Google working on fast cache for the Chrome back button

Google announced Chrome will be getting a new cache that will make pages that you've already visited load extremely fast. The search giant says they're taking this step because they estimate that 19 percent of mobile page views, and 10 percent of desktop view, consist of revisited pages. As such, Google thinks a backward/forward cache makes a lot of sense.

On the Chrome team, we are exploring a new back/forward cache to cache pages in-memory (preserving JavaScript & DOM state) when the user navigates away. This is definitely not a trivial endeavor but if it succeeds it will make navigating back and forth very fast.

A back/forward cache (bfcache) caches whole pages (including the JavaScript heap) when navigating away from a page, so that the full state of the page can be restored when the user navigates back. Think of it as pausing a page when you leave it and playing it when you return.

The video below shows an early prototype of the feature at work on the desktop version of Chrome:



And here's an Android demonstration: