is scheduled to move to version 61 on July 20th. Those dates are, of course, tentative; as with any other large-scale project, especially an open-source one, Chromium can run into snags that could take time to fix, or end up having to scrap or delay certain features, which can delay the moving of builds onto other channels a bit
