14 DAY TRIAL // Web apps are constantly becoming more complex and, though there is an effort from most developers to make them lighter and from browser makers to render them faster, they still end up eating up quite a bit of resources. And with most people having more and more tabs opened at the same time, this adds up. Any modern PC is more than able to handle even the heaviest users but netbooks are another matter. Google has thought of this, especially with its great interest in the netbook market with its upcoming Chrome OS, and is working on introducing a feature dubbed 'phantom tabs' in Google Chrome.
Despite their ghoulish name, phantom tabs can prove quite useful in a number of occasions. About the time Chrome OS was revealed to the public, Google Chrome and Chromium got Pinned Tabs, a feature, which enables users to save some space by 'pinning' the apps they used more frequently. Activating the feature on any tab would move it to the left of the queue and also remove its name leaving only its favicon.
Phantom Tabs take this one step further. When the feature is enabled, users can close any pinned tab, to save up memory and CPU cycles, but the tab itself will enter an afterlife of sorts as its favicon will remain in place as sign of its past existence. This will then act as a shortcut to the web page, enabling users to access it with one click, but the processing thread for that page will be shut down. In a way, the tab becomes a bookmark of sorts but easier to get to than the regular bookmark toolbar hidden in the default Chrome configuration.
Phantom Tabs are only available in the latest Chromium nightly builds and they aren't enabled by default. As with most experimental features in the web browser, it has to be enabled by launching it with the -enable-phantom-tabs command-line switch. The feature doesn't seem to be working on the latest Linux Chromium builds. [via DownloadSquad]