Exploring Our v31 Container Updates

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By Chuck Doerr, CIO and Co-Founder

At OpenFin, we're committed to helping teams work smarter, faster, and more effectively. We regularly update our signature products to best fit the needs of end users. That includes our Container developer platform, which makes it easy to build enterprise-grade native web apps from the ground up.

We recently introduced v31 of OpenFin Container. Being co-stable with Chrome means that OpenFin now delivers the enterprise security and architecture needed by our customers while also providing the latest critical security patches, bug fixes, and new features from Chromium.

Let’s unpack a few of the major updates.

Enhancements to Graceful Shutdown

While we have long been able to detect and react to user-driven applications’ close events (cleaning up system resources, capturing save states, etc.), we previously did not have these capabilities at the operating system level. With enhancements introduced in v31 of OpenFin Container, scheduled restarts and other system-driven shutdown events can be monitored so that user applications can properly react to them.

Graceful shutdown makes it possible to respond seamlessly to system events and halt any shutdown for a short period of time. This enables applications to save their progress, preventing the loss of critical information. With this new capability, apps can resume without any additional data loss, improving application reliability, reducing downtime and creating an enhanced end-user experience.

Enhancements to Print Capabilities

Prior to v31, OpenFin had the same print capabilities as Google Chrome. With our latest release, our Container’s print function now offers new possibilities, such as the option to print all views within a given window, as well as to directly print a screenshot of a window as it appears on the desktop. These enhanced printing capabilities create an intuitive experience. Even as the end user’s screen gets more complex, with composite windows consisting of collections of applications, the process of visualizing information and putting it into a tangible format remains simple and efficient.

Stability with Chromium

Being co-stable with Chromium is critical security need for every organization, so we pride ourselves on being able to provide this for our clients. OpenFin Container v31 includes features, enhancements and fixes from Chromium 111 and 112 and has been released co-stable with 112. With these upgrades, we can deliver the enterprise-grade security and advanced architecture end-users need, while also reflecting the latest patches and bug fixes.

On average, each major version of OpenFin Container includes fixes for 140 specific security bugs from the Chromium team. Our previous release, v30, included 132 bug fixes, and we expect a similar number for v31.

The benefits of staying current with Chromium go beyond these critical security updates—OpenFin also receives all of the web platform’s latest features and enhancements, including:

No-Op Fetch Handler Skipping
A great performance enhancement tool for client service. If a fetch handler is a no-op, the web platform now identifies it as such and skips it, removing overhead and improving navigation.

CSS Support for Nesting
Reduces the need for developers to repeat selectors, while simultaneously co-locating style rules for related elements.

View Transitions API
Provides a mechanism for easily creating animated transitions between different DOM states, and updates DOM contents in a single step.

Have questions on any of the new capabilities introduced in Container v31? For more details, head over to our versions page for the release notes, or reach out to info@openfin.co to set up a demo.