Google Chrome 44 for iOS brings in Physical Web support

Google Chrome 44 for iOS brings in Physical Web support

Google has recently released Chrome 44, an update for iOS that offers support for the company’s Physical Web project. This new feature will allow smart devices to communicate with smartphones, without downloading other apps. Users can now communicate via web technologies using the Chrome widget from the ‘Today view’ on iOS.

Image: Chromium Blog

The Physical Web is an open source approach to help users build contextual interactions that people can discover and use with less friction. According to Chromium Blog, the new Chrome for iOS integrates the Physical Web into the Chrome Today widget, enabling users to access an on-demand list of web content that is relevant to their surroundings.

It added that, when users who have enabled the Physical Web open the Today view, the Chrome widget scans for broadcasted URLs and displays these results using estimated proximity of the beacons to rank the content.

In other features, the update adds in new swipe gesture feature for making navigation throughout the app, much easier. Google will likely release Chrome 44 for Android in the next few days.

Just three months ago, Google had released a significant update for Chrome on iOS which brought in several new features. For starters, the updated Google Chrome for iOS (version 42) introduces a new Notification Center widget which brings in controls which lets users launch a new tab or launch a voice search directly from the ‘Today’ view of the Notification Center.

A report by MacRumours pointed out that there is no comparable Safari widget for quick launching searches and hence, the new Chrome widget “gives it a bit of a leg up over Apple’s built-in browser”. However, Safari users can use Siri for quick searches.