How about a little blast from the past? Compression was a hot feature in Windows back in the 90s when storage space was a luxury. It enabled users to trade off a little performance for space.
Win-win.
Now this nifty feature is back, not for the operating system, but the web browser.
Edge is already one of the fastest web browsers around, thanks in no small part to the optimizations Microsoft has built into its new web browser. But things just got amped up to another level with this new option that the company recently rolled out.
Disk cache compression is the name of this new game that helps the browser reduce its age footprint and improve general performance.
All this has been detailed in this blog post compiled by the Redmond-based company.
You may recall that Edge received cache compression technology earlier this year with version 102, with the company having designed this feature to help the browser maintain a better balance between performance and resource consumption.
Especially on devices that do not have unlimited acres of storage space available.
This new feature works just as you would expect it to.
Like other modern web browsers, Edge caches a variety of content on disk so that the next time you need something, it pulls the required bit from a local copy without the need to fetch the data again from the network.
While this means that Edge works both faster and more efficiently, it also means that Microsoft can’t stretch the cache size without limits. This is, obviously, done to prevent computers from running out of space.
Enter compression.
Edge now has the ability to maximize cache and reduce network usage by compressing the stored content. Microsoft says this is highly compressible. Edge 102 automatically compresses disk caches on devices that the company says meet eligibility checks.
Details are provided, but as the company clarifies, the compression only happens when it does not degrade the overall user experience.
