Many of my colleagues at Android Police don’t use Chrome as their default, but most people, including myself, use it as their primary web browser.
It’s nowhere near a perfect web browser, but I still use it as my default for its handy browsing tools and itsdeep integration with the wider Google ecosystem.
The other reason I haven’t left Chrome is the continuous improvement through new features and changes Google has pushed over the years. Then there are those I desperately wanted to test on Chrome, but Google had other plans.
Of all those, I felt the strongest pull towards a prototype feature that Google was working on for Chrome in 2019. I was excited to try it because of its uncompromising attitude toward speed.
The feature was called “Never-Slow Mode.” I consider it one of the radical changes Google has ever proposed for Chrome, and I wish Google had shipped it.
What’s Chrome’s Never-Slow Mode, anyway?
It would’ve reshaped the web
The only software engineer I know is one of my friends, and he once paraphrased a line from French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry that has stuck with me ever since.
It goes something like this: Perfection isn’t when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
The core meaning of this line, as my friend explained, is that perfection doesn’t come from endlessly adding features; instead, it comes from removing unnecessary things.
The more I think about this line, the more I think about how web apps have become heavier to load over the years without delivering a meaningful upgrade in user experience.
Google’s Never-Slow Mode was a great attempt to fix this problem. Engineers at the Mountain View tech giant conceptualized a version of Chrome that would never slow down in any circumstances, unless the internet doesn’t work properly.
In a Chromium Gerrit change in 2019, Google proposed adding what it called “–enable-features=NeverSlowMode” to “enforce per-interaction budgets” on websites. It had proposed some radical ideas to achieve this.
If it had shipped, it would’ve blocked large scripts and assets like fonts and images based on size. If the page exceeded the budgets, the Never-Slow Mode would’ve triggered and blocked everything that’s over the predefined limit to keep Chrome responsive and fast.
The company proposed the following limits:
- Per-image max size: 1MiB
- Total image budget: 2MiB
- Per-stylesheet max size: 100KiB
- Total stylesheet budget: 200KiB
- Per-script max size: 50KiB
- Total script budget: 500KiB
- Per-font max size: 100KiB
- Total font budget: 100KiB
- Total connection limit: 10
- Long-task limit: 200ms
This was a bold move, and people were divided over this. I remember the proposal got serious criticism, even from those who wanted Chrome to load web pages faster.
The criticisms were legit because, looking at the details, it was evident that it might break content when implemented. I had voiced similar concerns, but I still wanted Google to push this as a feature for the greater good.
Why I wanted Google to roll out Never-Slow Mode in Chrome despite the risk
The Never-Slow Mode had a major issue, but I still wanted it
I’m not a web-development expert, but I know it when a website feels unnecessarily slow. Anyone can spot it if they pay enough attention.
I understand when a complex web page needs to do it, but why does a web page, whose purpose is to show text-based information, often use plenty of resources when it doesn’t add any value?
This was a problem when Never-Slow Mode was being worked on, and it’s still a problem now. I love stylish websites, but that shouldn’t come at the expense of performance, especially when a simple approach would be fine.
The Never-Slow Mode would have drawn a red line that no website would have dared to cross if implemented well. I would love to believe that it would’ve encouraged developers to think before they make a page unnecessarily complicated.
Even if it felt too bold to implement, Google should’ve at least given us a flag to enable the feature for those who want it. I want to punish the culprits by refusing to visit their sites again when I see that half of the things on a website don’t load.
I still wish I had a Never-Slow Mode flag in Chrome
I agree with anyone who says the Never-Slow Mode was an extreme idea, but an extreme problem calls for an extreme response.
I still believe Google will revive the idea in some form in the future, because the urgency is even more severe than it was in 2019.
However, it makes sense for the company to push those limits slightly higher because the web has evolved since then. If Google revives it, it should revise the limits from time to time so they don’t feel outdated.
I can’t wait to use this trick to make Chrome faster.
