 In Chrome 72, creating public class fields in JavaScript is now a lot cleaner. You can see if a page has been activated with the new User Activation API, and localizing lists becomes way easier, and there's plenty more. I'm Pete LaPage. Let's dive in and see what's new for developers in Chrome 72. My first language was Java, and when I started learning JavaScript, it threw me for a bit of a loop. How did I create a class or deal with inheritance? What about public and private properties and methods? Many of the recent updates to JavaScript make object-oriented programming much easier. I can now create classes that mostly work like I expect them to, complete with constructors, getters and setters, static methods, and public properties. Thanks to V8 7.2, which ships with Chrome 72, you can now declare public class fields directly in the class definition, eliminating the need to do it in the constructor. Support for private class fields is in the works. Head over to Matthias' article on class fields for more details. Remember when sites could automatically play sounds as soon as the page loaded? You had to scramble to hit the mute key or figure out which tab it was and close it. That's why some APIs require activation via a user gesture before the work. Unfortunately, browsers handle this activation in different ways. Chrome 72 introduces user activation V2, which simplifies user activation for all gated APIs. It's based on a new specification that aims to standardize how activation works across all browsers. There's a new user activation property on both Navigator and Message Event that has two properties, has been active and is active. Has been active indicates if the associated window has ever seen a user activation in its life cycle. And is active indicates if the associated window currently has a user activation in its life cycle. We'll have a detailed write up on developers.google.com slash web slash updates, shortly, so keep an eye out for that. I really love the Intel APIs. They're super helpful for localizing content into other languages. In Chrome 72, there's a new method that makes rendering lists easier. Like other Intel APIs, it shifts the burden to the JavaScript engine without sacrificing performance. Initialize it with the locale you want, then call format and it'll use the correct words and syntax. It can do conjunctions, which adds the localized equivalent of and, and look at those beautiful Oxford commas. It can do disjunctions, adding the localized equivalent of or, and by providing some additional options, you can do even more. Check out Matthias's post for more details. These are just a few of the changes in Chrome 72 for developers. There's plenty more. Chrome 72 changes the behavior of cache.addall to better match the spec. Previously, if there were duplicate entries in the same call, later requests would simply overwrite that first request. To match the spec, if there are duplicate entries, it will reject with an invalid state error. Request for Fabe icons are now handled by the service worker, as long as the request URL is on the same origin as the service worker. And of course, there's plenty more, so check them out. All the details, including docs and specs, are in the updates post linked in the description. Be sure to check out the latest Chrome DevTools video to learn what's new in DevTools. Then click the subscribe button and you'll get an email notification whenever we launch a new video. I'm Pete LePage, and as soon as Chrome 73 is released, I'll be right here to tell you what's new in Chrome.