Chrome Beta v44 update brings improvements to Notifications API and promoted add to homescreen

Google has just issued a new update to Chrome Beta, which brings a handful of developer-centric updates to the browser. Bumping the app up to version 44, this update will make it much easier for developers to get the most out of certain APIs that have already been introduced to the platform.

Chrome Beta version 42 introduced push notifications from favorite websites, which allowed users to receive updates from sites even after the webpage was closed. Now in version 44, devs can use a new method called getNotifications to find out which notifications are being displayed, and Notification.data so they can see which notification was clicked.

Beta version 42 also brought along with it the ability to easily add frequently-visited websites to the home screen, and version 44 brings a few improvements to this feature. Chrome Beta will now fire a beforeinstallprompt prior to the banner being shown, allowing devs to gauge which banners are being clicked and which ones aren’t. There are a few other notable updates in this release which you can find here:

• Chrome’s implementation of the Push API has undergone several minor breaking changes in order to keep up to date with the evolving specification.
• ES6 extended Unicode escape sequences allow developers to use the extended set of Unicode characters in JavaScript string literals, where previously characters whose escape sequences contain more than four hexadecimal values were unable to be denoted.
• This release includes a new implementation of multi-column layout by Opera engineer Morten Stenshorne, solving historic issues with incorrect column balancing.
• Developers should now use the scroll attributes of document.scrollingElement instead of document.body as the latter has several well known issues.

The update is now live in the Google Play Store, so hit up the link below if you’re interested in grabbing the latest version.