Hacker News Reader

It's not actually loaded, it's prerendered. The rough details are here: http://blog.chromium.org/2011/06/prerendering-in-chrome.html

The salient bit seems to be: "The browser fetches all of the sub-resources and does all of the work necessary to display the page. In many cases, the site simply seems to load instantly when the user clicks."

I'm not sure if impression tracking gifs would be loaded (I'd hope not), but it doesn't seem to run any of the JS.

View on HN

I imagine this as Chrome middle-clicking on links Google thinks you may want to see. They're opened in an invisible tab that replaces the current one if you click the link.

Just as Google Instant made AdWords more confusing, it sounds like link prerendering will affect all sorts of analytics.

>It's not actually loaded, it's prerendered.

And how exactly does the browser render assets without loading them? Is there some sort of time-traveling HTTP google is hiding under the curtain with this feature?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com