Re: Shrinking existing libraries as a goal

I wholeheartedly support this proposal. +1000.

From: Yehuda Katz <wycats@gmail.com<mailto:wycats@gmail.com>>
Date: Wed, 16 May 2012 00:32:51 -0400
To: <public-webapps@w3.org<mailto:public-webapps@w3.org>>
Subject: Shrinking existing libraries as a goal
Resent-From: <public-webapps@w3.org<mailto:public-webapps@w3.org>>
Resent-Date: Wed, 16 May 2012 04:33:57 +0000

In the past year or so, I've participated in a number of threads that were implicitly about adding features to browsers that would shrink the size of existing libraries.

Inevitably, those discussions end up litigating whether making it easier for jQuery (or some other library) to do the task is a good idea in the first place.

While those discussions are extremely useful, I feel it would be useful for a group to focus on proposals that would shrink the size of existing libraries with the implicit assumption that it was a good idea.

>From some basic experimentation I've personally done with the jQuery codebase, I feel that such a group could rather quickly identify enough areas to make a much smaller version of jQuery that ran on modern browsers plausible. I also think that having data to support or refute that assertion would be useful, as it's often made casually in meta-discussions.

If there is a strong reason that people feel that a focused effort to identify ways to shrink existing popular libraries in new browsers would be a bad idea, I'd be very interested to hear it.

Thanks so much for your consideration,

Yehuda Katz
jQuery Foundation
(ph) 718.877.1325