Chrome may be one of the most loved Internet browsers, but it can still be a little frustrating to use at times, largely because of how much processing power and battery it uses.
These issues seem to be especially rampant on Apple computers. Google, however, is well aware of the issues and Chrome engineer Peter Kasting recently took to Google+ to explain what the company will do to remedy the situation.
The most significant changes will alter how Chrome renders pages, prioritizing foreground tabs rather than background tabs, which will greatly relieve the strain on processing.
"Before: Renderers for background tabs had the same priority as for foreground tabs.
Now: Renderers for background tabs get a lower priority, reducing idle wakeups on various perf test, in some cases by significant amounts (e.g. 50% on one test)," said Kasting in his post.
Chrome will also now be taking up around the same level of processing power as Safari. While previously Chrome would take up around 0.3 percent of processing power for a certain activity, it will now take up 0.1 percent, which is on par with Safari.
Of course, dropping from 0.3 percent to 0.1 percent is small for one single activity, but when all of the activities that a browser is put through are put together, the processing power can quickly add up.
It's also important to mention that Google will likely never be able to achieve the same efficiency with Chrome on a Mac as Apple does with Safari. Apple has complete control over the hardware and software elements of its computers, enabling it to better get the two working together extremely efficiently.
The news comes shortly after Google announced that it would be significantly lowering how much battery power Chrome takes up by limiting how often Adobe Flash can run in Chrome. To do this, it will essentially pause Flash when running Flash is not central to how the web page is rendered. Of course, this may have an effect on how many ads run, but Google is offering tools for advertisers to convert their ads from Flash to HTML 5, which is far more efficient.
The new updates will be released to the Chrome beta channel in around a month, so will likely be released to the consumer version of Chrome in the next few months. While many may have stopped using Chrome because of its power consumption, it may be time to take another look at the browser.
