Chrome programmers have removed a third-party software package from the browser in favour of their own software, as part of Google's attempt to improve performance of the open-source package.
The change came with a key component in V8, the browser's JavaScript processor, called regular expression manipulation or regexps. "As we've improved other parts of the language, regexps started to stand out as being slower than the rest. We felt it should be possible to improve performance by integrating with our existing infrastructure rather than using an external library," according to a Chromium blog post by programmers Erik Corry, Christian Plesner Hansen and Lasse Reichstein Holst Nielsen.
This kicked off Google's own project, Irregexp, the headline feature in the new developer preview version of Chrome, 2.0.160.0 (release notes).
Previously, Chrome used a supporting software package or library called JPCRE, a variation by the Webkit browser project of the PCRE package. That eased compatibility issues by making Chrome behave like the much more mature and tested Safari browser from Apple, also based on Webkit. However, Google has checked for compatibility of its own code by using its accelerated testing programme, which automatically checks code against portions of its own comprehensive web-search database.
"During development we have tested Irregexp against one million of the most popular web pages to ensure that the new implementation stays compatible with our previous implementation and the web," the programmers said.
Separately, the programmers said they created a new third version of their JavaScript benchmark. This version specifically exercises regular expressions taken from 50 of the web's most popular pages.
JavaScript is increasingly widely used to build sophisticated web applications, including Google Docs and Gmail as well as other interactive online services, making fast response or annoying lags very noticeable by users. It is also widely used for many more mundane aspects of web pages, so JavaScript speedup helps improve web browsing performance broadly.
More changes to V8 are coming, and Google has said it will detail some at its May developer conference, Google I/O. One session there will focus on the software, including "initiatives that will propel V8 to the next performance level," according to the session notes.
Separately, Google also released the new version 1.0.154.46 of Chrome for both its stable and beta version users on Wednesday. That version fixed a security problem and an issue with Chrome's incognito mode.
