Lazy loading is not a new concept by now. The idea is simple – postpone loading some of the heavier elements of the page until lighter elements are loaded. This way, the user can start interacting with the content sooner or later.
Since 2019, lazy loading for images and iframes has been occurring in Chrome and Chromium-based browsers. Both types of elements will start loading only when the user scrolls closer to them on the page.
Google has announced that it is currently testing extended lazy loading that also includes video and audio elements. That is to say, multimedia content is placed inside a video or audio HTML tag. Granted, these are not as common as images or even iframes on the modern web, but they still have their uses.
The lazy loading change is apparently coming to Chrome 148 on both desktop and mobile. Since Google is committing it to the Chromium codebase, we expect it to also come to other Chromium-based browsers like Microsoft Edge.
