Chrome browser developers have been quite active and during the last days and have released various changes and of those announced one of them is the lazy loading tools extension for web page elements, which allows not to load content that is outside the visible area until the user scrolls the page to the place immediately before the element.
Previously in Chrome this mode was already implemented for images, but now the Chrome developers have gone one step further and they have added the ability to lazy load iframes.
To control lazy loading pages in the "iframe" tag, the "loading" attribute was added, which can be set to "deferred" (postpone download), "eager" (download at once) and "automatic" ( to delay loading at the browser's discretion, when you turn on Lite mode).
Lazy loading is expected to reduce memory consumption, reduce traffic and increase the speed at which pages initially open. For example, when the new mode is enabled, the blocks with Twitter, Facebook and YouTube ads and widgets will stop loading immediately, if they are not visible to the user, until the user scrolls the page to a position in front of these blocks.
According to the developers, on average lazy loading will save 2-3% of traffic, it will reduce the number of initial renders by 1-2% and reduce the delay before input availability by 2%.
For specific sites, the changes are more noticeable. For example, enabling lazy loading of the YouTube block will reduce the downloaded data by approximately 500 KB, Instagram - by 100 KB, Spotify - 500 KB, Facebook - 400 KB.
In particular, the use of lazy loading of youtube blocks on Chrome.com allowed mobile devices to reduce the waiting time for page availability to initiate interaction by up to 10 seconds and the size of the JavaScript code initially loaded in 511 KB.
Another change that has been added to the browser's code base and that will be generally visible in Chrome from version 86 is the function of disable autocomplete for forms input on loaded pages over HTTPS but sending data over HTTP.
This was implemented because autocomplete authentication forms on pages opened via HTTP have been disabled in Chrome and Firefox for a long time, but until now, opening a page with a form via HTTPS or HTTP served as a sign disconnect, now encryption will also be taken into account when submitting data to the forms controller. Additionally, a new warning has been added to Chrome to inform the user to send full data through an unencrypted communication channel.
Today this feature can be enabled in Canary versions in "chrome: // flags # mixed-forms-disable-autofill".
Also another change what to expect for Chrome 86 is the elimination of experimental indicator, which allows you to display an item in the context menu to display the full URL in the address bar.
The element "Always show full URL" will be available in the context menu by default, no need to change settings on the about: flags page. The full URL can also be viewed by double clicking on the address bar.
Remember that in Chrome 69, Google conducted an experiment to hide "https: //", "http: //" and "www" in the address bar. The first attempt failed and the concealment was canceled. Subsequent experiments continued and in Chrome 76, by default, the address started to display without the www protocol and subdomain, and in Chrome 79 the setting was removed to return the old behavior.
After user dissatisfaction, a new experimental flag was added in Chrome 86, adding an item to the context menu to disable hiding and show the full URL in all conditions.