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Google Chrome To Feature Built-In Image Lazy Loading (bleepingcomputer.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Future versions of Google Chrome will feature built-in support for lazy loading, a mechanism to defer the loading of images and iframes if they are not visible on the user's screen at load time. This system will first ship with Chrome for Android and Google doesn't rule out adding it to desktop versions if tests go as planned. The feature is called Blink LazyLoad, and as the name hints, it will implement the principle of "lazy loading" inside Chrome itself.
Google engineers reported page load speed improvements varying from 18% to 35%, depending on the underlying network. Other browser makers have been notified of the Chrome team's plan, but none have provided input if they plan to implement a similar feature. Compared to most JS-based lazy loading scripts that only target images, Google implementation will also target iframes.
Google engineers reported page load speed improvements varying from 18% to 35%, depending on the underlying network. Other browser makers have been notified of the Chrome team's plan, but none have provided input if they plan to implement a similar feature. Compared to most JS-based lazy loading scripts that only target images, Google implementation will also target iframes.
Taking control and functionality away from the web developer because browser developers think they know what's best for everyone.
As long as they include a SYNC/ASYNC parameter to the HTML elements to override the user agent's behavior, we're all good here. In fact, being able to manually specify ASYNC without any JS at all would be freaggin godsend as a developer!
Yes, it will remain perfectly smooth for people who don't use Chrome
This is to be implemented as an html attribute, so control is still in the hands of developers. It's a great idea, frankly.
Lazy load JS has all kinds of problems. You know how pages jump around while you scroll? That is JS lazy loading. If it is implemented natively in the browser, then the browser can do things like figure out which images to pre-load and when to do it based on variables that JS does not have access to (network speed, latency, current load...). Further, it is guaranteed to use much fewer resources than lazy-loading JS, which hooks into onscroll and onresize events, then loops over _every_ lazy-loaded image on the page, calculates its position relative to the window, and _then_ lazy loads. It is a complete and utter hack.
Hell, I would be perfectly happy with a simple "defered" attribute on image tags, like we have with script tags. Then I could just chuck this hacky shit to the curb.
Your not seeing the big picture.
Those megabytes you save per month, that you don't notice. Account for Exabytes of Ads Images, that their resources will not need to send onto sites that the information will not be seen.
If you are going to charge per click why bother wasting your resources downloading data that will not be clicked.
If you are charging for impressions, why scam your customers with extra charges until it actually has an impression.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
installing an ad blocker (I recommend uBlock Origin) so most of that crap don't get loaded at all.
Even best is disabling javascript. I recommend "Quick Javascript Switcher".
Fuck smooth scrolling. Just jump x lines down instantly, please. I don't want an animation, and I certainly don't need an animation that requires the GPU to do work for no reason. The distinct sound an Intel iGPU makes when smooth scrolling is torture to my ears. Even regular scrolling pisses me off. The only thing worse is the metallic whine of an M.2 SSD under load.
Taking control and functionality away from the web developer because browser developers think they know what's best for everyone.
Gab.ai has this for their pages, and it's awful.
Scrolling down, you have to wait a moment or two to load each image as it comes into view. It's a complete time waster.
I run the slider up and down a few times to activate all the images, then go browse another page while the Gab page loads. I can't imagine doing this for *all* pages on the internet - it would be an unacceptable wast of my time.
It's similar to the google image search, which only shows a quarter page of thumbnails, but if you scroll down it suddenly loads another quarter page... jumping the slider and causing you to lose your place while scanning through the images.
Again, it's intended for some purpose which is not "convenience of the viewer". We're not the customer, so it probably saves their real customers (the advertizers) somehow.
Both of these are for non-phone browsing, for which data rates and caps don't apply. I can see why phone browsing might want to save data, but why inflict this on desktop PCs?
Kinda odd as the rest of Google is figuring out how to waste more of our data by cramming preloaded "suggested" items into their apps (Android Chrome & Maps for example).
Also, expect to see new memory-usage benchmark-advertorials - Look how much less memory Chrome uses! It's magic!
So this is a revenue reducer. Excellent.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Yes, because touchscreen devices will really appreciate that.
Just because you put your ear so close to the PCB you think you can hear the electrons vibrating doesn't mean nobody else should get a smooth scrolling experience.
Actually it is a cost reducer.
Sending Ads that will not be viewed is just wasting googles money sending the traffic. And if google can show a higher impression rate with their services then all the better.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Damn, is your father a dog or something?
#DeleteFacebook
Then add a setting to enable smooth scrolling only for scrolling initiated by touch, not for scrolling initatied by arrow keys, the mouse wheel, or the up or down arrows on the scroll bar.
non-phone browsing, for which data rates and caps don't apply.
You appear not to have priced out satellite Internet, fixed cellular Internet, or DSL in some parts of Iowa. They still very much have caps. (Source: Exede.com; Verizon.net)
What is this "lofi" attribute you're speaking of?
#DeleteFacebook
I really hate going to a web site, wait for it to load and then suddenly BOOM! a full-page image is the first thing the appears before all the other parts of the web page. Where's the "X" so I can close it? Huh, it doesn't have one? Why can't I scroll past this? Oh, it's covering up the scroll bar.
Sounds like that ad doesn't follow The Coalition for Better Ads standards, and as such, will be blocked by Chrome as of February 15th.
If you are referring to lowsrc, I hope you're aware that it has been deprecated and replaced in HTML5.
#DeleteFacebook
Anonymous Coward wrote about prestitial ads on websites:
It's like trying to watch a movie that I paid for at the theater but before the projector starts, a really loud guy sitting in the seat in front of you stands up, turns around and starts yelling you about some product or service he thinks you might be interested in because the movie kinda is about that. He won't shut up and he's blocking the screen until you agree to read the brochure he's holding out in front of him.
You mean like the commercials that movie theaters have been showing for decades to supplement box office revenue? I imagine theaters do this because the movie studio gets a cut of ticket sales, but not of overpriced popcorn or these ads.
Chrome will soon block ads on sites that use prestitial ads with countdown or any prestitials on mobile.
We're back in the 90s?
Note to self: buy thousands of Bitcoins and sell them all around Christmas 2017.
#DeleteFacebook
Don't they realize the other hand is bloating webpages up with their near monopoly on online advertising?
What else would you suggest for a site to continue to pay its writers? Each site selling static ad space to advertisers? Paywalls? Or firing all employees and becoming a butcher, as Slashdot user bingoUV suggested?
Plus their analytics, big CSS fonts, and promotion of more and more javascript frameworks etc.
By "big CSS fonts", do you mean large point size or large byte size?
If the latter: Say a site uses a lightweight JS library built on the advances in vanilla JS since IE <= 11 sunset, self-hosts it, self-hosts Matomo (formerly called Piwik) for analytics, and offers a meaningful functionality subset when JS is off. How is the site supposed to make its fonts smaller to download?
I'm no son of a bitch, but I can still hear noise in the 100-8000 Hz band when the CPU and GPU loads change on some machines. I'm not quite sure if it's electrical noise leaking into the audio output or magnetostriction in the power supply.
Which only means viewers will be seeing a lot more "To continue, unblock our ads in Chrome and disable tracking protection in Firefox" notices on websites, including websites linked from Slashdot stories.
W3C's official replacement for lowsrc= is to use formats that support incremental loading, delivering a low-detail image early in the file and the difference between low- and high-detail images later. JPEG has progressive refinement, and PNG has Adam7 interlacing. But not all formats support this; for instance, I don't see a way to make it work for an SVG illustration or for anything animated.
What other replacement did you have in mind, if any?
Browsers are supposed to render everything in the viewport. Ie: only the visible part. Once the content of the viewport is determined, anything else is wasted cycles.
Is it necessarily "wasted cycles" to prepare for further scrolling of the viewport? My use case often involves loading a document, disconnecting from the Internet, and then scrolling the viewport to the remainder of the document.
Now all we have to do is figure a way to tell the browser that all the adds are off the visible section of the page and we'll never see them.
You live and learn, or you don't learn much.
That's fine, you can either agree to the terms, or not visit the site.
preogresive Mpeg
I've heard of progressive JPEG and Adam7-interlaced PNG for still images, but not progressive MPEG. The closest thing I can think of is a CSS trick to display a JPEG filmstrip as an animation, where the underlying JPEG is stored progressively.
[Dealing with anti-adblock in] websites linked from Slashdot stories
not visit the site.
And get moderated down for making uninformed comments based on not having read the featured article.
Now how should I tell a major web search engine which domains (plural) I don't want to visit so that it doesn't return them in search results that it presents to me? Google Search limits the number of -site:example.com terms that I can add to each query.
If your website pisses me off because of the way it loads (no matter which browser I'm using), I'm simply never coming back there.
While I'm bitching, if you use light gray text on a barely darker gray background, may you rot in Hell forever.
This is all a huge exercise in gaming metrics, a natural by-product of Google's OKR system, according to the Law of Totally Expected Consequence.
I define a page as being loaded as when I can scroll down without noticing that the page wasn't really loaded in the first place.
From my vantage point, load times are getting worse and worse.
If the system instruments itself to determine the amount of image load delay exposed to the end user, and then adjust the loading threshold to the activity patterns of the user, so that the exposed delay occupies a sweet spot between interactivity and network efficiency, that would constitute a benchmark refined, rather than a benchmark gamed.
I'll even allow them to conduct a weighted average on visible load delay where page cruft is multiplied a small number (negative values, in many scenarios, are highly encouraged).
YouTube is presently pissing me off, because they are loading the video element itself, without so much as the page title or upload date visible for three to four seconds. I hardly ever stick around to watch a video with comments disabled. It's a sign of fear on the part of the channel creator, and that fear is almost always fully justified. But I regularly have to wait for four seconds now with a mostly white screen to decide whether the video makes the cut.
The system is loaded, all right, by design.
I'm about 18 inches away from the NUC on my desk. If drag a scroll bar up and down I can hear an annoying clicking sound, almost like a softer, faster version of a hard drive (the system is running a M.2 SSD). This has been true for Intel iGPUs for over a decade. I have to disable shit like smooth scrolling, font smoothing, etc. on my work machines to reduce it (but not eliminate it). I'm fine with disabling them, because I generally hate those things anyway. It's a problem when I'm on a site that uses some god awful Google web font that expects you to have font smoothing / subpixel rendering bullshit enabled, then cranks the text size down.
The last laptop I purchased (not for my own use, fuck laptops) has a Samsung SSD in it and it makes an awful whine when under load. This can be heard from across the room. Thankfully, its so fast that it's rarely under load. (Originally the laptop had a Toshiba SSD that had this issue, but to a lesser extent. I had to get it replaced because one of the USB 3 ports was shorted out.)
Plenty of people have similar complaints the newer SSDs and complaints about coil whine have existed for ages.
When I'm on my phone I don't want the dozen or so images of "look what [celebrity] looks like now, you won't believe it!" ads to waste my data allowance.
Or won't be blocked by anything if they're hosted by the site you're visiting. Like what quite a few news websites are doing now on their mobile optimised pages.
What about moron /. commenters who confuse "progressive jpeg" with "preogresive mpeg"?
Plenty of people have similar complaints the newer SSDs and complaints about coil whine have existed for ages.
Yes! It's good seeing I'm not the only one. For other /.ers who think we're crazy, I think there are two things in play
0) Somewhat healthy hearing and not having reached the 40's.
1) SSD noise. Work refreshed the HDD laptop with an new SSD system from the same maker (Dell's Elitebook) around 18 months ago. I'm surprised I stopped noticing it a few months after resigning to my fate. It took me about 5 months of hearing the coil whine from up to 6 feet away whenever the drive is spinning up.
2) Scrolling whine. It sounds like a mix between white noise from radio stations and the SSD noises. It doesn't affect every brand of PC I've used, and it's only been present when using headphones as I scroll. I've experienced it on PCs as far back as a 386. Most recently on a Pentium 4, IIRC. It rarely comes out thru the speakers, if at all, so I'll second tepples in the issue being leaking from shoddy electronics.
Touche!
But the point Still stands.
*** Suerte a todos y Feliz dia!
Why would Google want to block ads that are not from Doubleclick? Oh, wait. They are not doing it for our good, they are doing it for their good and by accident it is also for our good.
Just because they are the enemy of our enemy does not them our friends.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Hearing sounds from the computer that are related to display activity is common; I have experienced it on both laptop and desktop computers. It's not that you're hearing the displayed electrons directly. The actual cause is crosstalk between the wires that carry the video signal and the ones that carry audio to your speakers or headphones.
One way to eliminate the problem is to move audio D/A conversion out of the computer. Listen through a USB headset or speakers, or use an external audio interface.
SSDs don't contain coils or switching power supplies. But the motherboards and PSUs that provide power to them do, and they are a possible source of coil whine. Display noises can come from the switching power supply in the monitor as well as the one in the computer.
Another common source of noise is crosstalk between the audio circuits in the computer and other signals that are present. You won't hear that kind of noise if you don't have any speakers or headphones connected, and it will usually go away if you switch to a USB headset or an external audio interface.
Google, Yellow pages et al, are meant to be a listing of results matching a search term
A list of domains to exclude from results could be construed as "a search term", as the same functionality is available with -site: terms. My practical problems are that 1. entering a long list of -site: terms every time is tedious, and 2. Google Search caps the number of -site: terms in one query. My ideological problem is the intent inherent in the fact that Google Search used to let a logged-in user store what amounts to a list of -site: terms to apply to all queries but has since removed this feature.
you'd have to consent to Google tracking you to figure out what particular things a website does that you don't like.
I'd let Google track my use of Search to save my domain blacklist, but not my visits to third-party sites operated by companies not part of Alphabet.