Chrome's front and back button performance needs improvement in 2020

Google is working on a new cache for its Chrome browser to improve the performance of operations back and forth on the desktop and on the mobile.

Called bfcache, a previous / next cache abbreviation, it is designed to cache pages in memory when users access another page, for example. by activating links, entering URLs manually or by other means.

The cache will store a copy of the page left by the user, including JavaScript and the state of the DOM, so that Chrome can load it into memory when the user decides to use the button Previous or Next browser.

This is like putting hibernate pages in memory to re-enable them when the page is reviewed during the session. Chrome will store a finite number of entries in the new cache, in order to avoid too much impact on the browser's memory usage.

Chrome is already caching content so that content is loaded faster than when you first visit a previously unvisited page.

The current implementation requires Chrome to scan and render the page again, and then perform other calculations to display the page again for the user.

Basically, the only thing that really changes when it comes to accessing previously visited pages is that Chrome does not need to establish as many network connections if cached content is available.

This may surprise some, but Chrome is lagging behind Firefox and Safari in this regard. Both web browsers support similar features. Mozilla has also called it bfcache for more than 10 years.

Transfer and transfer operations are an important activity on desktops and mobiles, according to Google. Google's statistics indicate that Chrome desktop users view 10% of pages, compared to 19% for mobile users. Making operations backtracking faster is therefore beneficial for the desktop and mobile user experience.

Google has released two videos demonstrating the difference between the performance of the Previous and Next buttons in current Chrome versions and in prototypes that already use an earlier version of bfcache.

Google Chrome desktop

Google Chrome Mobile

Bfcache speeds up the loading of pages already visited but does not affect the new pages visited in the browser.

Google says the implementation is not trivial, as its engineers will need to make major changes to Chrome's non-rendered process components, the navigation stack, and the processing of page-related tasks. Google notes that there is also a confidentiality to take into account.

Google is targeting a 2020 version of the stable version of Chrome browser on desktop and mobile. The company wants to limit the number of cache entries at the beginning and increase it gradually. One of the reasons is probably that he wants to control the impact of the feature on the use of memory by the browser.

Now You: Do you often go back and forth in your browser?

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