[webkit-dev] Making browsers faster: Resource Packages

[Peter Kasting]

On Tue, Nov 17, 2009 at 3:14 PM, James Robinson <jamesr at google.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Nov 17, 2009 at 3:02 PM, Peter Kasting <pkasting at google.com>
> wrote:
> > On Tue, Nov 17, 2009 at 3:00 PM, James Robinson <jamesr at google.com>
> wrote:
> >> It seems like a browser will have to essentially stop rendering until
> >> it has finished downloading the entire .zip and examined it.
> >
> > I think mitigating this is why there are optional manifests.  I agree
> that
> > if there's no manifest, this is really, really painful.  I think
> manifests
> > should be made mandatory.
> > PK
>
> Do you mean external manifests?  Either way, the browser cannot start
> a download for any external resource until it downloads and parses out
> the manifest.txt for every resource bundle seen in the page so far.
>

Well, it can start the downloads, but it might have to throw them away, and
it definitely can't actually make use of their contents.  In this way it's a
bit like the current implementation of optimistic parallel script fetching.


> Whether it is pulling the manifest out of a .zip file or as a .txt by
> itself doesn't matter much, it's still an extra HTTP round-trip before
> any content can be downloaded (including content that is not bundled
> at all).


True.  It's just not a delay until the .zip file has completed its download.

I agree that even with a manifest, this is suboptimal.

I think the decision to incorporate this in Fx 3.7 may be premature.

PK
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