14 DAY TRIAL // Google Chrome is often touted as extremely fast by end users, and the Mountain View-based search giant has certainly stressed a strong focus on performance since the initial release.
The work needed to speed up Chrome even more continues even as the open source browser reached version 13, which is now available to early adopters worldwide, and is twofold.
Essentially, the search company is not only optimizing the browser for top performance, but is also delivering the tool that web developers require to increase the speed at which their sites load.
Chrome 13.0.772.0, released on the Dev Channel this week, is an illustrative example in this regard.
Available for testing on top of Windows, Mac, Linux, Chrome 13.0.772.0 Dev comes with a few improvements, including a refresh to the JavaScript engine.
In this regard, the work that Google has done to boost JS performance pushed V8 up to version 3.3.8.1.
In addition to the update introduced to V8, the Mountain View-based search giant also reveals that it’s progressing along with efforts related to rel: preload.
While this appears to mean little if not nothing for end users, it’s actually a very important detail which can contribute to improving site loading performance.
By taking advantage of rel: preload, web devs can build sites that prefetch a range of content, speeding up the availability of content to end users.
Various code, including CSS and JavaScript can be preloaded for portions of a site that users have not yet visited, but are most likely to go to next.
Imagine a blog, visitors land on Page 1, but then continue to read through to Page 2, Page 3 and so on and so forth.
With rel: preload, content from subsequent pages can be preloaded while the user is still on the home page, and when moving on, provide a seamless and extremely fast transition, with pages appearing to take no time at all to load, which is somewhat true, since they were already prefetched.
Firefox already supported rel: preload and it seems that it was a good enough idea to be taken on by Google for Chrome.
Additional enhancements in Chrome 13.0.772.0 Dev revolve around Print Preview, and also involve a range of bug fixes which will improve reliability.
Google Chrome for Windows is available for download here.
Google Chrome for Linux is available for download here.
Google Chrome for Mac is available for download here.