Something I've noticed that was introduced in Chrome 69, and is still there in Chrome 70, is the blurring of images displayed via the CSS background property.

For example, I'm using Chrome on desktop and the UK flag beside engine's name in the above post is blurred. When I view this page in Firefox the flag is not blurred.

I've had to re-code some elements on my sites to work around this issue.

Hm. Has anyone out there got a comparatively new Mac? Mine's locked at v. 67 and I'm wondering if Chrome, like Safari, is keyed to OS version. (Which is a whole different field of discussion.)

Has anyone out there got a comparatively new Mac?

Are they still making those things? (rhetorical)

I think I looked it up last time they were pushing an update, and had simply forgotten about it until I checked again. “OS 10.6 - 10.9 are no longer supported”. From which we deduce that OS <= 10.5 do not exist at all.

:: detour to raw logs, where I learned something a little interesting, which botrunners don't need to know I've noticed ;) ::

I'm wondering if Chrome, like Safari, is keyed to OS version.

It is, and you must be on 10.9 or older. Those were dropped somewhere between releases 67 and 68.

Google Chrome is up to date
Version 70.0.3538.67 (Official Build) (64-bit)

Mobile Chrome for Android just updated on my phone.

For the 1st time ever, the version numbers between Desktop and Mobile are an exact match.

Here is, hopefully, a simple question. Does Chrome transmit the referrer URL when hitting a web server? I believe that for perhaps many years, Chrome does not (by default) send the referrer, and (a) I don't know if this is platform dependent (ie MAC vs iPhone vs Windows) and (b) if there is an over-ride setting for this (and I wouldn't think many people would use it).

I ask because I really really want to know if I should be seeing referrer data in my web server logs files for hits from what look like legit Chrome user-agents. Speaking of this new chrome version 70.what-ever, I noticed they started showing up in my logs on Oct 19, and I see some examples where this version 70 has a referrer present and others where it's absent.

Does Chrome transmit the referrer URL when hitting a web server?

Are you asking about the previous (off-site) page referer when a page request comes in, or about the on-site page referer sent with requests for supporting files? (I hope not the latter, since even Google sends a referer with css and js requests, implying that they believe the referer is meaningful.) I see no evidence that Chrome has stopped sending a referer of either kind.

After some trial and error, the search string I arrived at was

/(\w+\.html)? HTTP/1.1" 200 \d+ "[^"]+\w" "[^\n"]+Chrome/[567]

if you want to check your own logs.

Does Chrome transmit the referrer URL when hitting a web server?

If the previous page allows a referrer, then yes. Chrome 70 does not change anything from the last couple versions in this regard.

Many secure sites use varioys security headers, including:

Referrer-Policy: no-referrer

However there are privacy features like incognito and do not track that a Chrome user can turn on and may interfere with the referer being present in the server logs. These features have been available in the last few Chrome versions.

I think perhaps this explanation will help:
[smerity.com...]

If someone has done a google search (presumably they have accessed google via https:\\www.google.com) and google presents them with a search result that is a link to my website (and my server is http not https) then will I see www.google.com as the referring url that the browser sends when it performs the first request on my site? I thought I read somewhere that chrome does not send referrer info any more, or does that depend on this http/https business as described in the above article?

will I see www.google.com as the referring url

Yes. What you will not see--and what most people haven't seen in several years now, regardless of visitor's browser--is the query string that tells what the visitor was searching for. Rarely you'll get this information from other countries' googles, but never from google dot com. This continues to be true even if your own site goes https; they simply don't send the information.

Edit: I did some spot-checking in logs and was gobsmacked to find a handful of requests that did include the full google query. Most but not all from mobiles, most but not all from other googles, most but not all to https sites, most but not all from http google. But the numbers are minute compared to the total number of google referers--much less than 1%.

File under: wtf?

will I see www.google.com as the referring url

On my medium traffic site, I'd say maybe 35% to 40% of humans come in with a referrer.

Since Chrome is the most used browser worldwide and my stats show most of my visitors are using Chrome, I'd say Chrome visits do both: include a referrer and not include a referrer.