Go back and back in Google Chrome will be much faster with bfcache

Google Chrome is the most popular web browser in the world, on both mobile and desktop. Over the years, he has been criticized for using more memory than necessary and for being swollen in size and features, but he has also been praised for his speed and ease of use. Now, Google has announced that it is working on a new feature to improve browsing in the web browser, using bfcache (cache backwards).

Google says that a previous / next cache (bfcache) caches entire pages, including the JavaScript segment, when browsing outside a page. This is done so that the full state of the page can be restored when the user goes back. The company gives the analogy to put a page on hold when the user leaves it and read it on his return. This will work during the back navigation as well as during the next navigation to a previous page.

Google notes that this feature will not help you when visiting new websites. That does not mean that it will not be useful, though. According to the company, going back represents 19% of pages viewed on Google Chrome for Android and 10% on Chrome for PC. With bfcache, this navigation will be "extremely fast", according to Google. It's certainly not an easy task to implement, notes the company.

Google notes that Mozilla Firefox and Apple Safari have subtly implemented different technologies. However, Chrome chooses not to use WebKit's implementation of bfcache due to incompatibility with Chrome's multi-process architecture.

Addy Osmani, a technical leader of the Chrome team, said CNET The trickiest part for Chrome is to rewrite parts of the browser to protect privacy and security. Google's web browser must ensure that it blocks the operation of Web-based JavaScript programs, even if they cling to it in memory. He acknowledged that the use of JavaScript on pages that do not exist from the point of view of the user is "a big potential problem in terms of confidentiality" and that, therefore, the company will change the architecture of Chrome to prevent the problem of confidentiality from arising.

The wrong side? bfcache will not be available on Chrome soon. Google hopes to test bfcache in 2019 and integrate it into Chrome by 2020, according to Osmani.

Another constraint is that saving the status of web pages for possible future use consumes memory, which is already one of the major problems faced by Chrome. Mr. Osmani said that Google is still trying to determine the best rules for choosing which pages to keep when to delete them from memory. He also said that this feature could contribute to other situations, such as improving the performance of tabs to be paused when they are in the background, especially on mobile. Such a situation generally leads to memory savings, but also has a major disadvantage, because the pages must be reloaded after their return.

bfcache on Chrome looks promising, but it's still in its infancy. We hope to learn more in the coming months.

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Source: GoogleVia: CNET