Re: Media Queries and optimizing what data gets transferred

On 1/25/13 11:57 AM, Fred Andrews wrote:
> It would appear that allowing the UA to not load these resource and to
> return null when accessed them via the CSSOM would address some
> of these issues?

The problem is not "allowing" in spec terms.

The problem is making it clear when the UA can skip such loading without 
breaking a web page.

> If there is really a lot of script out there that would break if a null was
> encountered then perhaps a meta element could be added to flag the
> new behavior and the old could be deprecated?

Is that really better than flagging on a per-stylesheet basis that the 
page does not require an OM for that particular stylesheet?

But yes, that's an option.

> Many web browsers allow the user to choose not to download image
> resources, so are these a problem too?

Have you tried browsing without images turned on?  Lots of sites in fact 
become totally unusable...

> Is this just an issue for the loading of the style sheets, or are other
> resources affected?

Stylesheets are the primary one that expose an interesting OM.

> Is there are good reason why the style sheets could not all be bundled
> into one resource to avoid the issue?


How does that help?

> The Client Hints proposal would appear to go much further than just
> addressing the issue of the loading of the style sheets?

Indeed.  I'm not advocating the Client Hints proposal here, merely 
pointing out that there is no way for a UA to safely skip loading 
stylesheets at the moment.  We either need such a way that authors can 
opt in to or authors need a way to avoid serving the <link> element to 
the UA to start with.

-Boris

Received on Friday, 25 January 2013 17:03:44 UTC