Developers: Google Chrome gets faster and new tab, PDF, and URL sharing features

mardi 25 août 2020

Google Chrome gets faster and new tab, PDF, and URL sharing features

Google on Tuesday said Chrome will be faster thanks to Profile Guided Optimization (PGO) and tab throttling. In addition, Google is adding a few productivity tweaks that make tabs easier to manage, URLs easier to share, and PDFs easier to fill out.

With Profile Guided Optimization, which is now in Chrome 85 on Mac and Windows, Google says tabs will load up to 10% faster at the median, with even greater performance improvements when your PC’s CPU is loaded with many tabs or other programs. It’s a compiler optimization technique wherein the most performance-critical parts of the code can run faster.

In addition, Google Chrome is introducing tab throttling in beta. The feature works by giving more resources to the tabs you’re using, rather than distributing resources equally. “We see improvements not only in loading speed but also battery and memory savings,” said Max Christoff, Engineering Director, Chrome.

Google also detailed the browser’s new tab grouping feature, which the company previously rolled out to PCs in beta and to Chrome OS 83. The feature allows users to distinguish tabs by topic, task, or priority. And when tabs are in groups, they can be collapsed and expanded for a cleaner, more organized workspace. According to Google, this was one of Chrome’s most requested features.

Google also said tab previews are coming to Chrome in beta. The feature will allow users to hover over a tab and quickly see a thumbnail preview. The feature will come in handy in situations when you have a lot of tabs open from the same website or service.

Additionally, Chrome is adding the ability to share a web page via a QR code on Android, touch-friendly tabs for tablets (shown below), suggestions for switching to an already-open tab on Android, and the ability to fill out PDFs before downloading them.