[webkit-dev] Question regarding priorities of subresource content retrieval

[Adam Barth]

There is already some amount of code that's involved with prioritizing
subresource loads.  See
http://trac.webkit.org/browser/trunk/Source/WebCore/loader/ResourceLoadScheduler.h
and http://trac.webkit.org/browser/trunk/Source/WebCore/loader/cache/CachedResourceLoader.h.

I suspect the prioritization algorithm could be improved.  A good
first step is to create a benchmark illustrating the performance
issues and then write patches that optimize the benchmark.  Please
consider putting your performance test in
http://trac.webkit.org/browser/trunk/PerformanceTests/ so that it's
easy for others to work on as well.

Adam


On Mon, Feb 7, 2011 at 11:23 AM, Silvio Ventres
<silvio.ventres at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello.
>
> Can someone point where in the source code is the implementation of
> the subresources loading and some documentation regarding its
> implementation - as a queue or just child-threads or async functions?
>
> The reason is that the current subresource loading seems to lack any
> prioritization and it often occurs that some external "1x1 pixel
> tracker" or other similarly unimportant page resources block the
> rendering of the page completely, and the user is left starting at
> "contacting ads.doubleclick.com" with a blank page. This is very
> frustrating as the page render as a whole then depends on the slowest
> part and cannot be possibly done faster by any optimizations in
> hardware or software on the part of the page owner.
>
> Thus, the proposition is this:
> 1. Render should only wait for the main HTML/CSS to load from the main
> page domain (a page in tumblr.com domain should wait for html/css
> files from *.tumblr.com, but not from *.doubleclick.com).
> 2. Other content load except HTML/CSS should be prioritized as
> follows, with placeholders shown until the load is complete - possibly
> adding one or more extra render passes, but increasing interactivity.
>
> So, basic priorities:
>
> 10 = Highest:   HTML/CSS from main domain (sites.tumblr.com/some_site.html)
> 9: JS/XHR from main domain
> 8: HTML/CSS/JS from subdomains in the same domain (ads.tumblr.com/ad_serve.js)
>
> 7. <Reserved for future use>
>
> 6. IMG/media from main domain (sites.tubmlr.com/header.png)
> 5. IMG/media from subdomains in the same domain (ads.tubmlr.com/banner1.png)
>
> 4. <Optional*> HTML/CSS/JS (text) from CDNs
> 3. <Optional*> IMG/media from CDNs
>
> 2. HTML/CSS/JS from other domains
> (*.doubleclick.com/link_210986cv3.php?refer=2323424)
> 1=Lowest. IMG from other domains (*.doublclick.com/images/track_1x1.gif)
>
> *4 and 3 are optional and would need some kind of a whitelist of
> well-known CDN domains.
>
> This prioritization will reduce the latency between the page load
> start and a usable render, so even if some external-domain subresource
> is nonresponsive, interactivity will not suffer.
> Maybe the priorities should be moved to a user-controllable setting,
> where more fine-grained rules can be defined. Otherwise, maybe HTML
> standard can be extended to provide hints to the browser regarding the
> preferred subresource loading order, which should of course be
> user-overridable.
>
> Thank you for reading.
> This might be a big undertaking but the benefit for the user will be
> seen instantly.
>
> --
>  silvio
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