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Chrome 57 Limits Background Tabs Usage To 1% Per CPU Core (bleepingcomputer.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from BleepingComputer: Starting with Chrome 57, released last week, Google has put a muzzle on the amount of resources background tabs can use. According to Google engineers, Chrome 57 will temporarily delay a background tab's JavaScript timers if that tab is using more than 1% of a CPU core. Further, all background timers are suspended automatically after five minutes on mobile devices. The delay/suspension will halt resource consumption and cut down on battery usage, something that laptop, tablet, and smartphone owners can all relate. Google hinted in late January that it would limit JavaScript timers in background tabs, but nobody expected it to happen as soon as last week's Chrome release. By 2020, Google hopes to pause JavaScript operations in all background pages.
I used to wish browsers would do this. But now I know that there are good uses for background processes, even though limiting them to 1% seems fine to me.
For example, slack changes the tab title and icon when an event happens, like a new message. Gmail updates the title to show how many messages you have. These are reasonable use cases.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I'm using facebook and google hangouts to communicate with people. Since I don't want to install applications, I use them as browser tabs. Does this mean I will no longer get noticed when someone messages me?
Avantgarde Hebrew science fiction
But nobody does that. They make ordinary webpages that use 500KB of javascript code to make something that looks (and feels) like a cheap 40KB HTML page based on iframes from back in 1996. Big static posters with HD stock images, 3 lines of text, and a download/email button. Why do these pages need javascript at all? What is javascript for?!