Performance is a very conditional concept, because it entirely depends on the subjective perception of the evaluator. So what may seem very fast to some will be annoyingly slow to others. But even with such differences in perception, Google Chrome was never sluggish. For all its shortcomings in the form of increased resource consumption and the launch of a large number of processes, it managed to remain a fairly fast solution for web surfing, especially on mobile platforms. But Google decided that its browser has room to grow.
Google Chrome will get faster. Yes, even faster
With the release of the next update, a new mechanism called bfcache, or back-forward cache, will appear in Google Chrome for Android. From the name it is clear that the innovation will be responsible for working with the cache. But how does it improve browser performance? It turns out that everything is extremely simple.
What is bfcache
The essence of the bfcache mechanism is to cache all previous pages that were opened by the user and store information about them in memory within a single session. This will allow you to return to any of them, if necessary, without downloading them again, but pulling them up from the cache. It seems that such an approach cannot save a lot of time, but practice has shown that the increase in download speed will be quite noticeable. Rather, the download as such disappears altogether, because the previously visited page opens instantly.
See what is the difference in the speed of opening previously visited pages. It's especially great that the effect works both ways.
According to the developers of Google Chrome, they studied the behavior of browser users and found that 19% of all clicks are returned. This is a rather large figure, which means that the bfcache mechanism will make sense and be popular, since it will reduce the time it takes to load pages when switching back and forth.
How to speed up Google Chrome
It was originally planned to add bfcache to Google Chrome a year ago. It was then that the developers presented the new mechanism to the public. However, as a result, it was decided to temporarily abandon the launch – the complexity of the implementation affected. The team working on the browser was unable to ensure that it can consistently hold the necessary components in memory and access them efficiently, reducing load times. Therefore, the developers had to rewrite a fair amount of the code, but this was not enough.
Returning to the previous page should be quick too
The fact is that the previous implementation of the bfcache mechanism could provoke the emergence of a new type of malicious attacks that exploit JavaScript. They could make it easier for cybercriminals to access confidential information that users post on websites: logins, passwords, personal data, payment card details and much more. Therefore, it is logical that Google decided to slow down the release of the innovation and postponed it for almost a whole year to fix all the bugs. But now we know for sure that everything is all right if the company has agreed to launch it.
An update with bfcache support will be released before the end of this summer as part of Chrome 86. It promises to be one of the largest in terms of functionality, as it will include a lazy loading mechanism, advanced security tools, and an improved ad blocker. But more importantly, Chrome will get an updated software structure that will make the browser use fewer resources than before.