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Microsoft Edge recently posted on their blog that they were experimenting with an idea to reduce website lag by fixing third-party embedded web content and speeding all-round performance. Seeking developer reviews, they noted that entire browsers could be slowed down by websites that had third-party elements like YouTube videos, social media posts, and ads. These elements, being foreign to the website, couldn’t be properly optimized by the website, eating up RAM and thus crashing a tab, window, or more.
The proposal
They proposed fixing the situation automatically by adding a browser feature that limits the performance of the embedded content, like an automatic preset RAM limiter. Usually, fixing the issue requires site owners to tame the embedded object either by removing it or working with the content provider to fix it. The feature is proposed to offer several ways for websites and web applications to manage resource-intensive embedded content. The “basic” setting will restrict large assets, such as oversized images and web fonts, while also notifying site owners about uncompressed resources. The “early-script” and “script” settings will curb specific animations and JavaScript functions that consume excessive bandwidth and processing power. Lastly, the “globals” setting will impose limits on overall CPU usage and frame rates, ensuring smoother performance without overloading system resources.
Also, they proposed to report embedded content that violated the document policy to site owners and third parties alike for proper mitigation. These, they said, are aimed at “making it possible for you to control the performance impact of the content you embed and make it easy to do so without having to determine exactly the individual constraints that are needed.” Secondly, “And to make it possible for you to know when performance violations occur so that you can understand when the user experience is negatively impacted by embedded content and improve the experience.”
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Although the idea is still just a proposal in experimentation, it could grow into a standard if accepted by web developers and other companies building web browsers (such as Google and Apple). On paper, it seems like a fascinating idea that could improve performance on websites that need to use embedded content and keep browsers from crashing due to one embedded element or the other.