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Life & fun · February 8, 2014

JL

JS library to make your website instant

http://instantclick.io/ It seems the internet architecture won't bring us instant websites anytime soon. So here is a hack. I released this JS library last month (today is version 2.0 release, fixing v1.0's rough edges), it makes use of HTML5's pushState and preloading to make a website instant. It works like this: before clicking on a link, you'll hover over it. And there's a delay of 200-300 ms between these two events. InstantClick uses this delay to preload a page, when you click on a link it will display instantly in most case. (You can test on the website.) That's…

Alternativestop 1% of February 2014

In plain words

InstantClick is a JavaScript library that speeds up website navigation by preloading pages during the hover delay before a user clicks a link. Using HTML5's pushState and Ajax, it leverages the 200-300 millisecond gap between hovering and clicking to load content in advance, resulting in near-instant page displays. The library is designed for website developers seeking to improve user experience without relying on faster internet infrastructure. It offers customizable preloading options, including delayed preloading or triggering on mousedown to reduce server load.

written from the facts on this page · September 2026

From the sources

In the maker’s words, at launch

http://instantclick.io/ It seems the internet architecture won't bring us instant websites anytime soon. So here is a hack. I released this JS library last month (today is version 2.0 release, fixing v1.0's rough edges), it makes use of HTML5's pushState and preloading to make a website instant. It works like this: before clicking on a link, you'll hover over it. And there's a delay of 200-300 ms between these two events. InstantClick uses this delay to preload a page, when you click on a link it will display instantly in most case. (You can test on the website.) That's similar to pjax and Turbolinks, for it uses HTML5's pushState and Ajax. And preloading is thrown into the mix. In case preloading all the links that a user hover over is too much work for the server, there's also an option to set a delay before preloading kicks in, or to preload on "mousedown". Mousedown is when you press your mouse button (a click is when you release it). This way you still get a slight "magical" speed advantage, and pjax's benefits (notably, no recalculation of scripts/styles on every page change). For mobile it preloads on touchstart, so you get 400 ms to preload. This is different from FastClick: with InstantClick a user can still double tap to zoom without triggering a link. As said in the first sentence, the internet architecture can't bring us instant websites today or tomorrow. So I think this — InstantClick — could be a pretty big thing to improve the situation at scale. The main challenge I see is that existing JS scripts may not work with it out of the box. I don't do much web development nowadays though, so I don't know how big of a problem that is, and I don't know if there isn't any other major barrier in the way to make this mainstream. That's why I'm awaiting your opinion, smart folks of HN.

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