Google is getting ready to ship a new tool that could help web sites load more quickly. It’s a data compression algorithm called Brotli that could allow some web content to load up to 25 percent more quickly.
Brotli will be built into future versions of the Chrome web browser for Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, and Chrome OS.
Google says Brotli outperforms gzip compression by up to 25 percent, loads HTML content up to 25 percent more efficiently, and also offers improved load times for css and javascript.
You can already give Brotli a try if you’re using the Chrome Canary web browser, by typing this into your location bar:
chrome://flags#enable-brotli
Of course, just because your web browser can support the new algorithm doesn’t mean the web content you’re trying to view does. And Brotli only works on sites that use HTTPS. So you might not see any big speed boost right away.
But Google says its Google Fonts API is already using Brotli compression, so sites that use Google Web Fonts should benefit.
via Engadget and +Ilya Grigorik