Removals
Remove document.createTouch
The document.createTouch() method is being removed because the Touch()
constructor has been supported since Chrome 48. This follows a long-standing
trend in JavaScript APIs of moving away from factory functions and toward
constructors. The closely-related document.createTouchList() method is expected to be removed in Chrome 69.
Intent to Remove | Chromestatus Tracker | Chromium Bug
Remove Document.selectedStylesheetSet and Document.preferredStylesheetSet
The Document.selectedStylesheetSet and Document.preferredStylesheetSet attributes are removed because they are non-standard and only implemented by Chrome and WebKit. The standard versions of these attributes were removed from the spec in 2016.
Document.styleSheets provides some of the same functionality, thought not
all. Fortunately the risk to websites is low as the use of these items appears
to be in single digits. (See the Intent to Remove for exact numbers.)
Intent to Remove | Chromestatus Tracker | Chromium Bug
WEBGL_compressed_texture_atc
Previously, Chrome provided the AMD_compressed_ATC_texture_atc formats. These
formats were widely supported at the time the extension was created. Hardware
support has since dwindled to near-zero, with implementation currently possible
only on Qualcomm devices. This extension has been rejected by the WebGL Working
Group and support for it is now removed from Chrome.
Chromestatus Tracker | Chromium Bug
Deprecations
Deprecate and Remove Negative Brightness Values in Filter
For compliance with specification, filter's brightness() function no longer
accepts negative values.
Chromestatus Tracker | 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- They are superseded by newer APIs.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.