Author Archives: ericlaw

Same-Site Cookies By Default

The Chrome team is embarking on a clever and bold plan to change the recipe for cookies. It’s one of the most consequential changes to the web platform in almost a decade, but with any luck, users won’t notice anything has changed. But if you’re a web developer, you should start testing your sites andContinue reading “Same-Site Cookies By Default”

Aw, snap! What if Every Tab Crashes?

Update: I wrote a more comprehensive post about troubleshooting browser crashes. For a small number of users of Chromium-based browsers (including Chrome and the new Microsoft Edge) on Windows 10, after updating to 78.0.3875.0, every new tab crashes immediately when the browser starts. Impacted users can open as many new tabs as they like, butContinue reading “Aw, snap! What if Every Tab Crashes?”

Web-to-App Communication: DirectInvoke

Note: This post is part of a series about Web-to-App Communication techniques. Background Typically, if you want your website to send a document to a client application, you simply send the file as a download. Your server indicates that a file should be treated as a download in one of a few simple ways: Specifying aContinue reading “Web-to-App Communication: DirectInvoke”

Livin’ on the Edge: Root Causing Regressions

As we’ve been working to replatform the new Microsoft Edge browser atop Chromium, one interesting outcome has been early exposure to a lot more bugs in Chromium. Rapidly root-causing these regressions (bugs in scenarios that used to work correctly) has been a high-priority activity to help ensure Edge users have a good experience with ourContinue reading “Livin’ on the Edge: Root Causing Regressions”

Web-to-App Communication: App Protocols

Note: This post is part of a series about Web-to-App Communication techniques.Last updated: June 4, 2025 Just over eight years ago, I wrote my last blog post about App Protocols, a class of URI schemes that typically1 open another program on your computer instead of returning data to the web browser. A valid scheme name isContinue reading “Web-to-App Communication: App Protocols”

Browser Architecture: Web-to-App Communication Overview

This is an introduction/summary post which will link to individual articles about browser mechanisms for communicating directly between web content and native apps on the local computer (and vice-versa). This series aims to provide, for each mechanism, information about: Application Protocols Read my Blog post. tl;dr: Apps can register url protocol schemes (e.g. myapp://mydata). Browsers willContinue reading “Browser Architecture: Web-to-App Communication Overview”

Livin’ on the Edge: Dude Where’s My Fix?!? (Redux)

In my last post, I showed you how to use OmahaProxy’s Find Releases tool to discover which versions of Chrome contain a given bugfix. I noted that if you’re using Microsoft’s new Chromium-based Edge, you can look at the edge://version page or this extension to see the upstream Chrome version upon which Edge is based: OctContinue reading “Livin’ on the Edge: Dude Where’s My Fix?!? (Redux)”

Livin’ on the Edge: Dude Where’s My Fix?!?

Yesterday, we covered the mechanisms that modern browsers can use to rapidly update their release channels. Today, let’s look at how to figure out when an eagerly awaited fix will become available in the Canary channels. By way of example, consider crbug.com/977805, a nasty beast that caused some extensions to randomly be disabled and marked corrupt: ByContinue reading “Livin’ on the Edge: Dude Where’s My Fix?!?”

Great Product Support

And now for something completely different… Shortly after we moved into our house in late 2012, the control panel on our GE Oven (model #JTP30B0M1BB) started to fall apart. The faceplate of the control panel was made of a plastic that wasn’t sufficiently heat-resistant. The labeled plastic began to bubble, crack, and peel. By 2018,Continue reading “Great Product Support”