Clarification on background tab task pausing/freezing intent

[Alex Russell]

Hey all,

At last week's meeting, I volunteered to reach out to Chris (cc'd) to discuss some points that were unclear about the new iteration of the task freezing proposal. We talked a bit and he clarified for me that:

• The new approach applies for a small set of scenarios, e.g. tab restore, where pages might not have been previously running. It seems to have a large positive impact in those cases.
• That future work might still extend this approach to long-running background tabs, but...
• ...that we'd have a clear solution for developers; e.g., some scenarios (tabs launched as a standalone PWA) would be excluded

With that clarification, I'm happy for the current proposal to go forward, noting that Chris and the scheduling teams will send new intents for further behavior changes.

Regards

[Chris Harrelson]

Thanks for that update. It does sound significantly safer and avoids breaking (all?) of the use-cases suggested in feedback from developers.

Chris (Hamilton): am I correct in the statement above? In other words, are the situations in which tabs would be frozen only ones where there has been no significant developer complaint?

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[Chris Hamilton]

Yes, freezing in this form is effectively an O(seconds) time bounded scheduler optimization that allows resources to be focused on the foreground tab. It should be transparent to pretty much all use cases, with a worst case of impact of delaying incoming user notifications by O(seconds). 

[Chris Harrelson]

Hi Chris and Francois,

Could one of you update the blink-dev intent-to-ship thread with a clear explanation of the current desired plan to ship? That will help to clear up any concern from developers about use cases we don't intend to break in any way.

Chris

[Chris Harrelson]

Gentle reminder on this point - the intent is held up for the moment due to this request. Thanks.

[Chris Hamilton]

Sorry, I've been crazy busy trying to wrap up perf-related stuff before going on parental leave (will be OOO for the next 5 weeks). Francois will grab this. Sorry for the delay! 

Cheers,

Chris

[Chris Harrelson]

Ok, no problem. :) Thanks for the update.

[François Doray]

I posted on the blink-dev@ thread last week: https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/blink-dev/c/sotCDcI-E7Y/m/3x8clb3PEgAJ. I also updated the feature entry today https://www.chromestatus.com/feature/5193677469122560. Are there other actions we should take?

[Chris Harrelson]

Oh, I didn't see that message, sorry about that. Just to triple check, you are withdrawing the intent?

[François Doray]

Yes, we are withdrawing the intent.