Making XKit Faster: Part I

I know that XKit can be slow sometimes. And it is slower on Chrome.

And one of the most requested features on the XKit Survey was a faster backend. (after small bug fixes, and new features.)

So I’ve been working on making XKit faster. And there are two ‘phases’ I plan on to make this real:

  1. Phase 1: XKit 5.8 (soon!)
    I’ve been making adjustments in XKit extensions, the bootstrapper, and the whole back-end. I’ve done some tests, and these adjustments led to a nearly 25% decrease in CPU use. (even though it is making the X icon appear later and whatnot, because of the “postponing” of the extension loader.) I’ll be releasing it as soon as possible.
  2. Phase 2: XKit 6.0 (in a few months)
    This requires all the extensions for XKit to be re-written from scratch. (and there are over 27 extensions to be re-written), so it won’t be ready for a few months, but when it’s out there, there will be a lot of performance-wise improvements.

Thanks for using XKit, and I hope those releases will make the experience a lot better for you.