Deprecations and removals in Chrome 73
Removals
Remove EXPLAIN and REINDEX support in WebSQL
EXPLAIN's output is not guaranteed to be stable over SQLite versions, so developers cannot rely on it. REINDEX is only useful when collation sequence definitions change, and Chrome only uses the built-in collation sequences. Both features are now removed.
Remove isomorphic decoding of URL fragment identifier
When Chrome opens a URL with a fragment id, it decodes %xx and applies isomorphic-decode to it, then tries to find an element with the decoding result as an ID in some cases. For example, if a user opens example.com/#%F8%C0, Chrome does the following:
- It searches the page for an element with id="%F8%C0".
- If it’s not found, it searches the page for an element with id="øÀ". No other browsers do this, and it's not defined by the standard. Starting in version 73, Chrome no longer does this either.
Chrome Platform Status | Chromium Bug
Deprecations
Deprecate 'drive-by downloads' in sandboxed iframes
Chrome has deprecated downloads in sandboxed iframes that lack a user gesture ('drive-by downloads'), though this restriction could be lifted via an allow-downloads-without-user-activation keyword in the sandbox attribute list. This allows content providers to restrict malicious or abusive downloads.
Downloads can bring security vulnerabilities to a system. Even though additional security checks are done in Chrome and the operating system, we feel blocking downloads in sandboxed iframes also fits the general thought behind the sandbox. Apart from security concerns, it would be a more pleasant user experience for a click to trigger a download on the same page, compared with downloads started automatically when landing at a new page, or started non spontaneously after the click.
Removal is expected in Chrome 74.