Google Chrome 27 Is Out: 5% Faster Page Loads

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Google Chrome 27 Is Out: 5% Faster Page Loads

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday May 21, 2013 @03:05PM from the still-winning-the-version-race-against-firefox dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Google on Tuesday released Chrome version 27 for Windows, Mac, and Linux. The new version features a big boost to page loads (now 5 percent faster on average) as well as significant updates for developers. The speed improvement is thanks to the introduction of 'smarter behind-the-scenes resource scheduling,' according to Google. Starting with this release, the scheduler more aggressively uses an idle connection and demotes the priority of preloaded resources so that they don’t interfere with critical assets."

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Holy Mackerel by RudyHartmann · 2013-05-21 15:07 · Score: 1

Golly, Mr Wizard. I'm gonna pitch Firefox now.

--
Oh, yeah! Wise guy, huh? Woob woob woob woob! Nyuk! Nyuk!
1. Re:Holy Mackerel by rcjhawk · 2013-05-21 15:13 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Loaded 27 onto my laptop. It was so fast, the computer launched itself out of the house at FTL speed and is now tweeting from somewhere around Alpha Centauri.
  Guess I'll replace it with a Chromebook.
2. Re:Holy Mackerel by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-21 16:43 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Sure, if you like Google knowing what you're browsing. I just dumped Chrome after several years for Firefox.
  It's too easy to use Google for everything.
3. Re:Holy Mackerel by kthreadd · 2013-05-21 17:49 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  If you want a Google Chrome like browser I would recommend Chromium, which unlike Google Chrome is open source and doesn't track you as much as their proprietary product. You will miss out on some of the extra features available only in Google Chrome, but most of it should be the same.
4. Re:Holy Mackerel by noh8rz10 · 2013-05-21 18:03 · Score: 0
  
  which unlike Google Chrome is open source and doesn't track you as much as their proprietary product.
  eyebrows go up. doesn't track as much? is that the best we can hope for these days? also, stop pointing your goog glasses at me!
5. Re:Holy Mackerel by ls671 · 2013-05-21 19:08 · Score: 2
  
  Page used to load really fast in 1990s in mosaic then, Netscape as long as you had something like a T1 connection. Now, funnily enough, the software layer involved in serving dynamic content and all the xml, third party sites and what not network calls the browser has to make before actually counting the page as loaded make it seem like the software layer has become the bottle-neck. This sounds silly to me, maybe we over did a bit?
  
  --
  Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
6. Re:Holy Mackerel by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-21 20:51 · Score: 0
  
  CPUs used to be really fast in the 1990s, I remember getting a Pentium and that thing flew.
7. Re:Holy Mackerel by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-21 22:11 · Score: 0
  
  That number is incorrect according my tests. It should be 5.108773 times faster!
8. Re:Holy Mackerel by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-21 23:15 · Score: 0
  
  This is great news. Pages load before I even know I want them. Damn, Eric, you guys are good!
9. Re:Holy Mackerel by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-21 23:53 · Score: 0
  
  ... out the window.
  There, fixed that for you.
10. Re:Holy Mackerel by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-22 00:39 · Score: 0
  
  It still uses google for typeahead search guessing by default. But you can turn that off. I think once you do that, there's no tracking done/caused by the browser itself.
  Of course, if you still use Google services (search, gmail, gtalk, etc.) they'll still track you.
11. Re:Holy Mackerel by RicktheBrick · 2013-05-22 01:18 · Score: 1
  
  I just started it to test it. I went to google news. I scrolled down and started to read a link. I was interrupted three times in less than a minute by two updates to the page and a pop up. I am trying to read and the screen is flashing with updates and pop ups. It is very annoying. At least put a button on the screen that would change color when an update is available so I can decide if I want to view it and for pop ups make them show up before I start to read because if I am reading I will become annoyed and will without thought close the pop up.
12. Re:Holy Mackerel by ILongForDarkness · 2013-05-22 02:15 · Score: 1
  
  Nah it would never leave your house. Otherwise how is Google going to collect all that analytics data?
13. Re:Holy Mackerel by ILongForDarkness · 2013-05-22 02:18 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  I think Google and FB and others like them have a lot of blame to share for the web needing a 10X fatter pipe to get the same speed: if every freaking page didn't have to talk to Google Analytics, send your cookie to FB for tracking etc either before (likely) or during page load perhaps you could actually enjoy the content you are there for in the first place on a slow connection. Now you need the fast pipe just to get all the preamble out of the way to all parties interested.
14. Re:Holy Mackerel by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-22 02:42 · Score: 0
  
  That joke's ten years old.
15. Re:Holy Mackerel by LordLimecat · 2013-05-22 02:51 · Score: 2
  
  I think the proper person to blame for embedding GA and FB tracking is the webmaster, not Google and Facebook.
16. Re:Holy Mackerel by ILongForDarkness · 2013-05-22 03:20 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  True but claiming to save 5% of load time by making a browser while at the same time marketing products that slow down the page load in the first place seems kind of circular.
17. Re:Holy Mackerel by Krojack · 2013-05-22 03:22 · Score: 1
  
  You could always install "ScriptSafe" for Chrome (or NoScript for FF) and blacklist JS from those domains.
18. Re:Holy Mackerel by ILongForDarkness · 2013-05-22 03:45 · Score: 1
  
  Not sure if it would be granular enough. I use Google products and would want js to work but only when I'm actually browsing to one of their sites. Similarly with others: blocking JS that only comes from and points too things internal to the site I choose to browse too I'm okay with. Generally it is when they bounce me around/send data elsewhere I'm not aware of that I don't like. After all viewing donkey porn is obvious to the site you visit but that doesn't mean you want eBay knowing about it.
19. Re:Holy Mackerel by firewrought · 2013-05-22 04:59 · Score: 1
  
  Not sure if it would be granular enough. I use Google products and would want js to work but only when I'm actually browsing to one of their sites.
  Thing is, many websites fetch common JavaScript libraries from Google's CDN (in addition to using maps, fonts, and other API's). Much of the web is unintelligible without them. On the bright side, it looks like Google does their tracking thru separate domain names (doubleclick.net, googleadservices.com, google-analytics.com), and NoScript can discriminate among those.
  However, you may want to look at RequestPolicy, which requires you to whitelist all cross-domain access in a way that is clearly modeled after NoScript, which should prevent web bugs and other non-script techniques. (In fact, since so many sites require JS to view/use, I'm beginning to think that RP has a better premise than NS when it comes to managing web privacy/safety.)
  
  --
  -1, Too Many Layers Of Abstraction
20. Re:Holy Mackerel by jellomizer · 2013-05-22 05:18 · Score: 2
  
  Well back in the 1990's the common web page was text with a few hyper links, and if you were really fancy you had a picture.
  The bottle neck was the speed of the line.
  However html has transformed from a way to displaying documents, to more of an application platform.
  Complain if you like about it, but it is here to stay, and modern heavy html has solved a lot of problems. Such as platform independent programs, universal access to a program, easy deployment, etc...
  Yes we have sacrificed speed for convenience, but I think it is worth it.
  
  --
  If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
21. Re:Holy Mackerel by ILongForDarkness · 2013-05-22 05:51 · Score: 1
  
  Good points but you and other RP suggestor give. I agree NS isn't the way to go. It least for me and most people I meet they aren't say no JS they are saying I don't want this particular piece of JS running. More granularity is needed so the video on the page you are viewing works while the sidebar add that wants to run a video doesn't. Being able to specify policies blocking the shadier parts of the web would be nice.
22. Re:Holy Mackerel by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-22 09:53 · Score: 0
  
  I use a firefox (not sure what else it's available for) plugin called ghostery. Seems to do a decent job of blocking the unecessary tracking items on most pages. And it's easy to 'allow once' to enable discussion forums on the bottom of blogs and such.
23. Re:Holy Mackerel by ls671 · 2013-05-22 18:43 · Score: 1
  
  However html has transformed from a way to displaying documents, to more of an application platform.
  I know this obviously, I just asked if we had over done it? Never ask a question for which you do not already know the answer. The answer is yes, we have over done it, mostly not paying attention to code optimization at the core. More memory and faster CPU cycles is nowadays cheaper that efficiency at the core of program logic.
  
  Complain if you like about it, but it is here to stay, and modern heavy html has solved a lot of problems. Such as platform independent programs, universal access to a program, easy deployment, etc...
  Yes we have sacrificed speed for convenience, but I think it is worth it.
  I never complained about anything. My OP was merely an observation of what had happened; We got lazy, not everybody can code efficiently and it is cheaper to rely on more horsepower than to optimize code logic nowadays while code efficiency was much more important a few decades ago. This is exactly why we are still talking about page load speed in 2013.
  
  --
  Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
24. Re:Holy Mackerel by Ash+Vince · 2013-05-23 00:09 · Score: 1
  
  True but claiming to save 5% of load time by making a browser while at the same time marketing products that slow down the page load in the first place seems kind of circular.
  Without the shitty marketing products Google and Facebook would cease to exist.
  Money makes the world go round and neither of these companies would exist without some way of making money, however great Google search and Facebooks social network is. They both now need huge internet pipes and servers which does not come cheap.
  
  --
  I dont read /. to RTFA, I read /. to offend people in ignorance.
25. Re:Holy Mackerel by Joviex · 2013-05-24 09:46 · Score: 1
  
  You just don't get it man!
  
  Why would you not want to be riding a horse instead of upgrading to those fancy metal boxes with radios and seats and large storage space.
  
  Ridiculous! Progress is for all those crazy futurists.
  
  Gimme a plain transistor radio for all my news and entertainment.
  
  Get off my lawn!
I'd rather have a 10x faster connection. by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-21 15:10 · Score: 4, Insightful

Come on, USA! Catch up to the rest of the world.
1. Re:I'd rather have a 10x faster connection. by DNS-and-BIND · 2013-05-21 15:19 · Score: 0, Troll
  
  Ah, yes, does the "USA SUX0Rz!" flame ever get old on Slashdot? It truly is evergreen. Next time try spelling it "AmeriKKKa" for that extra authenticity.
  
  --
  Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
2. Re:I'd rather have a 10x faster connection. by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-21 15:37 · Score: 0, Insightful
  
  Getting touchy are we? Frustrated people aren't bowing at your feet anymore? Have you tried acting like a normal human being instead of getting constantly ultra-defensive about your country? ... It's not just on Slashdot btw but everywhere, on the net and IRL. I live just North of the border and people start ranting about Americans all the time, without being prompted. This was not the case 15 years ago. Think about it.
3. Re:I'd rather have a 10x faster connection. by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-21 15:56 · Score: 0
  
  Getting touchy are we? Frustrated people aren't bowing at your feet anymore? Have you tried acting like a normal human being instead of getting constantly ultra-defensive about your country? ... It's not just on Slashdot btw but everywhere, on the net and IRL. I live just North of the border and people start ranting about Americans all the time, without being prompted. This was not the case 15 years ago. Think about it.
  B-b-but we have a black president...
  \s
  I get 40Mbps/5Mbps (actual speed usually ~36Mbps) from my local telco in the U.S., and I'm in fly-over American nowhere near the coast, so I really don't have a clue why there is so much complaining about Internet in the U.S. I have Netflix and tons of computers, and I'm not even close to saturating my link. It's the fastest in my area, though many cities around where I live have 1Gbps access. I pay a decent chunk of cash for my access, but it certainly isn't anything I can't afford. Some areas (which are usually more rural) have fewer options and slower access, and other areas have it better than I do.
4. Re:I'd rather have a 10x faster connection. by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-21 16:31 · Score: 1
  
  B-b-but we have a black president...
  Well, it's kind of like he's black, anyway.
5. Re:I'd rather have a 10x faster connection. by DNS-and-BIND · 2013-05-21 20:12 · Score: 1
  
  It's called "Bush Derangement Syndrome". Look it up. It's a mental illness that causes people to start ranting apropos of nothing.
  
  --
  Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
6. Re:I'd rather have a 10x faster connection. by cffrost · 2013-05-21 22:32 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  It's called "Bush Derangement Syndrome". Look it up. It's a mental illness that causes people to start ranting apropos of nothing.
  
  Why tell us about it? Go talk to your doctor.
  
  --
  Thank you, Edward Snowden.
  
  "Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
7. Re:I'd rather have a 10x faster connection. by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-21 23:30 · Score: 0
  
  I get 40Mbps/5Mbps (actual speed usually ~36Mbps) from my local telco in the U.S., and I'm in fly-over American nowhere near the coast, so I really don't have a clue why there is so much complaining about Internet in the U.S.
  I'm 60 miles from the Atlantic and get 2Mbps on a good day, for which I probably pay more than you. That's why I complain.
8. Re:I'd rather have a 10x faster connection. by smooth+wombat · 2013-05-22 00:47 · Score: 1
  
  Is that like "Clinton Derangement Syndrome" because I know and have read of many people who still rant about how horrible that guy was despite having a growing economy, almost bringing some modicum of peace to the Palestinian/Israeli issue, being able form and enunciate coherent sentences and aside from getting a blowjob by a near heifer, didn't invade other countries just for the lulz.
  
  --
  We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
9. Re:I'd rather have a 10x faster connection. by edremy · 2013-05-22 01:12 · Score: 1
  
  I get 40Mbps/5Mbps (actual speed usually ~36Mbps) from my local telco in the U.S., and I'm in fly-over American nowhere near the coast, so I really don't have a clue why there is so much complaining about Internet in the U.S. I have Netflix and tons of computers, and I'm not even close to saturating my link. It's the fastest in my area, though many cities around where I live have 1Gbps access. I pay a decent chunk of cash for my access, but it certainly isn't anything I can't afford. Some areas (which are usually more rural) have fewer options and slower access, and other areas have it better than I do.
  You don't have a clue because you have a decent connection. Lots of us don't- far more than in other countries. Worse, there are no plans to get us anything better in the next decade. I live in a semi-rural area in a small town (Gettysburg)- not exactly the sticks. I just managed to upgrade my home network connection. I had been on 1.5 Mbps, but I now have the absolute fastest CenturyLink could sell me- 6Mbps. I'm not expecting another upgrade anytime soon...
  
  --
  "Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
10. Re:I'd rather have a 10x faster connection. by ILongForDarkness · 2013-05-22 02:22 · Score: 1
  
  Agreed we are just a couple Stanley Cups away from getting some good flag burning going on north of the border. Used to be people always talked about how we are in things together now it is bitching about how the PM is a puppet or how some dumb US law is going to force canadian governments or companies to follow along since they have business interests there.
11. Re:I'd rather have a 10x faster connection. by LordLimecat · 2013-05-22 02:52 · Score: 1
  
  I knew we never should have invaded canada.
12. Re:I'd rather have a 10x faster connection. by freezin+fat+guy · 2013-05-22 03:15 · Score: 1
  
  Have you tried acting like a normal human being instead of getting constantly ultra-defensive about your country?
  Actually I believe that is pretty normal. I've heard plenty of non-USAsians get defensive when someone from another country criticizes them.
  Besides, the real problem with America is the festering sore sitting on top of their back. Not sharing its bandwidth.
13. Re:I'd rather have a 10x faster connection. by Espectr0 · 2013-05-22 05:11 · Score: 1
  
  You could be a lot worse. In my country (Venezuela) the average broadband download speed is 1.3MBits.
  
  --
  Open Source Java Web Forum with LDAP authentication
14. Re:I'd rather have a 10x faster connection. by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-22 07:08 · Score: 0
  
  Smart man that Clinton. Fat chicks do give the best blowjobs.
Text colors and fonts.. by gonk · 2013-05-21 15:10 · Score: 0, Troll

It might be fast, but their font rendering sucks and they can't get text colors right. For those two reasons alone, I stick to FF. And yes, these are known bugs that have just not been fixed.
1. Re:Text colors and fonts.. by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-21 16:05 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  Chrome is optimized for Comic Sans. Other fonts are for pretentious hipsters.
Ridiculous by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-21 15:14 · Score: 0, Redundant

That version number inflation sucks hard. Considering the evolution since the beginning or Chrome, this should be version 1.26 not 27.
5% by ArchieBunker · 2013-05-21 15:15 · Score: 2, Insightful

CPUs are magnitudes faster today than they were 10 years ago. Why is it that pages still take seconds to load? Go back 10 years and they still took the same amount of time. Why?

--
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
1. Re:5% by Anpheus · 2013-05-21 15:17 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Latency. The world isn't getting any smaller.
2. Re: 5% by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-21 15:21 · Score: 1
  
  Because ten years ago web pages did a whole lot less. Also, CPU speed has little or nothing to do with how fast information can travel from a server to your...oh, I'm feeding a troll, aren't I?
3. Re:5% by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-21 15:21 · Score: 0
  
  Because websites are not the same as they were 10 years ago either
4. Re:5% by LordLucless · 2013-05-21 15:21 · Score: 2
  
  The same reason that Angband ran faster than Far Cry 3; modern webpages are doing more than the text-and-occasional-link of 10 years ago.
  
  --
  Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
5. Re:5% by ndrw · 2013-05-21 15:22 · Score: 1
  
  Because web pages now are exponentially more complicated and ridiculous than pages were ten years ago?
  Because as bandwidth has increased, the size of web pages has increased?
  Bandwidth has really only increased marginally due to massive monopolistic control of the US networking market?
6. Re:5% by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2013-05-21 15:25 · Score: 1
  
  CPUs are magnitudes faster today than they were 10 years ago. Why is it that pages still take seconds to load? Go back 10 years and they still took the same amount of time. Why?
  I'd assume that web devs(and their bean-counter overlords) are calibrating to user demands, not to the absolute objective of cutting down load times.
  More bandwidth? Hey, we can replace all those 256-color .gifs and solid backgrounds with non-crunchy jpegs! More still? How about some Flash videos? Ooh, faster CPU? If we just load 20kb worth of javascript we can do all kinds of things without the old forms/refresh dance by doing xmlhttprequests and twiddling the DOM...
  If you were content with the web page of 10 years ago, on today's hardware, it'd likely load like a bat, with a jetpack, on amphetamines, out of hell. It would also be comparatively spartan(though, given that much of what we have today is a nearly proper superset of ten years ago, there wouldn't be much stopping you from doing 10-year-old page styles on modern browsers.)
7. Re:5% by immaterial · 2013-05-21 15:25 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Same reason applications that used to fit on a floppy and launched in 5 seconds on a 33 mhz computer now require multiple DVDs and still take 5 seconds to launch: more features (whether necessary or not) and better graphics and other resources. Pages in 2003 probably used more highly-compressed graphics and didn't rely half as much on externally-loaded fonts and all sorts of Javascript garbage (including 3rd-party-loaded material such as Facebook "Like" buttons that allow Facebook to track your every move around the web).
8. Re:5% by Andrio · 2013-05-21 15:26 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  Pages are magnitudes more complex now. The average page will be 1 to 3 MB in size with thousands of lines of js. If you disable js websites become incredibly fast.
  
  --
  The Internet King? I wonder if he could provide faster nudity.
9. Re:5% by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-21 15:30 · Score: 0
  
  Because MBAs and other bottom-feeders of humanity have found ways to take advantage of technology's advances through vast and countless advertisement networks which slow or stall page loading. Money is why we can't have nice things, it's always the fucking money.
10. Re:5% by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-21 15:39 · Score: 0
  
  Slashdot 10 years ago: 92.9KB http://web.archive.org/web/20030526021234/http://slashdot.org/
  Slashdot now: 262KB
  There's part of the difference, in rendering. Sites are far more complex now, and often calibrate themselves to your browser with JS. All of that takes time. Sites get more complex as computers and browsers get more advanced.
  The biggest thing is latency doesn't change. The speed of light across the planet isn't likely to change, and the only way around it is quantum computing (and even then, may only propagate at the speed of light)
  Here's a pretty good illustration of latencies effects. http://staggerleedev.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/latencyperregion2.png
11. Re:5% by flyingfsck · 2013-05-21 15:41 · Score: 1
  
  Why? Because you forgot to install Adblock and Ghostery.
  
  --
  Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
12. Re:5% by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-21 15:56 · Score: 0
  
  Speed of light hasn't changed.
  Duh.
13. Re:5% by complete+loony · 2013-05-21 16:02 · Score: 2
  
  Web pages without scripting are really fast when they don't show you anything at all.
  
  --
  09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
14. Re:5% by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-21 16:05 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  Absolutely, thanks to all the spyware scripts like:
  http://google-analytics.com/trackme.js
  http://scorecardresearch.com/wetrackyou.js
  http://iamgoogleandiwantyourinfo.com/youreanidiot.js
  http://pleasesayfuckyoutoyourprivacy-google.com/youvebeenraped.js
  All of which are automatically included in each page you view with Chrome.
15. Re:5% by stms · 2013-05-21 16:05 · Score: 1
  
  Because most places have the same internet they had 10 years ago.
16. Re:5% by HCase · 2013-05-21 16:10 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Try loading a page that hasn't changed for years.
  I will offer as my suggestion, the Space Jam movie homepage:
  http://www2.warnerbros.com/spacejam/movie/jam.htm
17. Re:5% by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-21 16:15 · Score: 0
  
  My throughput is 80x higher than it was, but my latency is only 15 msec less.
18. Re:5% by Laxori666 · 2013-05-21 16:19 · Score: 1
  
  For lack of mod points, +1 Funny.
19. Re:5% by JabberWokky · 2013-05-21 16:20 · Score: 2
  
  CPUs are magnitudes faster today than they were 10 years ago. Why is it that pages still take seconds to load? Go back 10 years and they still took the same amount of time. Why?
  The two major updates so far this week: Google Chrome, which now renders faster, and flickr, which has significantly more complex and larger graphics. As things get able to and display process more, more is asked of them. We aren't targeting 580px wide simple HTML, no CSS and 15 color gifs. Nor are we targeting a single platform and the simple display of information. Even if you're just displaying stuff, if you're doing it right, you're divorcing content from presentation and sending a handful of files for each page: each a solution to a problem that was at one time annoying. Or "solved" poorly with the likes of early Frontpage or Dreamweaver.
  
  --
  "$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
20. Re:5% by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-21 16:39 · Score: 0
  
  My C=64 booted in 2.3 seconds.
21. Re:5% by csumpi · 2013-05-21 17:07 · Score: 2
  
  Ads. User tracking. Just look at the simplest page, it will probably have thousands of lines of javascript code, ping facebook and 15 other anti social networks and also load huge images and html5 video at the same time.
22. Re:5% by jandjmh · 2013-05-21 17:31 · Score: 1
  
  Arggh. How did anyone ever think those graphics were a good idea. It seemed like the page loaded pretty fast, so when my eyes stopped watering I got some good dark glasses, and browsed around the site. Navigating was so flipping fast it was virtually instantaneous.
23. Re:5% by noh8rz10 · 2013-05-21 18:10 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  given that much of what we have today is a nearly proper superset of ten years ago, there wouldn't be much stopping you from doing 10-year-old page styles on modern browsers
  [blink]i disagree![/blink]
24. Re:5% by Loki_1929 · 2013-05-21 18:11 · Score: 1
  
  Thank you for that.
  http://web.archive.org/web/20001219170800/http://slashdot.org/articles/98/11/11/1011216.shtml
  "So IBM announces a 25 gig hard drive... does the world need this yet? Unless this is in a RAID, would you really want to trust 25 gigs on a single drive? What would you use this for?"
  
  --
  -- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
25. Re:5% by GNious · 2013-05-21 18:29 · Score: 1
  
  I run Firefox/Aurora with NoScript - even basic pages showing a single picture (IMGUR and its friends) doesn't work.
  Somehow, being given a unique URL and showing the related picture requires client-side script in order to load said picture.
  Meanwhile, to get a faster internet, add Facebook and select Google domains to your internet filter (in router, AdBlock or whichever you prefer), and surfing suddenly gets more than 5% faster for most of the internets.
26. Re:5% by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-21 19:41 · Score: 0
  
  IT is still pretty retarded if webpage loading time is CPU-bound.
  Gives a pretty good indication how horribly bad HTML is as a language for describing modern webpages.
27. Re:5% by LordLucless · 2013-05-21 20:21 · Score: 1
  
  They're not CPU bound; I said they're "doing more" - like pulling javascript APIs from half a dozen different web services, loading massive (compared to 2003) images, buffering video, and doing who knows what with javascript.
  
  --
  Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
28. Re:5% by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-21 21:25 · Score: 1
  
  If it's not CPU-bound then a browser update shouldn't case a 5% faster loading time.
29. Re:5% by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-21 21:43 · Score: 0
  
  Because websites are not the same as they were 10 years ago either
  <blink>Damn straight!</blink>
  Now you have to use CSS and whatnot...
30. Re: 5% by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-21 22:20 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  More's the pity. "Here's your content (ie, text or picture),, and by the way here's an unrelated auto play video for you!"
31. Re:5% by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-21 22:29 · Score: 1
  
  This reminds me of May's Law: "Software efficiency halves every 18 months, compensating Moore's Law."
32. Re:5% by AmiMoJo · 2013-05-21 23:33 · Score: 1
  
  We need a way of selectively blocking Javascript on web sites. Adblock doesn't seem to be fine grained enough and only focuses on ads. It should be possible to block pointless eye candy crap that makes the page take a long time to load.
  
  --
  const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
  SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
33. Re:5% by RaceProUK · 2013-05-21 23:52 · Score: 1
  
  Don't worry, it'll be increased in 2208.
  
  --
  No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
34. Re:5% by RaceProUK · 2013-05-21 23:55 · Score: 1
  
  Somehow, being given a unique URL and showing the related picture requires client-side script in order to load said picture.
  More likely to try and stop you copying the image without permission. After all, it's not like there's a local cache or tools such as Fiddler.
  
  --
  No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
35. Re:5% by LordLucless · 2013-05-22 00:37 · Score: 1
  
  If you read the article, you'd see this was all about the network being the bottle-neck; the update changes the way the browser preloads resources while the network's blocking on the download of others.
  
  --
  Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
36. Re:5% by ILongForDarkness · 2013-05-22 02:24 · Score: 1
  
  10 years ago did every frigging page talk to a dozen different sites about your browsing history before loading? How about having lots of video? There is still more developers would love to cram in but there is about 0.5/2s window where you can load before people get bored and leave we just load more crap and do more client side processing now to use up the bandwidth and CPU. Oh yeah and latency as others mention: you still got to push the electrons around.
37. Re:5% by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-22 02:33 · Score: 0
  
  It may not have looked so bad on a VGA monitor running at 640x480@60Hz in 1996
38. Re:5% by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-22 07:26 · Score: 0
  
  Your tag didn't blink because <blink>you're doing it wrong!!!</blink>
  Seriously, though, CSS and javascript make the <blink> tag obsolete. You can even make it more annoying by making it flash different colors.
39. Re:5% by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-22 14:47 · Score: 0
  
  In my experience imgur works fine with JS disabled. I browse with JS off by default, because I don't read kotaku.
40. Re:5% by Ash+Vince · 2013-05-23 00:41 · Score: 1
  
  There is still more developers would love to cram in but there is about 0.5/2s window where you can load before people get bored and leave we just load more crap and do more client side processing now to use up the bandwidth and CPU.
  Contrary to the popular belief on slashdot us professional web developers do not sit around thinking of ways to use new browser features to make sites as slow as shit.
  Instead clients come to us as some graphic designer has mocked up this amazing new site for them with tons of flash animations they created, psd files that represent all aspects of the site with each layer representing a different page and some notes on which bits of the site need to be easily editable by the client, which bits obtain dynamic data from another site (like the companies aher price) and finally, with a detailed list of which tracking they want to use to track users journey through their website.
  Yup. much of this tracking crap is actually added at the clients request because they want to track how their users browse the site and what advert they clicked on a different site which brings though the clients who buy and what adverts on other sites just generate them click throughs but none that result in a purchase or sign up or whatever they want from the site.
  Web developers have to work through this crap and try and convince the designer that some of his design elements are going to kill the page loading time and are uttterly pointless. The ones that have to stay they try their best to make efficient by re-implementing it completely in JQuery or whatever. Try and convert the pointless flash object into a much smaller animated GIF or PNG since it is has no interactivity and is only flash as that is what the designer has tools to create.
  They then finally try and steer the client to only implementing the tracking shit on the pages that that are REALLY important (index, basket, purchase complete, etc). But no, the client first insists on the third party tracking be used to track every goddamn product so they can have all the analytics in the system their marketing chumps like using and not forcing them to login in to your site as well. Then they decide that the site is too complicated or something so you need to add the tracking to every page in the help section, then they notice that loads of people get to the index but never buy anything so you have add tracking to find out why (they load the index and decide it loads too slowly then fuck off to a quicker site probably due to the analytics shit).
  Finally, the client realises that when the get stuff demoed to them it was done in a designers office with fibre to the back of the demo PC, tests their web site at home and realises everything is slow as shit and asks you to find out why. You tell them, and they say that blaming Google or whoever does the tracking is just passing the buck as the google home page loads really quickly, you must have messed up in creating their site instead.
  At this point the web developer realises he can't win and shoots himself in the head :)
  
  --
  I dont read /. to RTFA, I read /. to offend people in ignorance.
41. Re:5% by ILongForDarkness · 2013-05-23 02:18 · Score: 1
  
  I think once you've become a webdeveloper you've already shot yourself in the head ;) Server side is the place to be :)
42. Re:5% by Ash+Vince · 2013-05-23 23:47 · Score: 1
  
  I think once you've become a webdeveloper you've already shot yourself in the head ;) Server side is the place to be :)
  Not really sure what you mean as i write mostly server side code even as a web developer.
  If you mean being a server admin then I do that too but it doesn't pay as much as I would like.
  
  --
  I dont read /. to RTFA, I read /. to offend people in ignorance.
43. Re:5% by ILongForDarkness · 2013-05-24 01:21 · Score: 1
  
  No I meant more data access/web services layer not javascript/CSS/HTML/flavor of the month client side monkey :)
44. Re:5% by Rakarra · 2013-05-24 03:58 · Score: 1
  
  Arggh. How did anyone ever think those graphics were a good idea.
  Ugggghhh!! It's like the return of Geocities.
45. Re:5% by Ash+Vince · 2013-05-24 12:20 · Score: 1
  
  No I meant more data access/web services layer not javascript/CSS/HTML/flavor of the month client side monkey :)
  Most web developers I know are forced to do crap loads of PHP on the server side, particularly MVC and OOP stuff. In my neck of the woods we call people who only do client side stuff "front end web developers" and similar. If anyone wants to be a web developer and only knows client side stuff they better be some sort of Javascript / Jquery / Knockout ninja.
  If I hired a web developer who could not at least integrate with a web service I would consider them not up to the task. Once you have done that a few times you should be able to create one for other people to use. Web services are an essential part of web development nowadays
  
  --
  I dont read /. to RTFA, I read /. to offend people in ignorance.
5% == meh by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-21 15:17 · Score: 0, Redundant

Ancient rule of thumb: Anything performance improvement below 10% is not perceptible.
So... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2013-05-21 15:17 · Score: 5, Funny

Is "'smarter behind-the-scenes resource scheduling,'" a codeword for 'not loading huge fucking flash objects from shitty overloaded ad servers'? Because that really helps with load times...
1. Re:So... by csumpi · 2013-05-21 16:56 · Score: 2
  
  That's not chrome's fault. User error, as always, for browsing the web without adblock, flashblock and plugins on autoload.
2. Re:So... by gl4ss · 2013-05-21 17:58 · Score: 1
  
  That's not chrome's fault. User error, as always, for browsing the web without adblock, flashblock and plugins on autoload.
  ..why do you think google got into browser game if not for shipping a browser that doesn't block their ads and tracking _by_default_.
  
  --
  world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
3. Re:So... by The+MAZZTer · 2013-05-22 00:45 · Score: 1
  
  Umm ALL browsers allow ads and tracking cookies by default.
  Well, IE10 asks nicely for servers to not track you, but we have yet to see how well that will work in the long run.
4. Re:So... by csumpi · 2013-05-22 02:20 · Score: 1
  
  I know it's the thing to do to call google evil and whatnot. Maybe they even do some evil.
  
  But what if they got into the browser support partly because they thought all the other browsers out there sucked?
  
  And what makes you think that Apple, MS, and Mozilla not "track" you? They all do. Even slashdot does. Don't like it, don't use it.
OWA by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-21 15:18 · Score: 0

Hope they actually managed to fix OWA file attachments with this version. I refuse to install silverlight as a work around.
Opera with text-only by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-21 15:18 · Score: 0

For the majority of my browsing I'm still ticking to Opera with CSS, images, and scripting turned off by default. Pages are loaded as fast as the server can feed the main HTML. If I really really want to I can turn on CSS or images by pressing a single key, but for most websites like this one the text is all that I'm interested in so why bother loading the rest.
1. Re:Opera with text-only by flyingfsck · 2013-05-21 15:42 · Score: 1
  
  Why don't you browse in bash with links then?
  
  --
  Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
2. Re:Opera with text-only by Eravnrekaree · 2013-05-21 16:13 · Score: 1
  
  maybe he needs javascript, CSS layout and other things most web pages these days insist on, which links wont do?
3. Re:Opera with text-only by KillDaBOB · 2013-05-21 16:32 · Score: 1
  
  uh... do you mean "lynx"? i've never heard of a browser called "links" before. man, that takes me back to some good ol' vax/vms days.
4. Re:Opera with text-only by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-21 16:37 · Score: 1
  
  links exists too, it's a text mode browser. The name is clever (or the opposite of clever, depending on your mood). w3m was the best browser of that type last I checked.
5. Re: Opera with text-only by AvitarX · 2013-05-21 17:19 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Links (elinks I think is the package name) is a console browser with some CSS layout support (unlike lynx when I replaced it).
  
  --
  Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
6. Re:Opera with text-only by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-21 20:27 · Score: 0
  
  But Links supports javascript and CSS. It'll do everything he needs, as long as he doesn't need graphics of any sort.
7. Re: Opera with text-only by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-22 14:52 · Score: 0
  
  elinks is a fork of the original links, but I'd recommend using it. There's also links2 which does graphical rendering in the frame-buffer (gpm mouse support and everything), but that seems a bit unnecessary.
I Tried It, But It Was Still Ridiculously Slow by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-21 15:36 · Score: 4, Interesting

The hideously poor performance that I observed had nothing whatsoever to do with Chrome or the browser, the problem was that in order to paint a simple page, my browser was also sent to the following hosts: a.fsdn.com, b.scorecardresearch.com, ad.doubleclick.net (47 times), fls.doubleclick.net, ajax.googleapis.com, www.google-analytics.net, libs.coremetrics.com, edge.quantserv.com, js.bizographics.com, ad.yieldmanager.com, r.twimg.com, and several connections to facebook and twitter, which are really puzzling since I have no facebook or twitter account. After about 3 minutes, something in the world of TCP/IP finally closed a couple of the doubleclick connections and the browser painted the page!
1. Re:I Tried It, But It Was Still Ridiculously Slow by Eravnrekaree · 2013-05-21 16:11 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  This is a browser problem because the browser should not wait for all of those sites to be contacted before painting the page
2. Re:I Tried It, But It Was Still Ridiculously Slow by pspahn · 2013-05-21 18:51 · Score: 1
  
  Alternatively a problem with the scripts, caused either by the developer loading them in the head instead of after body close, or by the authors of the scripts for writing them so that they only work when placed in the head.
  Scripts go after body close. If you don't like that, enjoy your high bounce rates.
  
  --
  Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
3. Re:I Tried It, But It Was Still Ridiculously Slow by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · 2013-05-21 22:54 · Score: 1
  
  First of all, what bozo modded this redundant?
  Second, I've always suspected people layed out browser HTML and other scripting such that the ads got downloaded first, then the pictures, or even text if they could swing it.
  This could be done by empiricle testing, and done differently per browser brand. Browsers must have some algorithm to decide what order to download dozens of sub-elements. Take advantage of that for, if not nefarious purposes, then at least irritating ones.
  This may also be the driver behind so much scripting, and not lazy, bloated layout generators.
  
  --
  (-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
4. Re:I Tried It, But It Was Still Ridiculously Slow by The+MAZZTer · 2013-05-22 00:48 · Score: 1
  
  Chrome has optimizations for that, so it's likely whoever built the site either used some weird TheDailyWTF worthy method of rendering their page with JavaScript, or otherwise did not properly test their page with Chrome to ensure this Chrome feature could properly handle their page.
5. Re:I Tried It, But It Was Still Ridiculously Slow by The+MAZZTer · 2013-05-22 00:49 · Score: 1
  
  Grab the ScriptSafe extension. It's the Chrome equivalent to Firefox's NoScript. Every JS script starts out blocked and you can whitelist domains as you go, avoiding those that have the suspicious names that don't actually add content to the page.
6. Re:I Tried It, But It Was Still Ridiculously Slow by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-22 04:58 · Score: 0
  
  Use Ghostery
  https://www.ghostery.com/
  To disable all 3rd party tracking.
  Free and fast. - Chrome, Safari, Mac, Windows,etc...
7. Re:I Tried It, But It Was Still Ridiculously Slow by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-22 07:37 · Score: 0
  
  NoScript actually does quite a bit more than simply white/blacklisting Javascript from certain (sub)domains. But I guess if that's all you want, then ScriptSafe is a slightly less wieldly drop-in replacement.
8. Re:I Tried It, But It Was Still Ridiculously Slow by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-22 16:25 · Score: 0
  
  This is a browser problem because the browser should not wait for all of those sites to be contacted before painting the page
  Sorry - I should have said "finished painting the page". It's not a browser problem, it's an absurdly inefficient web design problem that seems to permeate 99% of all web pages out there now. (btw, I'm a Linux/Apache/C/Postgres guy and know how to replace most of the web sites I see with something much more scalable and faster)
9. Re:I Tried It, But It Was Still Ridiculously Slow by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-22 16:29 · Score: 0
  
  It's not any one particular site. I see the problem with web sites contacting multiple 3rd party servers and using 10 times the TCP connections that they need all over the place. I hit "stop" on half the sites I visit. Some of them I just drop into my DNS server and point at google or if they're an ad server at my own apache box so I don't waste the time.
Still claims rights to 100% of what you do in it.. by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-21 15:38 · Score: 1, Interesting

"When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content."
This is going to be interesting in a few decades when Google is sold off and we get to see what kind of data they have been keeping.
max-width: 32em by tepples · 2013-05-21 15:39 · Score: 0

Take a 10- to 15-year-old page and style it with body { margin: 0 auto; padding: 2em 0.5em; max-width: 32em } to keep line lengths sane. After this, you'll have a usable first attempt at a mobile version.
Flashblock by tepples · 2013-05-21 15:40 · Score: 2

In that case, it wouldn't provide much of a benefit over what I already use: an extension that enforces a click-to-play policy on plug-ins. Such extensions go by names such as Flashblock.
1. Re:Flashblock by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-21 16:00 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Extension? Chrome and Firefox both have that capability native these days.
  Firefox: Go to about:config and search for click_to. Turn it to true. (It's really neat and even tells you what type of content you'll load before you click.)
  Chrome: Go to chrome://settings/content and select Click to play for plugins.
2. Re:Flashblock by Ash-Fox · 2013-05-22 00:28 · Score: 1
  
  The sad this is that this was a feature originally first provided in IE4, just had to change a registry key. I'm happy to see it as an option inside FF and Chrome now.
  
  --
  Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
3. Re:Flashblock by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-22 03:14 · Score: 0
  
  The sad this is that this was a feature originally was patented and required extortion money to use, so it was relegated to be provided in IE4 via a change to a registry key.
4. Re:Flashblock by Ash-Fox · 2013-05-22 03:42 · Score: 1
  
  Can you show the patent?
  
  --
  Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
To paraphrase Churchill by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-21 15:45 · Score: 0

Those who would give up privacy for a little faster page loads deserve neither.
1. Re:To paraphrase Churchill by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-21 15:56 · Score: 0
  
  That was Ben Franklin you cum-burping retard.
2. Re:To paraphrase Churchill by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-21 16:04 · Score: 1
  
  Check your facts, and try being less rude. It was Churchill.
is gmail faster in it? by 4wdloop · 2013-05-21 16:02 · Score: 1, Funny

Yea google, you're getting bigger and slower...gmail got so dog slow I am considering switching to hotmail, 5% is gonna go unnoticed by an average Joe.

--
4wdloop
1. Re:is gmail faster in it? by Laxori666 · 2013-05-21 16:21 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  5% actually makes a huge difference. "Latency matters. Amazon found every 100ms of latency cost them 1% in sales. Google found an extra .5 seconds in search page generation time dropped traffic by 20%." [link]. These statistics would not be true if the average Joe would not notice them. He notices, he just wouldn't phrase it as "this site was 100ms slower than usual so I didn't buy from it."
2. Re:is gmail faster in it? by 4wdloop · 2013-05-21 16:53 · Score: 2
  
  But wait...it's a client speed up optimization. All in all it would cause the same amount of traffic just reordered to start pages render sooner.
  As for Joe Human, his reaction time is at about 20ms. Hence @5% improvement would be theoretically "noticeable" in a 2 seconds page load. But unnoticeable if Joe Human would have to observe it relative to 2 seconds total. Likely even with a stop watch Joe H. would be in "error area". And 100ms would be an improvement on a 20s load which would challenge patience of any Joe H.
  From improvement description:
  "The primary drivers are: preloading images sooner, more aggressive use of idle network time, dynamically changing resource priorities, deprioritization of preloaded resources, and reduced bandwidth contention among images."
  From TFA:
  "when you add up those saved seconds across all Chrome users, it totals to more than 510 years of people’s time saved every week."
  Now that's convincing argument.
  I admit that squeezing that 5% of already well optimized code is a great achievement (technically) that may be head-deep in the law of diminishing returns (practically). But G$$gle can afford it.
  
  --
  4wdloop
3. Re:is gmail faster in it? by csumpi · 2013-05-21 16:57 · Score: 1
  
  You mean outlook.com. No more hotmail.
4. Re:is gmail faster in it? by garyok · 2013-05-21 21:28 · Score: 2
  
  As for Joe Human, his reaction time is at about 20ms. Hence @5% improvement would be theoretically "noticeable" in a 2 seconds page load. But unnoticeable if Joe Human would have to observe it relative to 2 seconds total. Likely even with a stop watch Joe H. would be in "error area". And 100ms would be an improvement on a 20s load which would challenge patience of any Joe H.
  Reaction time is how long it takes you to process a stimulus and initiate a physical action in response - it's not how long it takes you to notice something. Joe Human's sitting there wondering wondering why he's letting this site steal the precious moments of his life away from him loading ads for stuff he doesn't care about. He might not have time to hit the Cancel control before the page finishes loading but he knows his time's been wasted.
  
  --
  One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors - Plato
5. Re:is gmail faster in it? by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · 2013-05-21 23:09 · Score: 2
  
  It's a continuous curve. If it took 10 minutes, few would stick around. If instantaneous, everybody would, and only quality of results would matter. For each fraction of a second delay in-between, you get a nice sine curve of people giving up.
  This was the source of an interesting analysis that forcing airlines to give free baby seats would cost more lives than it saved by driving a small fraction of people to take the car instead. You can't get something for free, and the additional dimes added to everybody else's tickets would, incredulously, drive some, subconsciously, to take a car instead, crash, and die, as car travel is much more dangerous. For each penny of increased price, you get a diminishing number of buyers. With an annual granularity of hundreds of millions, this could be tens of thousands of people at each penny at the price points.
  Meanwhile, free baby seats (where babies could be strapped in instead of being held) would have only made a difference in two known cases, and one of those the baby survived anyway by flying into an overhead bin.
  
  --
  (-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
6. Re:is gmail faster in it? by AmiMoJo · 2013-05-21 23:22 · Score: 1
  
  How the hell are eBay and Paypal still in business? Their sites are achingly slow.
  
  --
  const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
  SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
7. Re:is gmail faster in it? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-21 23:40 · Score: 0
  
  and one of those the baby survived anyway by flying into an overhead bin.
  Kal-El is not a representative sample.
8. Re:is gmail faster in it? by wvmarle · 2013-05-22 00:02 · Score: 1
  
  No real competition.
9. Re:is gmail faster in it? by dfghjk · 2013-05-22 00:20 · Score: 1
  
  5% is 5%. It is barely on the edge of human perception. The average Joe would have difficulty noticing even if he were challenged to do so.
10. Re:is gmail faster in it? by misterooga · 2013-05-22 04:31 · Score: 1
  
  Average. So that means there are bound to be sites slower than that 5% diff.
  Upon self reflection, I've noticed that when a site loads slower, I usually close the tab and search for other sources or move on as well.
11. Re:is gmail faster in it? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-22 06:49 · Score: 0
  
  hotmail.com still is alive, it redirects to live.com.
  The full migration hasn't occurred, yet.
RAM usage is big issue, not CPU by Eravnrekaree · 2013-05-21 16:07 · Score: 4, Insightful

Its memory usage that is such a great problem for me, not really the issue of CPU time. If chrome is constantly cuasing disk caching because of the enormous memory usage, that is going to cause massive speed degredation, which is far greater than any 5% decrease in CPU time by an algorithm. I wish Chrome had a feature for not storing uncompressed copies of image if they are off screen and would fix the massive memory holes. Really no reason a browser should use more than 5-10 MB of RAM per open tab.
1. Re:RAM usage is big issue, not CPU by csumpi · 2013-05-21 17:02 · Score: 2
  
  Buy more ram. It's cheap. You'll be much happier, and not just with chrome.
  
  On the other hand, what memory holes? I run chrome for weeks, no issues whatsoever.
2. Re:RAM usage is big issue, not CPU by gl4ss · 2013-05-21 18:00 · Score: 1
  
  ram isn't much of an issue on a desktop.
  I got "just" 8 gigs and pretty much never go over 75% usage for extended periods of time.. even eclipse just takes 766mbytes!
  
  --
  world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
3. Re:RAM usage is big issue, not CPU by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-21 18:04 · Score: 1
  
  Really no reason a browser should use more than 5-10 MB of RAM per open tab.
  Hahahaha, good luck with that.
4. Re:RAM usage is big issue, not CPU by Lincolnshire+Poacher · 2013-05-21 18:10 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Buy more ram. It's cheap. You'll be much happier, and not just with chrome.
  Buying more RAM only makes sense if there is somewhere to put it.
  Of three laptops we have, one is limited to 8 GB and the two ultraportables to 2 GB.
5. Re:RAM usage is big issue, not CPU by lightknight · 2013-05-21 19:10 · Score: 1
  
  And why is that? Because people see laptops as disposables. There is little pressure for an OEM to spec a motherboard with a few extra SO-DIMM sockets, when people aren't planning to upgrade their laptops most of the time, or are going to buy a new one when they do (which will come with the more RAM).
  
  --
  I am John Hurt.
6. Re:RAM usage is big issue, not CPU by lightknight · 2013-05-21 19:20 · Score: 1
  
  Good for you. There are some people out there for whom 2 GB of email storage space is enough, or a 32 GB SSD is big enough. Or 32-bit processors are good enough.
  Technology, progress in life, is driven by people for whom the status quo was not good enough. We have 64-bit processors because some people decided that 32-bit processors simply wouldn't do. This is the same reason we use light bulbs, instead of candles, to illuminate our homes, and why you don't spend most of your life being chased by something bigger and angrier and quite possibly hungrier than you are...because some of those people, who had been chased by Muthgar the Lion of Doom across the Savannah of Africa decided that it simply wasn't the life for them. Chasing after Muthgar, on the other hand, in what closely resembles a tank, and paying his kin back for the numerous ancestors they wandered off with, however, was. As it stands, Muthgar is on such shaky ground at the moment, that he and his kin need to be kept inside a patrolled in area, so that there will a Muthgar in the future for people to remember what one looked like. Such are human beings -> they hate being prey to anything, and they hate being uncomfortable, and they hate having their freedoms restricted.
  
  --
  I am John Hurt.
7. Re:RAM usage is big issue, not CPU by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-21 19:49 · Score: 0
  
  my laptop has 4Gb ram, I normally have my mailclient, my rss reader, my webbrowser and a commandline open. Even with shitloads of tabs open I have yet to see my laptop go above 1.6GB ram in actual use (running debian+kde)
  unless you're compiling something big, or doing video-editing the amount of ram in even low-end laptops is complete and utter overkill these days
8. Re:RAM usage is big issue, not CPU by gl4ss · 2013-05-21 21:03 · Score: 1
  
  I was pointing out that I would use more ram if it brought things to work otherwise faster. even eclipse.
  I could do with 100mbytes of email storage. my laptop isn't maxed out on ram, if there was an advantage of getting another 8 gigs I would.
  
  --
  world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
9. Re:RAM usage is big issue, not CPU by AmiMoJo · 2013-05-21 21:09 · Score: 1
  
  I run Chrone on a 4GB laptop, typically have 30+ tabs open with peeks over maybe 80+ and don't see any memory issues. Are you opening 20 copies of Farmville or something?
  I think people need to recognize that some web sites chew RAM. The browser can do nothing about it, they just have that much content that needs to be rendered.
  If you can't add more RAM try and SSD. At least then swapping will be near instant (500MB/sec reads).
  
  --
  const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
  SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
10. Re:RAM usage is big issue, not CPU by complete+loony · 2013-05-21 21:11 · Score: 1
  
  From reading the MemShrink blog, firefox will now discard uncompressed images you can't see. Not sure when that will hit a release version though.
  
  --
  09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
chrome benchmark by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-21 16:13 · Score: 0

I don't know how much faster it is because it broke the chrome web page benchmark.
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/page-benchmarker/channimfdomahekjcahlbpccbgaopjll?hl=en
I find this the best test for browsing performance. I have a set list of urls I test with.
Lets hope it's more stable than last version by BigFire · 2013-05-21 16:52 · Score: 1

Build-in flash module crash so frequently it isn't funny.
1. Re:Lets hope it's more stable than last version by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-21 18:34 · Score: 0
  
  Google it. If your flash setting somehow conflicts with stand-alone flash player, that happens.
This is great! by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-21 16:58 · Score: 1

Now I can visit various mirrors of the old goatse.cx page 5% faster! Not the new goatse.cx though because now it just sucks.
1. Re:This is great! by iggymanz · 2013-05-22 00:04 · Score: 1
  
  wow, the first mention of goatse in slashdot *without a link*
Speed is not an issue anymore ..... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-21 16:59 · Score: 0

Rendering the pages CORRECTLY is more important than running faster by a few milliseconds. And that is where Chrome fails miserably.
A simple solution for your problem by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-21 17:03 · Score: 0

Firefox w/ AdBlock and NoScript.
Never use a benchmark tool ... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-21 17:06 · Score: 0

.. developed by the developer of a browser.
It is very easy to fix a test when the person who wrote the item being tested is also the one writing the test.
And 2000% memory usage... by wakeboarder · 2013-05-21 17:20 · Score: 0

And I don't want google tracking me.
1. Re:And 2000% memory usage... by kthreadd · 2013-05-21 18:00 · Score: 2
  
  Then you might want to use Chromium instead. Chromium is open source unlike Google Chrome, and doesn't include the same tracking system that Google adds to its proprietary product.
2. Re:And 2000% memory usage... by jones_supa · 2013-05-21 18:05 · Score: 1
  
  I even use the built-in sign-in feature. Kind of cringes to think that my complete list of visited URLs is stored in their server. I'm insane.
3. Re:And 2000% memory usage... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-22 00:40 · Score: 0
  
  Don't forget to disable google type-ahead suggestions for searching too.
which means by Tablizer · 2013-05-21 17:39 · Score: 0

5% more pop-ups per hour, yeaaah!

--
Table-ized A.I.
Still missing a feature! by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-21 17:48 · Score: 0

How about making Chrome work with RHEL 6 again?
1. Re:Still missing a feature! by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-21 17:54 · Score: 0
  
  How about making RHEL 6 work with the rest of the world again?
  If you want to use an OS built on obsolete components is your call, but don't expect everyone else to cater to your needs.
2. Re:Still missing a feature! by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-21 23:54 · Score: 0
  
  What you would call "obsolete" I call "stable."
3. Re:Still missing a feature! by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-22 05:17 · Score: 0
  
  And Chrome is all but stable, you have to chose which one you want. As far as I know RHEL has a perfectly fine working Firefox maintained by Red Hat included in the distribution. That's what you should use if you want stable.
Wow! 5%!! by OhANameWhatName · 2013-05-21 19:33 · Score: 1

My hat has just sploded off my head! 5%

Let's start a chant .. Google Google Google Google Google Google

Yaaayy GOOGLE!
unscientific/unsubstantiated report by thephydes · 2013-05-21 19:36 · Score: 1

Yes, it does appear to be snappier. But hey, what would I know? (please don't answer that)
1. Re:unscientific/unsubstantiated report by Ol+Biscuitbarrel · 2013-05-22 02:41 · Score: 1
  
  Upgraded and all my open tabs have failed to reappear. That's no good.
Chrome Versions by wadeal · 2013-05-21 20:01 · Score: 1

Chrome "Fuck you Firefox you'll never catch our number" Version.
1. Re:Chrome Versions by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-21 22:03 · Score: 0
  
  Actually, Mozilla's marketing people scheduled this perfectly.
  Chrome releases new versions every 2 months (8 weeks), Firefox is on a 6 week cycle. They will eventually catch and surpass Chrome's version number by design.
  The fact that this entire exercise is fucking stupid and they should have just switched to YYYY.MM numbering (Firefox 2013.6) instead is another matter.
Don't care by thetoadwarrior · 2013-05-21 20:37 · Score: 1

I'm sure google's Internet tracking software still eats up a pile of memory and in interface still eats balls so I'm still going to treat chrome like Eric Schmidt treats his wife.
And once again they keep the fundamental flaws... by jbssm · 2013-05-21 22:50 · Score: 1

Once again, they didn't address the real 2 problems of Chrome:
- On demand loading of pages (at least) like Firefox does. Many of us have lots of pages open in the browser. Firefox only loads those that we visit upon starting, from what I read Opera is working on that... Chrome chokes and slows to a crawl and ramps up the memory usage of the system.

- An usable tab manager? Please? Is that so complicated to understand? How the hell are we supposed to use a browser that keeps shrinking the tab handlers until the point they are just a few pixels with no information whatsoever instead of just doing the obvious and scroll them? And how - in this day and age - Chrome still doesn't have an usable tab grouping manager like Firefox and Opera? Have you ever tried to figure out where a tab is when Chrome has 20 or 30 open ones?
Sure... 5% load speed increase and the same old bad usability... that's what we need.
5% faster page loads? by SlashV · 2013-05-21 23:14 · Score: 1

Web browsers are like washing powder. Forever three times concentrated and more powerful, bla bla bla. Yet my laundry doesn't get any cleaner.. and my web browsing doesn't get any faster!
Re:And once again they keep the fundamental flaws. by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-21 23:23 · Score: 1

>Chrome still doesn't have an usable tab grouping manager like Firefox and Opera?
They are called windows and they show why things like TabCandy are not needed.
Have they fixed the crashing "google talk plugin"? by 140Mandak262Jamuna · 2013-05-21 23:28 · Score: 1

My major issues with Chrome is, it is a resource hog. When google drive wants to sync, or when google talk plug in misbehaves it drags the whole computer, not just the browser down. When some stupid site writes a ridiculous javascript all hogging cpu, Chrome isolates it to a chrome process and allows me to bottle it. But who will bell the cat, when Chrome itself hogs the mouse pointer or locks the event queue stopping refresh, mouse clicks and focus changes?

--
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Flashblock is in-built in Chrome by ciantic · 2013-05-21 23:57 · Score: 2

Also, I think Google Chrome is first browser to implement click to play flashblock in browser, and that is a good thing.
Settings -> Content Settings -> Plug-Ins and select "Click to play". You can also make exception like PDF reader to allow always.
Until.... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-22 00:18 · Score: 0

Until they bring back side tabs, no one cares.
F Chrome
90s guy by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-22 00:34 · Score: 0

I'm behind a 56k modem and it's still slow. Google lied.
27 = Broken printing? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-22 01:13 · Score: 0

Several computers in different locations using Chrome suddenly can't print from the browser.
How does it work with Win8? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-22 03:35 · Score: 0

Can't put Chrome on my touch screen Win 8 laptop because it doesn't work with the touch screen function. That would be OKbut it messes up my IE10 touch screen capabilities. I have Opera as a second browser now and it works fine with the touch screen and IE10, I don't really use Opera but I'm saying, can't have Chrome installed on my laptop for this reason.
Have they enabled .opus playback by default yet? by Dr.Dubious+DDQ · 2013-05-22 04:01 · Score: 1

Last time I looked, you could enable playback of opus audio by starting chrom(e|ium) with a special command-line switch, but they were refusing to enable it by default until there was opus-in-webm support (a format that as far as I know still doesn't even exist).
Meanwhile, Firefox has played .opus for about a year now...

--
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
Re:And once again they keep the fundamental flaws. by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-22 04:05 · Score: 0

Actually they have their reason for their tab manager, people are quite good at remembering locations, so even if the tab is now nearly nothing left, you will still rather easily find the right tab, while if it scrolls, suddenly the tab isn't there anymore and you have to start scrolling. Certainly not all people will agree, but I find the shrinking a better way, usually. As long as I can still see the icon and the close button.
RequestPolicy extension stops GETs at the start. by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-22 04:55 · Score: 0

RequestPolicy extension. Blacklist/whitelist stops most HTTP requests to other domains before they start. More work, MUCH more effective.
Configured well, it's pretty much the ultimate against driveby ad/scripting/phish/malware issues.
Although with the version I'm running, I have to add to the whitelist to get most new sites to actually be readable on first load when they try to load their CSS/background images off a subdomain, so I can't recommend it for anyone who doesn't know how the internet actually works. Oh, and the number of cross-site-requests is to load some kinds of embedded streaming video is 3+ domains deep and just retarded.
Or temporarily allow all requests from a domain, but that's a bit excessive.
Please suggest a better browser! by qualico · 2013-05-22 05:29 · Score: 1

Glad to see some serious ripping of Chrome here.
It sucks and not just a little.
Like Microsoft, Google is trying to be all things to all people and this just makes for shit software.
Why the fuck do they need to use so much memory?
Try http://www.crazybrowser.com/
as an example of the size a browser should be
does not work for some pages so its the lesser of an evil for now anyway.
but seriously, Google is doing so much shit in the background that you need to give up most of your bandwidth to tracking and most of your memory for loading...so frustrating.
Does anyone else have a suggestion for a good light weight browser?
Maybe we need to create a 5k only Internet. No Flash allowed!
http://www.the5k.org/
1. Re:Please suggest a better browser! by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-22 15:07 · Score: 0
  
  If you're on a linux (or possibly other *nix) box, I can recommend surf from suckless.org.
  It's a lightweight webkit wrapper with a very minimal featureset (in the nightlies they've removed the loading progress bar), but I've found it blazingly fast in my use-cases. When I first used it I thought "Woah. This is how the web should've always been". Chrome and Firefox feel dog slow by comparison.
  Disclaimer: It doesn't have tabs either, so you need a good window manager, or otherwise "tabbed', also from suckless.
5%? Yawn. Call us when it's 90% faster. by elabs · 2013-05-22 07:10 · Score: 1

This isn't news. No user will notice a 5% improvement in load times. We'd much rather have a smaller memory footprint.
Browser Speed by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-23 16:11 · Score: 0

gosgog:
Here, you could have a "supercomputer" but the Provincial Net service available is putrid. Howabout 0.023Mbs download!! Ugh...Chromium, Chrome, Firefox, Dog Pile....whatever, I'm stuck with it & 15 days ago, a lot of Websites wont go past their front page or even load....stuff that we never had problems with in the past...double UGH!