covering the week's top textbooks like
Linux bias the latest experimental
addition to the Chrome browser promises
to save a ton of power usage a new flag
in the canary version of chrome called
throttle javascript timers in background
will cut down on the processing that
normally happens in background tabs and
it could add two hours to a laptop's
runtime JavaScript's timers often track
user interaction with a web page
checking things like the scroll position
and add interaction while the tab is
open this also happens on background
tabs which really isn't useful since by
definition a background tab isn't being
interacted with when you have a bunch of
tabs open these timers can chew through
a good amount of battery for no reason
normally background tabs can trigger a
wake-up once per second now in canary if
you turn on the new throttle JavaScript
timer setting any tab that is being in
the background for more than five
minutes we'll have these timers disabled
with wake-ups limited to once per minute
Google Ransom - sorry Google ran some
tests to see what kind of impact this
would have on battery life for the first
test they used a 20-18 15-inch MacBook
Pro and loaded up 36 background tabs
with a blank foreground tab then let the
laptop run until it died but the feature
turned on the laptop lasted two hours
longer or 28% longer than the default
settings that's a huge improvement and
it still can't get croup but it still
can't get chrome up to the level of
Apple's Safari which bested Chrome by
three hours with the default settings
and by one hour with the new throttling
flag the first test showed just how much
power can be sucked up by background
tabs but the next test was more of a
real-world use case it swapped out of
the blank foreground tab for a YouTube
video with an actual foreground task
going on the difference was less
dramatic but still significant without
throttling tabs chrome lasted four point
seven hours and with throttling it got
an extra thirty nine minutes lasting 5.3
hours
safari was not included in the second
test while these are promising results
Google says they are still investigating
how limiting background timers will
affect web pages while Google says that
the work done from these JavaScript
timers was often not valuable to the
user when the page was in the background
they also don't want to break web pages
which provide valuable background
services like incoming chat and video
messages media playback and
notifications
after a 50% roll out on the canary
version google plans to gather feedback
from web developers before the change
hits the wider chrome user base you know
that's an interesting story because for
my wife and I were both Chrome users we
often have a ton of tabs open I mean if
I'm doing you know research for work or
she's doing you know different things at
home or we're helping the kids with
school between their schoolwork and and
the research that they're doing and the
the work that they're working on on
their Google Docs we could at any point
have a couple dozen tabs open and I mean
the with Mike with our family computer
we've got the dual monitors and it's not
uncommon for me to have a browser off to
the one screen with two dozen tabs and
then my main screen where I've got a
couple of main tabs and so to have an
ANA grant it's not a laptop but to have
that power saving is huge because not
only is it less power on the computer
that's being used but over time you
could see some savings and you're sure
you know you mentioned it's not a laptop
and and one of the things that Beckett
didn't touch on Jeff was performance
yeah and I do think about how even on
our desktop computer at home my youngest
will have that same scenario 20 tabs
open and then he'll switch user oh right
so which is great because Linux Mint
allows us to have multiple people logged
in at once but now we've got somebody
else logging in and double tops yeah so
his Java JavaScript timers are still
going off in his browser on his profile
yes so I wonder how it would affect
performance as well yeah I I'm very
interested to see I mean I I know it's a
small change yeah going from one second
to the one-minute but I'm really looking
forward to see the impact because I do
think it's gonna be it will have that
you know performance power but and
especially for older devices like if you
if you've got an older laptop that's
always struggling I mean not just
battery saving but if it does improve
some of that background performance you
know that could breathe you know a
little bit of extra life into those
devices besides I think it's a great
great idea a great feature yeah
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