Chrome faster thanks to the new bfcache
The Google browser will be completed with a new cache function that will allow a faster and more efficient loading of the pages you have just visited. Here’s how it will work.
A new feature in Google Chrome could speed up browsing the web pages you have just visited, thanks to saving them in full. The browser could store all its contents, including JavaScript statuses, keeping them in the system memory even when you have moved to a new page.
By keeping the web page in its entirety in the RAM memory, the browser can almost instantly load the page previously visited without having the need to download the data from the servers again and without having to rework the various elements. To date, the feature already exists in a prototype way, and two videos of the same (on desktops and smartphones) have been shown on the Google Developers website.
The feature is now known as bfcache, or back/forward cache, and aims to improve the browsing experience, especially on smartphones and tablets. According to data released by Google, browsing to pages previously visited consists of 19% of all mobile browsing experiences, and could offer advantages both in terms of performance and in terms of efficiency and bandwidth consumption when you’re out and about.
However, this is a feature already present on other browsers, such as Safari and Firefox to name a few, but Google points out that in its implementation there are some differences that allow Chrome to exploit the bfcache on a more consistent number of sites than competing software. It is clear that with bfcache the additional performance will come with an extra sacrifice in terms of RAM consumption.
It must be said, that Chrome will not see the new feature for a long time yet, at least in the stable release channels: according to the company’s current plans the bfcache will arrive on Chrome not before 2020. Google is trying to improve performance of his browser and, in addition to the features already implemented, has several projects in the pipeline: for example: the Never-Slow Mode of which we had spoken previously, or lazy loading.
To these will be added the bfcache, oriented above all to ultra-portable devices. The test phase will be accelerated in the coming months of 2019, and in this period, the web developers will have the possibility to optimize their web pages so that they are compatible both with the implementation of Chrome and with that of the other solutions on the market.
