Enable Lazy Frame Loading in Microsoft Edge

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How to Enable Lazy Iframe Loading in Microsoft Edge Chromium

If you are using the newest Microsoft Edge browser, which is Chromium-based, you reduce the page loading time by enabling lazy image loading. It defers the loading of images until the page is scrolled down to them. Additionally, you can turn on the same behavior for iframes.

The feature is called 'Lazy Frame Loading', and it is natively available in Microsoft Edge without installing extra add-ons.

Then lazy loading is enabled, the browser will prioritize the content visible to the user, while postponing the rendering process for frames that are not visible to the user.

An iFrame is an inline frame placed on a web page to load another web document inside it. It may contain its own markup, JavaScript, and CSS. It is normally loaded and parsed along with its parent HTML document. Frames are often utilized by ads. Earlier, frames where actively used to build navigation links and content reference for a web site.

Edge (and Chrome/Chromium) comes a number of useful options which are experimental. They are hidden behind options known as 'flags'. To unblock them, you need to turn on this or that flag. This is applicable to lazy frame loading.

To Enable Lazy Frame Loading in Microsoft Edge,

  1. Open Microsoft Edge.
  2. Type the following in the address bar: edge://flags/#enable-lazy-frame-loading.
  3. Select Enabled from the drop-down menu next to the Lazy Frame Loading line.
  4. Click on the restart button.
  5. From now, Edge will try to load frames on demand which have the loading="lazy" attribute (see the note below).
  6. Instead, you can set the flag to Enabled (Automatically lazily load where safe..) to make Edge lazily load frames that doesn't include the loading="lazy" attribute.

You are done. The browser will prioritize the content visible to the user, while postponing the rendering process for images and frames that are not visible to the user. 

Note: The loading=lazy option is a new HTML attribute this was recently added to the HTML standard as a draft. In the future, all popular web browsers should get support for lazy element loading.

Besides Edge, Chrome and Firefox also support the lazy image and frame loading feature. Check this out:

 

Microsoft recently released the first stable version of Microsoft Edge Chromium to the public. Surprisingly, Microsoft Edge is still supporting a number of aging Windows versions, including Windows 7, which has recently reached its end of support. Check out Windows Versions Supported by Microsoft Edge Chromium.

Interested users can download MSI installers for deployment and customization.

For pre-release versions, Microsoft is currently using three channels to deliver updates to Edge Insiders. The Canary channel receives updates daily (except Saturday and Sunday), the Dev channel is getting updates weekly, and the Beta channel is updated every 6 weeks. Microsoft is going to support Edge Chromium on Windows 7, 8.1 and 10, alongside macOS, Linux (coming in the future) and mobile apps on iOS and Android.

Actual Edge versions

The actual versions of Edge Chromium at the moment of this writing are as follows:

You will find many Edge tricks and features covered in the following post:

Hands-on with the new Chromium-based Microsoft Edge

Also, see the following updates.

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Author: Sergey Tkachenko

Sergey Tkachenko is a software developer who started Winaero back in 2011. On this blog, Sergey is writing about everything connected to Microsoft, Windows and popular software. Follow him on Telegram, Twitter, and YouTube.

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