Google Chrome’s New Link Preview Feature
Introduction
It’s normal practice to click on a link to check out the destination page and exit the page as soon as possible if it doesn’t meet your requirements. However, doing so consumes bandwidth and time, and the best browsers for Android are all about streamlining and simplifying everyday tasks. To this purpose, Google has implemented a feature in Chrome that substantially draws inspiration from Apple’s Safari app for iOS. In doing so, Google is adopting a page from Apple’s playbook.
Learning from Safari for iOS
It’s Possible That Safari for iOS Will Teach Google Chrome a Thing o r Two_
A New Feature for Previewing Webpages
Recently, a Chrome researcher and Android Police reader who uses the Twitter handle @Leopeva64 unearthed Google’s intentions for a new feature to make it simpler for users to preview webpages. The long-press menu in Chrome already includes a Preview Page option; however, the functionality of this new feature would be entirely different.
Enhancing User Experience
Users would have a better idea of what the pages look like, allowing them to make more educated judgments before opening them. It has been brought to our attention by Leopeva64 that many contributions in the Chromium Gerrit refer to functionality. If implemented, it will cut down on the number of times users browse pages they are not interested in, hence reducing the amount of effort and bandwidth expended.
..basically this new feature would show you a preview of the page (after clicking or hovering over the link), several options are mentioned in the doc, including being able to open the preview in a new tab or in the Side panel:https://t.co/oYGvodibdH
.https://t.co/MhF1Ncm8qv
. pic.twitter.com/KsAv0q9r7b— Leopeva64 (@Leopeva64) July 25, 2023
Implementation Strategies
How Google will carry out these actions needs to be made clear. To accommodate users who do not wish to read the lengthy document that is linked in the tweet, the Link Preview feature could be implemented in one of the following three ways: Utilize the already established MPArch architecture, make use of many different Web contents, or provide a system with temporary windows and tabs.
Possible Functionality
The first strategy would include utilizing the current MPArch architecture; however, this would necessitate some modifications to the API. The second method would involve using several WebContents, which would challenge the premise that each tab has its unique collection of WebContents (including its cookies, history, and so on). The utilization of temporary windows and tabs constitutes the third strategy. This new idea would not require modifications to the currently used API.
Chrome does some pre-rendering of pages in the background, and users can interact with the link preview. This behavior is explained in the Chrome documentation. Beyond that, we are still figuring out how the feature’s functionality would operate. If it’s anything like Apple’s version of peek-and-pop in Safari, the preview will display when you long-pressed a link and disappear when you lift your finger off the screen. This would be the case, even if it’s different. Similarly, desktop users can display a link’s preview by hovering their mouse cursor over the link.
Conclusion
There needs to be a schedule for when this functionality might be implemented in Chrome Canary and, eventually, the stable channel. Despite this, we will keep a careful eye on how it develops.
