Following the Chrome 98 stable release this week, Google has now promoted Chrome 99 to beta status. Next month, Chrome 99 will enter the stable channel, and then there’s the nerve-racking Chrome 100… In Chrome 99 beta, most of the changes are for developers. Highlights of the Chrome 99 beta include:
Support for CSS cascading layers as a structured way to organize and balance concerns within a single source for some cascading ordering of same-origin rules.
- The showPicker() method of the HTMLInputElement object, allows to programmatically display the browser selector for the input element. This is a more standardized way to, for example, display the browser’s date picker for a given input element.
- Dark mode support for Web App has entered an early experimental stage.
- A handwriting recognition API for real-time handwritten text recognition that enables web applications to leverage the underlying operating system’s handwriting recognition service has successfully completed early trials.
- Chrome’s 2D canvas rendering environment has gained various features, from new events to a reset method for conic gradients, to better handling of SVG filters and other additions for developers.
More details on the changes in Chrome 99 beta can be found on the Chromium blog and on ChromeStatus.com: