Faster page loads await
Most browser updates are pretty ho-hum in nature, the result of rapid release schedules that see frequent upgrades with mostly minor tweaks and feature enhancements to your browser of choice. That wont necessarily be the case with an upcoming Chrome update, one that promises to speed things up by a potentially significant margin.
The update will introduce a new compression algorithm called Brotli. Google first introduced the new algorithm in September with a claim that it can condense webpages up to 26 percent more than Zopfli, Chromes current compression algorithm.
"At Google, we think that internet users’ time is valuable, and that they shouldn’t have to wait long for a web page to load," Google said at the time.
Now its getting ready to forge ahead with Brotli, as revealed by Ilya Grigorik, a Web Performance Engineer at Google, on his Google+ page.
Brotli will also benefit mobile users. Its implementation in Chrome on mobile gadgets will lead to lower data use and battery life. In addition, the performance benefits could trickle over into web apps that are rendered by Chrome.
Chrome users wont be the only ones to benefit. Google made Brotli open source and barring any changes in plan, Mozilla will roll out support in Firefox later this month.
"The best way to make data appear to move faster over the Web is to move less of it and lossless compression has always been a core tenet of good web design... If all goes well in testing, Firefox 44 (ETA January 2016) will negotiate Brotli as a content-encoding for HTTPS resources," Mozilla stated back in September.
If youre anxious to see what Brotli can do, you can enable it in Chrome Canary via chrome://flags#enable-brotli.
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