Google Chrome Data Saver extension leaked

Google Chrome for iOS and Android have been using Data Compression Proxy for a while. This feature has been brought to desktop thanks to the open source Data Compression Proxy extension by niu tech. Now Google is developing its own extension entitled Data Saver (codenamed Flywheel Desktop), screenshot of which has recently leaked:

UPDATE: The official extension is now available in Chrome Web Store.

You can also compare Chrome Compression Proxy with Opera Turbo and Mozilla Janus.

Source: crbug.com

Chrome Data Compression Proxy vs Mozilla Janus vs Opera Turbo

Most of web browser vendors provide a way to speed up browsing by using compression proxy. Opera has long been known for its Turbo/Off-road mode, Google Chrome has the Data Compression Proxy and Mozilla has recently introduced the Janus Proxy, which you can access system-wide using a PAC file at http://janus.allizom.org.

I have tested onload event times of various web pages using all three compression proxies and a direct 5 Mb/s connection over WiFi on my PC. Total times as well as Numion YourSpeed results are shown below:

	Chrome DCP	Mozilla Janus	Opera Turbo	Direct
ZDNet	11.5 s	24.5 s	11.4 s	11.1 s
CNN	14.3 s	20.0 s	12.2 s	10.7 s
BBC	7.3 s	27.3 s	11.7 s	6.6 s
NYtimes	6.5 s	10.7 s	6.1 s	5.6 s
eBay	8.7 s	14.5 s	7.8 s	8.1 s
Amazon	5.3 s	10.6 s	3 s	5 s
Pinterest	7.4 s	12 s	9.2 s	7.3 s
Wikipedia	3.8 s	6.3 s	3 s	3 s
Total	64.8 s	125.9 s	64.4 s	57.4 s
Numion YourSpeed	218 kb/s	119 kb/s	216 kb/s	308 kb/s

Surprisingly, the fastest is a direct Internet connection, but this would depend on your local bandwidth. Opera Turbo and Chrome Compression Proxy go head to head, both using WebP image format. The slowest is Janus, using MozJPEG instead.

Download Chrome Dev Editor developer pre-release

Chrome Dev Editor is a web development environment running as a packaged app inside Google Chrome. It is based on the open source project Spark developed by Google since November 2013 using the Dart language and Polymer elements. Chrome Dev Editor supports building JavaScript & Dart web apps, Chrome apps, Polymer elements and widgets. It is going to be officially announced at Google I/O 2014, but you can download the developer pre-release version 0.13 below. Keep in mind, that you use it at your own risk.

To install Chrome Dev Editor, you would probably need a developer channel of Google Chrome. Go to chrome://extensions, drag and drop the CRX file there. You will be asked to install the packaged app.

On the first run, the app could hang at a splash screen for a while:

 In the main window, you can click the wrench icon to check the settings:

You can create your new project, deploy it or clone the Git repository using the hamburger icon:

You can run the HTML file using the context menu or the play icon:

Chrome Dev Editor provides code autocompletion and highlighting:

It even provides an integrated web server and supports Web Starter Kit out of the box:

Download Chrome Dev Editor packaged app (CRX)



Disclaimer: This is an unofficial developer pre-release. I am not affiliated with Google.

Opera 21 features Off-Road mode version 2 with video compression

Opera 21.0.1419.0 web browser for Mac and Windows, based on Chromium 34.0.1825.4, has just been released. This Developer release provides many new features: Aura, a hardware-accelerated window manager, an option to show full URL in address bar, full keyboard support for web apps, and so on.

But the most exciting experimental features are hidden under opera://flags page, namely:

• Off-Road mode, version 2 - a.k.a. Opera Turbo 2, which uses next-generation servers and protocols such as WebP and SPDY for faster web browsing.
• Video compression in Off-Road mode - which optimizes video in version 2 of Off-Road mode, using Skyfire Rocket Optimizer aquired by Opera.
• Speed Dial extensions compositing - which enables hardware accelerated compositing for Speed Dial extensions.
• Enable lazy session loading - which loads only the active tab when restoring browser session. Remaining tabs will be loaded when activated.
• Extended lazy session loading - which changes mode of operation of lazy session loading so that all tabs are gradually loaded in the background.
• Synchronization - a.k.a. Opera Link.
• Tab hibernation - which tells idle background tabs to hibernate.
• DirectWrite - which enables smooth font rendering (finally!).
• Experimental QUIC protocol - which speeds up web browsing on supported servers.
• HTTPS over experimental QUIC protocol - which enables QUIC for HTTPS.
• SPDY/4 alpha 2 - which is more up-to-date than SPDY/3.
• HTTP/2 draft 04 - which is a next-generation protocol based on SPDY.
• Built-in Asynchronous DNS - which is an internal non-blocking DNS client.
• Enable Experimental JavaScript - a.k.a. ECMAScript Harmony features, such as proxies, weak maps, sets, maps, typeof semantics and block scoping.
• Enable experimental Web Platform features - such as CSS Shapes, Canvas Blend modes, Canvas Paths and CSS Clip Paths.

As to performance, Off-Road mode version 2 is faster than version 1. The average measured speed in Numion YourSpeed was 375 kbps vs 301 kbps on a slow network. The video compression works by serving files with content type video/skyfire or video/mp4 from Opera Mini servers.

Download Opera Developer

Speed up your Google Chrome for desktop by using Data Compression Proxy

Google has added a Chrome Data Compression Proxy to its mobile Google Chrome browser for iOS and Android. Like Opera Turbo, it speeds up web browsing by greatly reducing size of transferred HTTP packets, by using a SPDY protocol, compressing resources, optimizing images to WEBP format and tunneling all traffic via secure HTTPS connection. Unfortunately, it has been available only to mobile users. Until now.

Browsing the net, I have just found an experimental Google Chrome extension, which brings Data Compression Proxy to desktop. This is an unofficial add-on, so it could potentially break some web pages or stop working some day, but for now it works great and accelerates web browsing significantly. What is more, it is open source, so anybody can check its source and contribute to it.

UPDATE: Google has released the official Data Saver extension for Chrome.

Download Data Saver from Chrome Web Store