Google to Improve Chrome Scrolling (Eventually)

Tired of stuttering and other odd performance issues while scrolling on Google's Chrome browser? You're in luck. Google has finally decided to switch to a Microsoft-driven solution for interacting with the browser via conventional mouse-based scrolling and touch-based scrolling.

"Last year we announced that, despite our involvement in the Pointer Events standard, we were going to focus on incremental improvements to existing APIs (like Touch Events), rather than implement Pointer Events in Chromium," Google software engineer Rick Byers said this week. "Since then we've received a steady stream of feedback from web developers, framework authors, and other browser vendors indicating that they see Pointer Events as a highly valuable addition to the platform. Since we're committed to a web platform which evolves collaboratively through open discussion and data from real-world development, we need to take this feedback very seriously."

Though Apple remains committed to Touch Events in its Safari browser, Microsoft and Mozilla support Pointer Events in their respective browsers. Google will need to do a little brainstorming as it integrates Pointer Events into Chrome, for there are still a few issues to work out—big issues.

"Pointer Events as currently defined requires a hit-test on every pointermove (as is the case for mousemove, but not touchmove). This imposes a performance cost on the engine which the major native mobile platforms and browsers don't have. I intend to work with the [Pointer Events Working Group] to identify some (probably breaking) API changes to allow us to avoid this cost for touch by default," Byers said. "This will be challenging to do without substantial compat pain, but I'm optimistic some solution can be reached to enable us to support Pointer Events without committing to this performance constraint."

If this all sounds like a lot of mumbo-jumbo, and all you care about is improved scrolling performance in Chrome as fast as you can get it, then you might be waiting a bit. ("Implementation is expected to take some time," Byers said.) There's currently no estimate as to when Google might officially be able to slap Pointer Events into a release build of Chrome. On the plus side, it'll work on all platforms Chrome supports once it's integrated.