I often am researching stuff, and need lots of tabs open but Chrome can get very slow.
I notice that often memory seems to be increasing for chrome processes – even ones I am not interacting with. I suspect this is because of Javascript.
Is there a way to temporarily disable Javascript or other resources for Chrome tabs I am not using, except for a whitelist of sites like GMail, and Facebook? (Some sites are webapps doing background tasks I find useful – like waiting for instant messages.)
I would be content with just an image of many web pages, rather than a full dynamic tab just sitting there using memory. I only need it to be dynamic when interacting with it.
I wish Chrome would keep inactive tabs in separate processes and just pause some of it's processes I'm not using.
Side note, probably separate issue: I often find killing the Flash plugin can speed things up too.
Best Answer
I wanted something like this but I only wanted to pause the JavaScript v8 context for inactive tabs as this is less disruptive to the page than turning JavaScript off. As what I found also somewhat answers the OP's question I'll put what I found here.
I found out that doing that was possible with chrome.experimental.debugger and they provide an sample extension which uses the debugger which creates an icon which allows one to pause and unpause the current tab.
I haven't yet tested whether that could be adapted to automatically pause tabs when inactive and unpause them when they become active.