Deprecations and removals in Chrome 76

Joe Medley
Joe Medley

Removals

Remove feature policy: lazyload

The lazyload feature policy was intended to allow developers to selectively control the lazyload attribute on the <iframe> and <img> tags to provide more control over loading delay for embedded contents and images on a per origin basis.

The policy is removed in favor of a newer feature policy for loading, namely loading-frame-default-eager which is more aligned with how the loading attribute will be used. The removal applies to both the Feature-Policy header and the <iframe> allow attribute.

Chrome Platform Status | Chromium Bug

Remove outputs from MediaStreamAudioDestinationNode

According to the specification, the MediaStreamAudioDestinationNode in the Web Audio API should have no outputs. Chrome's implementation has a single output which has been removed.

Chrome Platform Status | Chromium Bug

Remove insecure usage of DeviceMotionEvent

Chromium has been showing deprecation warnings since 2015 whenever the API is used in a non-secure browsing context. Chrome now restricts the API to secure browsing contexts. This change brings Chromium’s implementations in line with the privacy and security recommendations in the specification, and is aligned with the overarching effort to deprecate powerful features on insecure origins.

Chrome Platform Status | Chromium Bug

Remove insecure usage of DeviceOrientationEvent

Chromium has been showing deprecation warnings since 2015 whenever the API is used in a non-secure browsing context. Chrome now restricts the API to secure browsing contexts. This change brings Chromium’s implementations in line with the privacy and security recommendations in the specification, and is aligned with the overarching effort to deprecate powerful features on insecure origins.

Chrome Platform Status | Chromium Bug

Deprecation policy

To keep the platform healthy, we sometimes remove APIs from the Web Platform which have run their course. There can be many reasons why we would remove an API, such as:

  • They are superseded by newer APIs.
  • They are updated to reflect changes to specifications to bring alignment and consistency with other browsers.
  • They are early experiments that never came to fruition in other browsers and thus can increase the burden of support for web developers.

Some of these changes will have an effect on a very small number of sites. To mitigate issues ahead of time, we try to give developers advanced notice so they can make the required changes to keep their sites running.

Chrome currently has a process for deprecations and removals of API's, essentially:

  • Announce on the blink-dev mailing list.
  • Set warnings and give time scales in the Chrome DevTools Console when usage is detected on the page.
  • Wait, monitor, and then remove the feature as usage drops.

You can find a list of all deprecated features on chromestatus.com using the deprecated filter and removed features by applying the removed filter. We will also try to summarize some of the changes, reasoning, and migration paths in these posts.