Chrome team is working on cache implementation that should significantly speed up navigation

Google Chrome may get a back/forward cache. Now the browser caches the data to be downloaded from a web page, but this function also saves the execution state to come back to later. This can make navigating back ‘extremely fast’.

Also known as bfcache, the function is like pausing a web page; the JavaScript state and the DOM state are saved. According to the Chrome developers, 19 percent of pages in the mobile version of the browser are loaded based on the back and forward buttons. On desktops, that’s 10 percent. The Chrome developers have also posted some videos that clearly show the difference between the two implementations.

It is expected that this will increase the memory usage of Chrome. Google acknowledges this in the design document and states that the function also gets discard logic, so that pages visited in a session are not cached indefinitely. This should limit the additional memory usage.

The developers note that Firefox and Safari both already have implementations of this that are a little different. However, Chrome will not adopt those implementations due to “compatibility issues with Chrome’s multi-process architecture.” A release date for the feature is not given.