Google has been working with Adobe Flash to ensure a power-efficient Internet browsing experience without sacrificing the important and interactive content of a Web page.
Tommy Li, a power conservationist and software engineer from Google, posted on a blog on Google Chrome about a way of improving battery life on one's laptop through an update to Google's Chrome Web browser, which provides intelligent pausing of content such as Flash animations that are not central to the web page, while the main content like a video would play without interruption. Just in case Chrome has paused the animation that the user is interested, one could just click the content to resume play.
The feature is already enabled by default on the latest beta releases of Chrome, as of June 4, and will be probably hit the Chrome stable channel as early as September. Google claims this significant update reduces power consumption and will allow users to surf the Internet longer before plugging in to charge one's laptop. No actual figures were posted in the blog, but some have testified that an extra hour or so of battery life has been extended on their laptop.
For other Chrome users, feel free to test it. Click the three short horizontal lines at the upper right corner of the browser to access Chrome's menu, then choose Settings, click "Show advanced settings" at the bottom part, and then scroll down to the "Privacy" section, and click the "Content settings" box. Scroll down a bit to the Plugins section, change the radio button from "Run all plugin content (recommended)" to "Detect and run important plugin content."
Google promises more power improvement tools in the coming months. At first it may appear this is a bad business move for the company, given that the major percentage of its revenue relies on ads, and most commercial ads are still created and displayed in Flash. However, this useful update is part of the company's broader effort encouraging advertisers to switch from using Flash ads to the Google-preferred HTML5.
Last February, Google started to convert Adobe Flash ads to HTML5, which allows advertisers to display their ads on the Google Display Network even without a browser that supports Flash content. Currently, advertisers are encouraged to upload their ads through AdWords Editor, AdWords, or any third-party tool that supports Google's ad platform. Eventually most ads in Google will be made in HTML5, just like YouTube replaced Flash for HTML5 by default.
Photo: David Martyn Hunt | Flickr
