5 ms·

We used to do this in Chrome in our pre-release days. It was annoying to use so we turned it off. The downside is that our session restore startup time could de

We used to do this in Chrome in our pre-release days. It was annoying to use so we turned it off. The downside is that our session restore startup time could definitely be better for large numbers of tabs. We could do a better job of prioritizing loads. The right balance is doing the right thing for the user without exposing an implementation detail IMO.

illumen 14y ago
Interesting. Putting in the work to just improve the speed is the hard fix usually. But I guess firefox and chrome are fairly optimized for loading already. However, some good heuristics might help. Things like number of tabs, most common tabs used, active tab, time to load and responsiveness(frame rate, latency etc) would be good indicators. I'm not sure how good hard coding stuff in like number of tabs would be. Whilst just loading up to 8 tabs would probably work, these numbers seem to change over time. Like the oldIE 4 connections limit for example. But! With frequent automatic updates, this value could be tweaked later if needed. Cpu, and IO could be set based on the indicators as well.
malnourish 14y ago
Why not something like: If *n* tabs >= x Load tabs on demand Else Load tabs in background x can be set by default at some arbitrary number and also be changed.
- r00fus 14y ago
  Problem is, X will change based on a bunch of factors - type of browsing, screen real-estate, etc. If that isn't taken into account, it could result in what the user perceives to be a jarring interface shift. We could use much more subtle algorithms - what about loading visible page, then queuing up X background tabs to concurrently load (based tab order)? What about a logarithmic backoff (ie, load up visible and several background pages, then slowly load others)? Fact is, user-time is valuable, compute time (and for most users) bandwidth is not. What's valuable should be prioritized.
Erunno 14y ago
The problem with Chrome not having such an option is not just limited to startup time when restoring a session. Having too many open tabs causes the resource consumption to go through the roof (especially RAM and CPU cycles). I can easily have several hundreds of tabs in Firefox (in combination with tab groups) because I usually use different small subsets of tabs during my sessions so the resource usage is quite manageable. I've said it times and again: Chrome is optimized for a single use case (i.e. few tab users) at which it excels but tends to break down quickly once you leave its comfort zone, unless you have a fairly powerful system. Maybe the project leader nudge, nudge could divert some resources to make Chrome scale better. ;-)

illumen 14y ago

Interesting. Putting in the work to just improve the speed is the hard fix usually. But I guess firefox and chrome are fairly optimized for loading already. However, some good heuristics might help. Things like number of tabs, most common tabs used, active tab, time to load and responsiveness(frame rate, latency etc) would be good indicators. I'm not sure how good hard coding stuff in like number of tabs would be. Whilst just loading up to 8 tabs would probably work, these numbers seem to change over time. Like the oldIE 4 connections limit for example. But! With frequent automatic updates, this value could be tweaked later if needed. Cpu, and IO could be set based on the indicators as well.

malnourish 14y ago

Why not something like: If *n* tabs >= x Load tabs on demand Else Load tabs in background x can be set by default at some arbitrary number and also be changed.

r00fus 14y ago
Problem is, X will change based on a bunch of factors - type of browsing, screen real-estate, etc. If that isn't taken into account, it could result in what the user perceives to be a jarring interface shift. We could use much more subtle algorithms - what about loading visible page, then queuing up X background tabs to concurrently load (based tab order)? What about a logarithmic backoff (ie, load up visible and several background pages, then slowly load others)? Fact is, user-time is valuable, compute time (and for most users) bandwidth is not. What's valuable should be prioritized.

Erunno 14y ago

The problem with Chrome not having such an option is not just limited to startup time when restoring a session. Having too many open tabs causes the resource consumption to go through the roof (especially RAM and CPU cycles). I can easily have several hundreds of tabs in Firefox (in combination with tab groups) because I usually use different small subsets of tabs during my sessions so the resource usage is quite manageable. I've said it times and again: Chrome is optimized for a single use case (i.e. few tab users) at which it excels but tends to break down quickly once you leave its comfort zone, unless you have a fairly powerful system. Maybe the project leader nudge, nudge could divert some resources to make Chrome scale better. ;-)