Chrome 28 arrives with Blink, rich notifications for apps and extensions on Windows; Mac and Linux coming soon
Google today released Chrome version 28 for Windows and Mac. The new version features a notification center, although it’s only available on Windows (in addition to Chrome OS of course, which has had it for a while now). You can update to the latest release now using the browser’s built-in silent updater, or download it directly from
google.com/chrome.
This is also the first release of Chrome that ships with Blink instead of WebKit. You can check the
Blink ID yourself tag by navigating to chrome://version/.
If you’re wondering about Chrome for Linux, it actually hit version 28 before the other two desktop platforms: on June 17. The minimum requirements were updated to the following Linux distribution version: Ubuntu 12.04+, Debian 7+, OpenSuSE 12.2+, and Fedora Linux 17+.
Google today released Chrome version 28 for Windows and Mac. The new version features a notification center, although it’s only available on Windows (in addition to Chrome OS of course, which has had it for a while now). You can update to the latest release now using the browser’s built-in silent updater, or download it directly from google.com/chrome.
This is also the first release of Chrome that ships with Blink instead of WebKit. You can check the Blink ID yourself tag by navigating to chrome://version/.
If you’re wondering about Chrome for Linux, it actually hit version 28 before the other two desktop platforms: on June 17. The minimum requirements were updated to the following Linux distribution version: Ubuntu 12.04+, Debian 7+, OpenSuSE 12.2+, and Fedora Linux 17+.
“We’ve designed these notifications to be beautiful, useful and engaging,” Google says. Notifications from apps and extensions can be formatted to display text and images, as well as include actions directly inside the pop-up.
Here’s an example:
Both Chrome and Chrome OS already support basic Web notifications, but rich notifications for Chrome packaged apps and extensions significantly change the game since not only can they display content like lists and images, but users can act directly on them. Furthermore, notifications now live in a center outside the browser, which allows users to receive notifications even when the browser isn’t open.
We’ve heard about the notification center on Windows since at least January. Chrome Canary for Windows received it in March, solidifying the speculation.
Yet a lot has changed since then. Here are what the notifications look like on Windows in the latest version of Chrome:
Mac will likely be the next platform to get the notification center. In May, it showed up in Chromium for Mac and the Chrome blog today specifically said “Mac is coming soon” (although Google has been talking about Mac and Linux support for months).
Many believe the notification center is key to bringing Google Now to the desktop, which has also showed up in pre-release builds of Chrome as well as in Chromium. Yet Google hasn’t enabled Google Now in Chrome yet, though it has been working with other app and extension makers to build rich notifications into their projects.
If you’re a developer, you can start building your own rich notifications into your app or extension too. Google has a
Notify Test App and
documenation for you to peruse over. The company is also taking feedback and offering support over at
Stack Overflow, its
mailing list, and
issue tracker.
via:thenextweb
