- From: Eduardo Casais <casays@yahoo.com>
- Date: Thu, 19 Mar 2009 02:57:16 -0700 (PDT)
- To: public-bpwg@w3.org
> Does that mean you think we should avoid the word "minify" ?
Minify is a specific tool, and using minify as a verb is bound to generate some
confusion. Furthermore, it is not clear what exact category of optimization
is being covered. Lexical simplification comprises not only the elimination of
redundant white space (lexical separators) and of comments, but also the
reduction of identifiers (what obfuscating tools often do, e.g. "currentAction"
becomes "zz1"), or the substitution of named and character entities with actual
characters.
> Inlining resources has a performance benefit because it reduces HTTP
> requests. This is definitely a useful technique that we use in a number of
> applications.
>
> Of course, it's not a required technique since the app won't be
> pathologically bad without it.
The formulation in the document and general recommendations for mobile
applications out there tend towards stating that the best practice is actually
to modularize pages and keep shared resources separate -- inlining thus
constitutes more an exceptional practice.
However, with the proper context, it can become a best practice: what are the
characteristics of the applications and target run-time environments that make
inlining more suitable? Is this confirmed by sufficient experience?
> Many of the BPs mentioned are a summary of practical experiences (what we
> are actually doing internally at Google right now) but this isn't backed up
> by structured research across a range of platforms to ensure it really
> qualifies as a best-practice.
Many of the issues dealt with in the document concern fairly recent technology.
Mobile AJAX is really two years old; I do not know whether stable, recommended
practices have had the time to emerge for that sort of environment.
A first step would be to collect published documentation on the actual practices
and experiences -- the current list of references in the BP document relate more
to traditional browsing. The following might be relevant as a starting point:
Mikko Pervilä, Jussi Kangasharju
Department of Computer Science, University of Helsinki
Performance of Ajax Applications on Mobile Devices
PERMID & IMUx Joint Workshop
Pervasive 2008, Sydney
19th May 2008
http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/pervila/Gradu/Gradu_final.pdf
There also seems to be groups devoted to AJAX (e.g. www.openajax.org); maybe the
W3C could establish a liaison with them to tap their wisdom.
Since I am myself not into AJAX or widgets, I am afraid that I cannot concretely
help much further here.
E.Casais
Received on Thursday, 19 March 2009 09:58:07 UTC