Re: [whatwg] Preloading and deferred loading of scripts and other resources

On Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 6:50 PM, Ilya Grigorik <igrigorik@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Thu, Sep 11, 2014 at 7:55 PM, Ryosuke Niwa <rniwa@apple.com> wrote:
>
> > On Sep 8, 2014, at 10:54 PM, Ilya Grigorik <igrigorik@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > On Mon, Sep 8, 2014 at 7:59 PM, Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch> wrote:
> > >
> > >>> The platform is missing a lower-level primitive (declarative and
> > >>> imperative) that is able to explain resource loading with the same
> > >>> expressive power as requests initiated by the browser itself.
> > >>
> > >> That isn't a problem.
> > >
> > > I don't follow. To me that *is* the core problem that we should solve
> > first
> > > and ship as soon as possible: if we keep the surface area low, we can
> > ship
> > > it quickly and let developers experiment and move the platform forward.
> > > Adding more layers of higher-level APIs only slows the deployment
> > process.
> >
> > What problem(s) are those developers going to solve with such a low level
> > API
> > other than the use cases A through Z listed here?
>

Responding to Ryosuke (I wasn't on the list then), a low level API is
exactly what's missing.  IMO, the idea that browsers should provide
convenient, high-level, spot solutions to some common problems is flawed.

Instead, the browser should expose the lowest-level, most-capable APIs and
let libraries sort out the convenience and common idioms.

It's less work for browser vendors and empowers library authors and the
developer community.

I want to be able to fill a page with a thousand img tags and specify that
they download in order of distance from the viewport.  I want to be able to
set priorities of XMLHttpRequests.  I want to be able to set XHR priorities
relative to image loads (that actually came up _today_ in profiling our
application).  I want to be able to deprioritize arbitrary resources after
first paint.  I want to adjust priorities as the application is being used.

In short, I agree 100% with Ilya: Instead of hypothesizing about use cases,
the web is better-served by exposing the primitive features of the web
platform, which lets library authors and web developers decide for
themselves how to take advantage of them.

Cheers,
Chad

--
Chad Austin
Technical Director, IMVU
http://chadaustin.me

Received on Friday, 17 October 2014 04:36:37 UTC