Re: FYI: Mozilla's Resource Packages

Hi,
The idea looks very good. But I want to point out one scenario which should
be considered before going forward with this approach. Consider a text only
browser or a browser which doesn't want to display images or doesn't want to
execute javascript or doesn't support java script (may be through settings
change by the user), in this case the browser will download the resource
package file only to find that it has unnecessarily downloaded many images
and javascript file which are not going to be used. To address this may be
we can add some header through which browsers should be able to tell the
servers what resources should the resource package file contain.

Regards,
Sriram

On Tue, Nov 17, 2009 at 8:19 PM, Anthony Bryan <anthonybryan@gmail.com>wrote:

> http://limi.net/articles/resource-packages/
>
> Making browsers faster: Resource Packages
>
> A proposal to make downloading web page resources faster in all browsers.
>
> Introduction & Rationale
>
> What if there was a backwards compatible way to transfer all of the
> resources that are used on every single page in your site — CSS, JS,
> images, anything else — in a single HTTP request at the start of the
> first visit to the page? This is what Resource Package support in
> browsers will let you do.
>
> Implementation
>
> While Zip files do not have not the most elegant or efficient packing
> format out there, they have the following very desirable traits:
>
>    * Easily available reference implementations.
>    * Can be unpacked even in partial state — which means that we can
> stream the file, and put CSS and JavaScript first in the archive, and
> they will unpacked and made available before the entire file has been
> downloaded.
>    * Excellent toolchain support, zip/unzip is available on all major
> platforms, so it’s easy for web developers to use.
>
> We propose this markup to signal a zipped resource package:
>
> <link rel="resource-package"
>      type="application/zip"
>      href="site-resources.zip" />
>
>
> --
> (( Anthony Bryan ... Metalink [ http://www.metalinker.org ]
>  )) Easier, More Reliable, Self Healing Downloads
>
>