Chrome 14 preloads/renders pages based on URL suggestions

Enabled in about:flags for Chrome Canary is

Basically, if you type in "noteb" and Chrome autofilles/suggestions "notebookreview.com" it starts loading "notebookreview.com" before you hit enter.

It's an interesting feature. On the one hand, if it's wrong that's an extra page you've just downloaded. On the other, it's virtually instant web browsing.

 

does it pollute the history table with preloaded pages?

 

I wouldn't think so.

 

I could see this being troublesome having Chrome load up certain adult websites when another user is trying to go someplace else.

 

firefox had an extension that did pre-rendering quite awhile ago, although it was an extension so I don't think it had read/write permissions for browsing history.

 

Why would that be an issue?

a) It won't load sites that aren't in your history, so you'd have to have visited it before and not have been using private browser.

b) It can load up whatever it likes, you won't see anything until you hit enter.

 

it could be a problem for systems with work and home usage, as it would list home-adresses in the work-proxy server. means if facebook is forbidden, but it pops up as a suggestion everytime you type f in the browserbar, that means you have tons of (tried) facebook acesses while at work, even while you wanted to access some work system.

that could raise questions.

other than that case, not really an issue.

 

The whole point of my comment was that those certain sites could be in the history. Other people use the same computer and not always aware of privacy settings.

 

Yes... it's still not an issue. What's the worst that happens? It preloads the page, then you hit a new letter and it preloads the next instead.

@Dave, it's about:flags right now, I'm sure you'll have to enable it in settings when it hits stable.

 

I'm not entirely sure I want Google to have authority to preload pages it thinks I want to visit.

 

Simply disable it, I like it though.

 

Why? It's not like it will be trying to load up ad pages. It's loading up pages it thinks you want to go to based on your most visited sites etc.

What "authority" are they taking other than loading a page you've already visited at least once yourself?

This just seems like such a silly reason not to use the feature. I can understand having incredibly limited hardware/ bandwidth... but not wanting to... what... give your browser that extra power?

 

I just don't like the feature. Sorry for commenting on it Mr. Google.

 

Well, as long as you're sorry.