Google Tests 'Never-Slow Mode' for Speedier Browsing (zdnet.com)

At some point in the future, Chrome may gain a new feature, dubbed 'Never-Slow Mode', which would trim heavy web pages to keep browsing fast. From a report: The prototype feature is referenced in a work-in-progress commit for the Chromium open-source project. With Never-Slow Mode enabled, it would "enforce per-interaction budgets designed to keep the main thread clean." The design document for Never-Slow Mode hasn't been made public. However, the feature's owner, Chrome developer Alex Russell, has provided a rough outline of how it would work to speed up web pages with large scripts. "Currently blocks large scripts, sets budgets for certain resource types (script, font, css, images), turns off document.write(), clobbers sync XHR, enables client-hints pervasively, and buffers resources without 'Content-Length' set," wrote Russell.

Comments

Que my mom wondering why the internets broke

[Anonymous Coward]

Fucks sake - this is exactly the reason random web page X stops working.

Here's a hint google: You're fixing the WRONG problem.

The correct problem to apply pressure to:

1) Crap web code, and specfically better educating the people that write it.
2) Javascripts crappy threads.

Your 'never slow mode' should only ever be a debug tool for people making web pages.

Re:Que my mom wondering why the internets broke

[DarkRookie2]

Just look at the code for any site made or redesigned last 5 years.

Re:Que my mom wondering why the internets broke

[Penguinisto]

re. 1. :
No, seriously, no. Why is it up to the browser to accommodate shitty code (outside of gracefully aborting the load and kicking up the appropriate error code - is that what you meant?) I also don't really buy the 'brilliant-code-caught-in-the-trap' argument, either; exploiting ugly standards-sloppy interpreter loopholes to do something awesome is cool, but the true innovation is to do it in a way that doesn't cause the browser to puke whenever the browser makers fix the bug you exploited for that 'innovation' in the first place.

Re:Que my mom wondering why the internets broke

[dinfinity]

You misspelled 'js' there.

PHP is a server-side language, remember?

Re:Que my mom wondering why the internets broke

[swillden]

Your 'never slow mode' should only ever be a debug tool for people making web pages.

I think the idea is that by making "slow mode" pages fail to work well, they'll force programmers to make better web pages. Chrome has had debug tools that provide all this information for ages, and the developers who make use of them can make very snappy sites. But those conscientious and careful developers aren't the problem. It's all the ones who won't do it right until doing it wrong results in user complaints that you need to reach.

(Disclaimer: I work for Google but don't know anything about this beyond what I read in the summary. I didn't even RTFA.)

Re:Que my mom wondering why the internets broke

[Dynedain]

The correct problem to apply pressure to:

1) Crap web code, and specfically better educating the people that write it.
2) Javascripts crappy threads.

That's exactly what they're doing. If your site craps out under this mode, you'll be pressured to fix it.

Sounds like effective ad blocking is the answer

[OffTheLip]

Web pages load okay without all of the crap added to them.

How about tracking?

[Anonymous Coward]

i would turn off the tracking and monitoring and everything would be much faster!

That's easy

[Opportunist]

Dump all the ads and it's gonna be blazingly fast.

Re:Go back to older HTML.

[tepples]

So where would that leave web applications that have a legitimate use for "all this HTML5 crap"? As I understand your suggestion, they'd have to become native applications, which means they might not be made available at all for minority operating systems or CPU architectures.

Never slow typing on android

[HalAtWork]

How about they work on a 'never slow typing' mode for Android. How does everyone get this so wrong? Doesn't matter the phone, there's always a point where the text stops popping up as you're typing and then a ton of random characters barf out at once, cursor position getting switched around as you type, it's maddening.

Human nature

[sjbe]

1) Crap web code, and specfically better educating the people that write it.

Good luck with that. Exactly how do you plan to reach all these millions of developers writing "crap" code and forcibly educate them? Sometimes forced constraints are not such a bad thing.

Your 'never slow mode' should only ever be a debug tool for people making web pages.

Yeah, have you met people? Because NOBODY I know would stay in their lane on that, myself included.

Easy get rid of google analytics

[Perl-Pusher]

In my experience, the slowest loading pages all have the same browser status: "waiting on google analytics"! They should start there!

Re:Go back to older HTML.

[Fly Swatter]

It would leave them where they belong - not in a web browser.

How about less obese webpages?

[Rick Schumann]

I have a better solution: how about we 'trim the fat' from the pages' sources themselves, instead of having these bloated monstrosities in the first place? I use NoScript and whitelist only a few domains, so for many sites I manually temporarily 'trust' only the domains I know are safe and don't collect data. When some website won't even load basic text without enabling Javascript, and when the NoScript list of domains that page 'needs' grows to the point where it's practically going to scroll off the bottom of the monitor, then I say there's something seriously wrong with the way webpages are created these days.