I used to be a heavy Chrome user. An addict and a loyalist. That changed a month ago when I decided enough was enough. I hardly have any hair on my head but I was always getting to the point where I could pull my imaginary long hair wig. That was thanks to the woes I faced as a Chrome user. I still use the browser on my smartphones. It’s the default browser and I prefer it over others but I will only reconsider bringing it back to my laptop when Google finally finishes testing the new features aimed at making users not pull their hair.
Google is partnering with Adobe to help Chrome browser users get extended battery life. It is no secret that besides being a RAM hog, Chrome does not go slow on a machine’s battery. About the RAM hogging, there’s some deep dive-in somewhere else. Chrome is not just a browser. It is now a platform and with such growth, fat comes with it. To many, Chrome is no longer that lean and mean efficient browser that took the world by storm. It’s gained a lot of weight. Woe unto you if you have several plugins and load lots of pages with flash content. Just a few tabs and you’re ready to burn your hair. Thankfully that may be coming to an end soon.
When you’re on a webpage that runs Flash, we’ll intelligently pause content (like Flash animations) that aren’t central to the webpage, while keeping central content (like a video) playing without interruption. If we accidentally pause something you were interested in, you can just click it to resume playback. This update significantly reduces power consumption, allowing you to surf the web longer before having to hunt for a power outlet. – Google
We all want to jump to the bit where we can have that immediately on our machines, right? Well, you can have it now if you’re on the Chrome beta channel. If you prefer more stable releases and aren’t the adventurous type, you’ll need to wait a bit longer as Chrome’s engineering teams harmonize things and the early adopters help them identify bugs before it is ready for seeding to every one of the over a billion users of the browser (number includes mobile users who account for 14.3% of overall traffic). Or you can tinker with the browser settings and turn a few plugins off.
Some concern though, and this should get advertisers pulling out their hair, what happens to the ads that run on flash when users disable it or have flash content automatically disabled by the browser?
Chrome is the second most popular web browser on the planet. According to the latest data from Net Applications, it has a 26.37% of the marketshare playing second fiddle to the venerable Internet Explorer which Microsoft will be retiring in favour of its new Edge browser which ships with the upcoming Windows 10.
