Google Chrome 106 was launched four weeks ago with many experimental and deprecated features, and today Chrome 107 will arrive with support for High-Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) decoding.
HEVC, also known as H.265, is a video compression format that is supported by many modern applications. Google Chrome 107 will support this format by default.
Other improvements in Google Chrome 107 include small features that are enabled by default including improvements to CSS grid-template property interpolation, allowing developers to implement specific interactive effects, hints for displaying a graphical surface with the ability to exclude the current tab, and displaying a button for switching display tabs during screen sharing. In addition, URLPattern has a case-ignoring option, better rendering blocking support and a “rel” attribute for form elements.
Finally, in terms of deprecated features, Google Chrome 107’s Expect-CT HTTP header, a way for sites to migrate to Certificate Transparency (CT) enforcement, has been axed. However, Google says that this is now required by default, and since no other browser provider has implemented this configuration, this adjustment will have no impact on current usage.
Mozilla’s Firefox Firefox browser has no intention of supporting HEVC at this time and has even expressed opposition. In discussions dating back to 2016, Mozilla emphasized that it has no plans for HEVC, calling it a “patent burden” and instead will focus on supporting AV1 decoding.
