[webkit-dev] [Proposal] Remove support for 'multipart/x-mixed-replace' main resources

[Brady Eidson]

> On Apr 21, 2015, at 3:39 PM, Chris Dumez <cdumez at apple.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I would like to suggest we remove support for 'multipart/x-mixed-replace’ main resources while keeping support for multipart images.
> 
> Based on Chrome usage data, this feature is extremely rarely used by Web sites (less than 0.00001% of page loads) [1]. This feature adds complexity to the loader and is a source of (security) bugs (e.g. [2] recently), current support also seems buggy.
> 
> Current support in Safari / WebKit:
> - Support is not great is WebKit. If you load a Motion JPEG main resource for example, it will keep creating a new ImageDocument and all its DOM tree for every frame (tested on Safari / Mac).
> - It looks like support is broken on Safari on iOS (I tried a Motion JPEG main resource on iOS8, I see the first frame then a blank page that never finishes loading).
> 
> Other browsers:
> - Never supported by IE (including IE11) for any resource
> - Chrome already dropped support for this (main resources only) almost 2 years ago [3].
> - Firefox 37 still supports this based on local testing.
> 
> Again, I am only proposing dropping support for main resources. For e.g., having an <IMG> element in a page whose src attribute points to a Motion JPEG would still work as intended.

I think it’s fine to drop support for multipart main resources besides MPJEG.

I think loading MJPEG as a main resource and having it be displayed as an ImageDocument is a valuable feature, and I object to dropping support for it. I’m not sure if that’s what you’re proposing, since it’s both a main resource and a multipart image.

I think you might have filed a bug about the new ImageDocument per frame, thought I can’t find it right now. I think fixing that bug is a better solution than dropping that support.

Thanks,
 Brady