Even with a super-speedy connection, the web can seem slow to load. Robert Irvine reveals how to beat the delays and get content instantly
Reduce the amount of data used by pages
The less data a web page uses, the faster it loads in your browser, which is why Google’s new Data Saver extension for Chrome (bit.ly/datasaver370) is such a good idea. It compresses content such as photos and design elements without affecting the appearance of pages. The add-on tells you the size of a page before and after compression, often reducing data by over 50 per cent. Sadly, it doesn’t yet work with secure HTTPS or incognito pages, and there’s no word of a Firefox version, but we definitely noticed a small boost in loading times.
Data Saver is also available in the Chrome app for Android. You can turn the feature on and check how much data you’ve saved over the last month by going to Settings, Advanced and tapping Data Saver.
Force websites to use their mobile versions
Many sites perform a ‘user agent’ check when you visit them, which identifies your browser and device so that content can be displayed accordingly. If the site detects that you’re using a phone or tablet, it may load its slimmed-down mobile version, which uses much less data and therefore loads faster. The Chrome and Opera extension User-Agent Switcher (bit.ly/uaschrome370) lets you pretend you’re using an Android, iOS or Windows Phone device instead of a Desktop browser. Just click its toolbar button and select a preset from the drop-down menu. You can also set Chrome or Opera to ‘remember’ the most recently used preset next time you launch the browser, so that you always view the mobile versions of sites. Bear in mind that although the streamlined pages may load faster, certain features may not be available.
For Firefox, there’s an identicallynamed add-on from a different developer (bit.ly/uasfirefox370), which works in the same way and lets you choose from a variety of mobile operating systems and browsers. Here’s how Mail Online looks when you fool the site into thinking you’re using an Android phone. The quality of images is noticeably reduced, but the pages load much faster.
Preload some content before the rest of the page
Most browsers now use ‘prefetching’ to store frequently loaded content from web pages in your browser. This means the page doesn’t need to be completely refreshed each time you visit, so everything will load faster. Browsers can even anticipate which page you’ll open next, based on your browsing history, and preload their prefetched resources (a feature called ‘speculative preconnection’). To turn on this option in Chrome, go to Settings, ‘Show advanced settings’ and, in the Privacy section, select ‘Prefetch resources to load pages more quickly’.
In Firefox, it should be enabled by default but you can check by typing about:config into your address bar and pressing Enter. Search for network.prefetch-next and ensure that its value is set to True (if not, double-click it to change it). Microsoft added prefetching to Internet Explorer in version 11, calling the feature ‘page prediction’.
There are some drawbacks to prefetching resources: for example, if your browser preloads the content, but you don’t ultimately visit the page, it could actually slow you down. Also, having your browser load certain resources automatically could potentially compromise your privacy.
Block hidden trackers before they load
There’s more to most websites than meets the eye, with invisible trackers for ad networks, analytic services and other third-party companies lurking on every page. Because you can’t see them, these trackers slow pages more than you realise, but there are several add-ons you can use to block them. Disconnect (disconnect.me/disconnect) is still one of the best tools for blocking trackers, but it was recently removed from the Chrome Web Store (it’s still available for Firefox, Opera and Safari). Other good options include Blur (formerly DoNoTrackMe, www.abine.com), Ghostery (www.ghostery.com) and our current favourite, Privacy Badger (www.eff.org/privacybadger). This extension works with Chrome and Firefox, and filters a host of spying ads and hidden trackers, while allowing acceptable cookies that are necessary for websites to function. We particularly like its traffic-light colour-coding system, which lets you decide which trackers to block and allow based on the how suspicious their behaviour is.
Tweak Chrome to load pages faster
Some websites (we’re looking at you, Mail Online) embed lots of highresolution images in their articles, which makes pages slower to load, especially in Chrome. The animated GIFs you see on Buzzfeed, Tumblr and similar sites also cause pages to hang. Rather than blocking such images altogether, you can turn on a Chrome feature called ‘GPU rasterization’, which uses a different method of rendering content. To activate it, type chrome:flags into your address bar to open the ‘Careful these experiments may bite’ page, then find the entry ‘Enable GPU rasterization’ and choose Enabled from the drop-down menu.
Some Chrome users have also experienced a performance boost by turning off the browser’s hardware acceleration feature that, conversely, is supposed to load pages faster. You can try this for yourself by going to Settings, ‘Show advanced settings’, System and deselecting ‘Use hardware acceleration when available’. Next, type chrome:flags into the address bar and enable the entry ‘Override software rendering list’.
Relaunch Chrome after applying these tweaks and you should hopefully notice a speed improvement.
Tweak Firefox to load pages faster
One of the most effective tricks for speeding up Firefox is to increase the number of connections it opens to a website’s server, a process known as ‘pipelining’. You can tweak the browser’s settings yourself through its ‘about:config’ page, but an easier and safer method is to use the add-on Tweak Network (bit.ly/tweak370) to adjust the page-loading settings. Once it’s installed, go to Tools, Tweak Network Settings and click the Power button. This activates pipelining and increases the maximum number of connections. Theoretically, this means Firefox will now load content faster, although it depends on the website, which may limit the number of connections per user.
Make all web pages ‘printfriendly’
Many online articles offer a Print option that removes adverts, photos, design elements and irrelevant text to save you wasting ink and paper. Stripping this superfluous content also makes pages load faster, so it’s worth viewing a ‘print-friendly’ version even if you don’t intend to print it.
The easiest way to do this is to install an add-on such as Readability (www.readability.com/addons) or Evernote Clearly (evernote.com/clearly), which both clean up pages instantly when you click their toolbar buttons. It’s true that when you first visit a page, you’ll need to load its full, slow version, but once the ‘print-friendly’ option has been activated, it will apply to subsequent pages in the article you’re reading. Both Readability and Evernote Clearly also let you save the streamlined article to read later, without needing to load the excess baggage.
Here’s how an article on Digital Spy looks before and after we cleaned it up using Readability.