Experimental adaptation of stable Chrome causes problems for companies

A test of an experimental tweak in the stable version of Chrome Browser sparked many complaints from users in business environments running Terminal Server this week. The change resulted in white screens of death on active tabs.

Hundreds of users are complaining on bugs.chromium and on Chrome’s support page about the consequences of the change. In addition, they are calling on the Chrome team to roll it back, something the developers seem to have done by now. The problems started on Wednesday. System administrators had to deal with users who got ‘white screens’ on active tabs on Chrome, with those tabs no longer responding.

The issue occurred in corporate remote desktop environments with Terminal Server and Citrix. This includes call centers, for example, and responses show that not only small businesses, but also those with hundreds and thousands of call center employees are affected. If a user locked their system with Win + L, other users of the server could experience white screens and stuck tabs that prevented further work. Restarting the browser or unlocking Windows again solved the problem, but it took employees and IT departments a lot of time, the complaint is.

The cause can be traced to an experimental feature that the Chrome team brought to the stable version to get more feedback. “The experiment has been in beta for about five months. It was activated on Tuesday morning and pushed to stable, ie version 77 and 78. Before that, it was running for 1 percent of Chrome 77 and 78 users with no reports of issues.” reports David Bienvenu of the Chrome development team.

The experimental feature involved WebContents Occlusion. This feature ensures that active tabs consume less resources when users place another active window over them. The behavior of the tabs then becomes similar to inactive or minimized tabs, to save battery life.