When apps are widely used by internet users around the world, developers need to be very careful with the changes and new features that they add to it. We’ve seen mishaps where software updates can sometimes brick devices which results in hundred if not thousands of users ending up being rather inconvenienced.Google almost made such a blunder with Chrome 56 which was released last week. In a post by web developer Samuel Reed (via Gizmodo), it seems that Google had toyed with the idea of throttling background tabs when not in use. The idea behind the feature was to give each tab a “budget” and when tabs exceed that background, activity would be throttled. This was to help with performance as well as conserving battery for laptop use.
However as Reed puts it, “This is generally a Good Thing. Browser vendors should be concerned about battery life, and this will do a lot to help. Unfortunately, this implementation is ignoring the new reality: the browser is no longer just a reading device; it is the world’s largest application platform. This will break the web.”
The good news is that Google realized that this would be a problem before Chrome 56 was released to the masses, and have since released a statement which reads, “Unfortunately, our current implementation throttles WebSockets. Because of this we ARE NOT SHIPPING this intervention in M56. The current plan is to disable time-budget background timer throttling for the pages with active connection (websocket, webrtc and server-sent events) and to ship in M57 (subject to further feedback).”