[Bug 19028] Support a rel attribute that restricts cookie transmission

https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=19028

--- Comment #6 from Alexander Romanovich <alex@sirensclef.com> ---
@kyle I don't have the details with me at this time, but a while back I ran
some numbers on this with a handful of web sites. The homepage of one of these
sites claimed approximately 700 bytes of cookie data was being sent for at
least 24 individual requests that appeared to not need cookies sent at all.
That's 16800 bytes total for just that one page.

In a case like this, it's a clear win to send the above suggested header (just
once, for the root index in question) in exchange for saving that amount of
data across all those requests. Remember also that it's typically more
expensive to upstream data than downstream. Of course, this profile may or may
not prove to be widely representative, and it is certainly on the developer to
deploy the feature in a way that produces the optimal tradeoff, as you have
noted.

I'm definitely suggesting this header be sent only for full HTML documents--
not for sub resources or for AJAX requests. Again, it would be up to the
developer to determine the logic for sending these. I tend to think that HTML
snippets via AJAX tend to be trending downward with application/json, etc.
(potentially containing HTML segments) better served in distinguishing these
types of requests. That said, I think your concerns are well warranted.

I believe it has been previously suggested that another possibility here would
be to include some form of manifest embedded/attached to the HTML document, as
opposed to a header. There is an approach to this that is quite tied to
application cache, and doesn't seem suitably abstract to use for other
purposes, but the precedent is there. I would be just as happy with an
implementation like this, provided it is well thought out.

I know that you also have an interest in webkit bug 30862, and I can't help but
wonder if some form of manifest/instruction such as we're discussing here would
be suited to solving that issue as well.

@julian The browser hints draft looks interesting. Will need more time to
digest it thoroughly.

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Received on Friday, 8 February 2013 02:45:22 UTC