Chrome 14 preloads/renders pages based on URL suggestions

I thought I'd share what I personally think is a pretty cool function of Chrome.

Enabled in about:flags for Chrome Canary is

Basically, if you type in "wild" and Chrome autofilles/suggestions "wilderssecurity.com" it starts loading "wilderssecurity.com" before you hit enter.

It's an interesting feature. On the one hand if it's wrong that's an extra page you've just downloaded. On the other, it's virtually instant web browsing.

 

I'd say it's a waste of bandwidth and other resources just like link prefetching.

 

got to go with JL on this one.

it's wasted bandwidth/energy that is required to load a wrong page.
i wonder how many tons of CO2 per year this requires...

 

CO2?

I doubt very much... it'll be a total of like... 3 page requests more at most (in my experience) lol just like DNS prefetching, which is supported by all browsers

what this really does is put the loading time on you while you're typing instead of after you start typing

 

Chrome is basically Google Labs, at least that's how Google seems to treat it. What are the security issues with this anyway? What if you type in "wild" and it doesn't preload wilderssecurity, but something else? And there's a difference between prefetching the DNS of all links of a page, and actually loading the sites themselves.

Beyond all that, I have to ask if the web is in such bad condition, or if we're all waiting for an asteroid to hit us, that we need stupid little toys like this. I mean seriously, is everyone in that much of a hurry that they can't type in an address or click a freaking bookmark link? This isn't "cool", it isn't "handy", it's just yet another little "feature" that can be inserted into the next review or as a bullet point on a features list to ooh and awe the sheep.

It still remains a fact to this day that speed is dependent on website response and your connection speed. If a website is being slow, all the pre-rendering isn't going to help. If you're on dial up, you're still gonna crawl.

 

It won't have any security issues that I can see.

You should look up RTT and SPDY. And, prerendering is basically meant to target slow connections by putting the loading time at a more convenient point.

I won't even respond to the middle paragraph, which is literally bashing a feature because you don't "need" speed. I don't even get that lmao

 

I appreciate you not responding to that part if all you got out of it was "we don't need speed". I did read up on SPDY and such, and, while perfectly fine and looks good, we're not there yet. Pre-rendering may help speed up loading, but if the website is having issues/running slow, or your connection is having issues..pre-rendering isn't going to fix it, whether you want to believe that or not.

Again, thank you for not replying to something you didn't understand, it's more than a lot around here do.

 

Too right mate!

*Does sheep impression* ~ "Baa..aaa"

 

I guess it comes down to "accurateness". From my experience on Google search, "preloading" can be confusing when the suggestions are not accurate.