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.

Comments

Sigh

[JMJimmy]

Taking control and functionality away from the web developer because browser developers think they know what's best for everyone.

Re:Sigh

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realize that this is how the web is supposed to be, right? Web developer develops a page, the browser determines how to render the page. This is exactly how things are supposed to be.

Re:Sigh

[Anonymous Coward]

You keep talking but keep ignoring the fundamental underlying philosophy of how the web was developed.... it is when fucktard developers insist on overriding the browser that problems happen. There is no requirement for a webpage to render for the entire page if it is not visible. Please stop making stuff up, admit you don't understand, educate yourself and then comment.

Re:Sigh

[viperidaenz]

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.

There is no HTML standard that says a browser needs to render the entire page. In fact there a provisions for displaying content before the entire page is even retrieved.
eg: The table element was designed so a browser could start rendering it before the element was retrieved.

Re:Sigh

[Anonymous Coward]

Just to elaborate a bit more as you are apparently slow, the first freaking sentence of your link says "*User agents are not required to present HTML documents in any particular way. ".

This is an important part of the way the web is supposed to work. You see way back n the day, the founders of the web understood that people would be viewing the web on different hardware, and in the future it would be viewed differently. Some folks might be sight imparted and be using readers. Some would not be able to support graphics, some may be limited in other ways. HTML was the language sent to the browser and the browser would be responsible for HOW to display it.

Yes, we now support CSS and with the introduction of CSS3, the server is able to suggest (note, not control) how a page is laid out. If a browser chooses to ignore one of the W3C's suggestions, it is free to. Really, this is by design. It is not a flaw. So if your browser chooses to render images that aren't displayed immediately, it is free to. If it chooses to not render them, that is also fine.

Web developers really need to understand this. It is one of the underlying tenets of the web and it really, really makes me sad when folks who make their living doing this stuff just don't get it.

Re:Will scrolling remain smooth?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, it will remain perfectly smooth for people who don't use Chrome

Re:Will scrolling remain smooth?

[jellomizer]

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.

It'll be Awful

[Okian Warrior]

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?

Re:Will scrolling remain smooth?

[DontBeAMoran]

Damn, is your father a dog or something?

Re:Are you high?

[JMJimmy]

I located the specification and this is not exactly being implemented as an HTML attribute. It's being implemented by default and for iframes it has an attribute to turn it off. That attribute does not exist for images.

If they made it the opposite so that you need to specify you want an image/iframe lazyloaded - I'd have no problem with that. The developer is given a new tool to optimize but isn't forced into anything.

Also, it breaks the 5.2 rendering standards