Chrome 51 Beta improves login experience on other sites, renders pages more efficiently

With Chrome 50 fully rolled out to browsers and Android, version 51 is now in the beta channel. One of the key features in this version is a new API that improves the website login experience and a more power efficient way to render a page.

While there are many third-party services that manage logins and passwords, most people rely on the one built into their browser. However, most built-in credential managers cannot account for custom login flows. By adding support for the new Credential Management API, websites can now interact directly with Chrome’s password manager to improve the login experience.

For example, a dialogue box will popup asking users if they want to login with credentials previously saved to their Google account. The API will allow users to sign in with one tap and let them automatically sign back in when returning to the site. Of course, this feature will only work with websites and services that integrate it.

Modern sites frequently embed videos and social widgets that create a lot of processing overhead that can mess up the user experience. Starting in this version, Chrome will no longer run the rendering pipeline for frames that are off screen. This will eliminate unnecessary work for the browser and reduce power consumption by up to 30% without affecting the user’s browsing experience.

This update also contains many additional APIs and other changes for developers. On the user side, Chrome 51 adds a new Material bookmark widget on Android and removes the merge tabs feature.

All these features apply to the newest Chrome Beta on all platforms. Otherwise, they should be available in the stable channel in approximately six weeks.