Many users were annoyed that Chrome needed an additional second or two to reload pages they’ve previously visited, so Google made a few improvements so that everything works smoothly. The browser was updated for both mobile and desktop and it refreshes pages 28 percent faster.
This is a great achievement for Google, and the company has explained that it changed the way the browser handles what’s known as “validation”. So, from now on, when revisiting a page, Chrome will make hundreds of network requests and it will validate the main resource. Google’s Takashi Toyoshima has offered more information in a blog post, saying that “The existing reload behavior usually solves broken pages, but stale content is inefficiently addressed by a regular reload, especially on mobile,” adding that “This feature was originally designed in times when broken pages were quite common, so it was reasonable to address both use cases at once”.
Toyoshima mentioned that browsers will no longer need to validate each and every element. This means that besides the fact that pages will reload faster, they will also consume less data and energy. In the past weeks, Google has been trying to make Chrome faster and more secure, and users feel more protected because HTTP pages that collect information related to banks and accounts are now flagged as “not secure” and they avoided by those who don’t want to take any chances.
The upcoming version of Chrome (58) will enable WebAssembly by default. This feature will make mobile devices more useful, because applications, especially low-level apps, will be given more processing power and JavaScript will become more user friendly. It will be easier to edit video in the browser, as WebAssembly will handle SIMD and threads better than JavaScript. Unfortunately, it will take some time until WebAssembly will be ready, because now it’s in an early form. At this point, it’s available in Chrome Canary, but soon it will arrive to Chrome Beta or Developer channels.
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