Tag: Chrome 68

The third and likely last Chrome 68 build has arrived in the Chrome OS Dev Channel.  The new build is 68.0.3440.4 (Platform version: 10718.4.0) and is available for most devices.  If you have a device in what is considered the alpha channel for the platform, you should have the update available to you.  This build follows the update from last week to the channel.

With the promotion of Chrome 67 to the stable happening this week and next, it means that 68 should be promoted to the Chrome OS Beta Channel, likely next week.  Remember that Chrome 67 is expected to be released for Chrome OS on June 5th.

The second build based on Chrome 68 has arrived in the Chrome OS Dev Channel this morning.  The new build is 68.0.3431.0 (Platform version: 10682.0.0) for those keeping score at home and is available on most systems in that channel.

For those of you new to Chrome OS, the Dev Channel is what would be considered Alpha builds and often have a lot of bugs and odd behaviors, but also include some of the newest features that will be eventually be coming to Chrome OS.  Sometimes the features slip or accelerate depending on stability.  It is not recommended that you run your primary Chromebook in the Dev Channel as you will certainly run into challenges are things simply not working as expected.

Back in January, I posted about a new commit in the Chrome OS Gerrit that pointed to the ability for Android apps to be able to access a USB drive attached to your Chromebook.  At the time, it was only a commit and had not shown up in any channel for the platform but that now has changed.

The team over at Chrome Story had discovered a new flag that enables this feature in the Chrome OS Canary Channel.  The Canary Channel right now is based on what will be Chrome 68 so we are still several months away from it landing in the Stable Channel – but it appears to be coming.

A new commit in the Chrome OS Gerrit points to an exciting new features for Chromebook users who need to access shared network resources.  It looks like the platform is going to be gaining native Server Message block (SMB) support, and it may be as soon as Chrome 68

For those that may not be familiar with SMB, it is a client-server communication protocol used for sharing access to files, printers, serial ports and other resources on a network.  If you have ever accessed a network based file or printer, odds are very high you accessed it via SMB.

In their continuing effort to keep end users safe and aware when they are visiting a non-secure website, Google has announced that starting in July 2018, these sites will be clearly identified in the Chrome browser.  The change will coincide with the release of Chrome 68 and will be across all platforms as well as Chrome OS.  A non-secure website is noted as http:// when you visit the site while a secure, encrypted site is noted as https:// in the URL.

The official announcement should not come as a surprise.  Google has already been urging sites to move to secure deployments with changes in how page ranking is done for secure versus non-secure sites.  This is the culmination of that effort.