This is a boring release, primarily to fix stability issues on some Apple Silicon devices. It's also based on the latest Chromium 128 so that's why it's a major version. Actual new features in the next proper release!
What's Polypane? Polypane is the web browser for ambitious web developers. It's a stand-alone browser that shows sites in multiple fully synced panes and helps you make your site more responsive, more accessible and faster.
Apple Silicon stability issues
Since Polypane 20 I got reports that Polypane would crash on some Apple Silicon devices. They didn't replicate for me so that's been very difficult to diagnose, but they were the result of Electron internals that recently got changed.
A whole bunch of issues around that have been fixed in the latest release of Electron, so Polypane 21 should be perfectly stable again!
If you temporarily fixed it by turning off hardware acceleration, make sure to turn it back on!
Outline panel improvements
Headings outline
The headings outline now differentiates between not visible and semantically hidden elements: semantically hidden elements are visible on the page but not accessible to screen readers, while not visible means they're in the DOM but not accessible to anyone.
Accessibility tree
When you click an element in the accessibility tree to inspect it in the elements panel, the elements panel now automatically switches to it's accessibility tab. This makes it easier to see the accessibility properties of the element you're inspecting. (Thanks Marcus!)
Accessibility panel improvements
When highlighting the accessibility issues in the page we made two improvements: We now show the error inside the overlay, and the overlay respects your best practices settings. If you have best practices turned off, the overlay will no longer show best practices issues. (Thanks Eric!)
Chromium 128
Polypane 21 includes an updated Chromium version, 128.0.6613.36. For an overview of the new experimental features enabled in 128, head over to our experimental features overview: Experimental Chromium Web Platform Features and for additional info, head over to the experimental chromium features docs.
Get Polypane 21
Polypane is available for Windows, Mac and Linux (.deb or AppImage) in both 64 bit and ARM versions.
Polypane automatically updates on Mac, Windows and on Linux when using the AppImage. Otherwise, go to the download page to download the latest version!
Don't have Polypane yet? There is a 14 day trial available. Try it for free. No credit card needed.
Polypane 21 Changelog
New
- New Chromium 128
Improved
- Improved Outline panel: Heading outline differentiates between not visible and semantically hidden elements
- Improved Outline panel: inspecting elements from the accessibility tree focuses the a11y tab in the elements panel (Thanks Marcus!)
- Improved Accessibility panel: Label issues in the overlay
- Improved Accessibility panel: Overlay now excludes best practices when unchecked (Thanks Eric!)
- Improved Screenshot editor: Add a new 24px font choice (Thanks Ivica!)
- Improved Trim leading spaces in the address bars
Fixes
- Fix Prevent crashes on some Apple Silicon devices
- Fix Meta panel: missing end quote when copying link tags with a href attribute (Thansk Paweł!)
- Fix Browse panel: correct placeholder style of search engine editor
