Chrome’s latest updates optimize browser speed for high-end Android devices

Google just announced an update to Chrome that looks to prioritize speed on higher-end Android devices, rather than app install size. This separate version of the browser will use “compiler flags tuned for speed rather than binary size”. According to Google, Android handsets running this will run the Speedometer 2.1 benchmark up to 30% faster!

Additionally, the Chrome dev team learned to target optimizations for specific JavaScript functions as well as other HTML parsing methods to update the DOM via JavaScript. A browser’s ‘DOM’ is the ‘Document Object Model’, or a programming interface for web documents. It represents the page so that programs can change its structure, style, and content. It’s displayed as nodes and objects so that JavaScript can interact with it.

To better explain what a DOM is, imagine a website as a house with different rooms, furniture, and decorations. The DOM is like a blueprint that shows the structure of the house and everything inside it. Just like a blueprint shows how different rooms and objects are connected and organized, the DOM shows how different elements of a website are connected and organized.

Programs can use the DOM to make changes to the website just like a homeowner can use a blueprint to make changes to their house. For example, a program can add or remove an element, change the color of a button, or update the text of a paragraph. In the same way, a homeowner can add or remove a wall, change the color of a room, or update the furniture to create a new look and feel. In English, the Chrome team found a way to better interact more efficiently with that blueprint, which translates to a better browsing experience, with faster page loads and smoother performance for you!

Because Google tends to use Apple’s WebKit Speedometer for benchmark testing because it’s the most accurate to how users interact with the browser from day to day. Lastly, Chrome for Mac devices is seeing a 10% Speedometer 2.1 bump over the last three months, which sounds pretty significant!

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