Google just made web pages easier to read with the latest Chrome update

Google has updated its Chrome browser once again, and it’s quietly added a brand new feature that should make web pages easier to read.

The new feature concerns progressive loading, which is way of loading web pages that prioritises the main page content, loading the text and main body of the page before ads and banners etc.

But often, progressive loading can cause pages to “jump” – something that occurs when you’ve already scrolled down before content at the top of the page has been loaded.

Once that content appears, it pushes the text and main body of the page downwards and generally throws you off your place.

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Now, Google’s new “scroll anchoring” feature, which comes with the latest version of Chrome will prevent these annoying jumps.

The company describes the feature in a blog post, writing: “scroll anchoring… locks the content you’re currently looking at to the screen, keeping you in the same spot so you can keep reading.”

There’s also a video demonstrating the ‘jumping’ issue alongside a page with scroll anchoring enabled:

Google adds: “Today we’re preventing an average of almost three “jumps” per pageview, and we’re still getting better.”

There’s a full technical guide to the new feature available here, for those that want to know exactly how the whole thing works or who want to disable the feature on pages where it isn’t needed.

It’s nice to see Google introducing something that combats the results of the increasing amount of ads and extra content web pages seemed to be crammed with these days, and we’re sure there’s more in the pipeline so stay tuned.

Let us know what you think of the new feature in the comments.