[webkit-dev] setTimeout as browser speed throttle

[Darin Fisher]

On Tue, Sep 30, 2008 at 11:55 PM, Maciej Stachowiak <mjs at apple.com> wrote:

>
> On Sep 30, 2008, at 10:36 PM, Darin Fisher wrote:
>
> On Tue, Sep 30, 2008 at 7:14 PM, Maciej Stachowiak <mjs at apple.com> wrote:
>>
>>> ...
>
>> 2) Consider making WebKit's default minimum timer limit lower - something
>>> like 3ms-5ms. I don't know what we would do to verify that this is "safe
>>> enough" or who would do the work. Maybe Hyatt?
>>>
>>
>
> We are in the process of verifying this now ;-)  Our eyes and ears are open
> (have been) for bug reports related to this.  Right now, we are happy to be
> trying something radical.  In the absence of problem reports, when do we
> declare success?
>
>
> Based on what Peter said, it sounds like there has been at least one
> problem report. There was at least one more vague report made informally in
> John Resig's blog comments. Maybe we need to start by agreeing what counts
> as "absence of problem reports".
>
> However, by way of comparison, we added a 10ms clamp three and a half years
> after the first Safari beta was released to the public, as it took about
> that long to get enough bug reports to convince us that we had to do it for
> compatibility.
>
> Given that, I think we may want to find some more active way to look for
> potential problems and potential benefits.
>
> Regards,
> Maciej
>
>

I can appreciate that you aren't interested in revisiting this problem after
having resolved it finally by adding the clamp.  I believe you when you say
you had compelling evidence too.

My point was just that we wanted to feel the pain ourselves before going a
similar route.  We have yet to feel the pain substantially, and so it is
interesting to keep going, gathering more data points.

(Our architecture is designed to allow users to see that it is a particular
website that is "misbehaving" and so we have a lot of opportunity I think to
raise the visibility of things like this and to at least gather more data.)

-Darin
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