Chrome 55 available to Mac, Windows, and Linux now

Fariha Khan
December 5, 2016
707

Google Chrome has been applying a multi-phase plan to de-emphasize Adobe Flash. Now rolling out to Windows, Mac as well as Linux, Chrome 55 will take the key step of defaulting to HTML5 on maximum sites.

With version 53 in September, Chrome blocked Flash-based page analytics in addition to additional background elements. A version later Chrome initiated rewriting embedded YouTube Flash players to use HTML5. Together with these transformations increase security, cut power consumption, and lead to quicker load times.

Chrome 55 has more user-facing and larger step of defaulting to HTML5. Sites that just support Flash are released, as are the top 10 sites on the internet for a year:

YouTube.com, Facebook.com, Yahoo.com, VK.com, Live.com, Yandex.ru, OK.ru, Twitch.tv, Amazon.com, and Mail.ru.

Users will be asked to enable Flash on all other sites the first time they visit. In addition to a better general web experience for all, we expect that this alteration will force publishers to convert over so that users are not bound to make a choice.

In addition to the normal bug and security fixes, the adding of CSS automatic hyphenation will enable the browser to hyphenate words when line-wrapping. This will enhance the visual uniformity of text blocks.

On Android, version 55 will extensively rollout downloads feature for offline pages, videos, and images viewing. Now media controls will show a button signifying when you can save a file. An additional new feature gives sites placed on the homescreen automatic continuous storage that stops automatic clearing.

For desktop, Chrome 55 is now available with updates for Chrome on Android and Chrome OS following soon after.