[webkit-gtk] dns prefetching knob

[Martin Robinson]

On Wed, Mar 9, 2011 at 6:28 AM, Marco Peereboom <slash at peereboom.us> wrote:
> Hence the knobbing part.  Some people have legitimate use for it which
> is of course fine.  I want it for performance reasons but also to
> prevent DNS tracking.  Between DNS prefetching, link hovering and the
> empty DNS lookups webkit generates one can get near pixel resolution on
> how the user moves his mouse.  This comes in handy for "Online
> Behavioral Tracking".  Being a practical paranoid I'd like to prevent
> that.

Is it possible for you to make the tools you used to generate your
performance number available publically? This would help us fix any
performance issues that exist as bugs. This may very well be some
weird corner case that we're hitting in libsoup. Let's fix it!

I do not think there is any harm in exposing this setting. I do
believe that those pushing for it should try to clarify what it is
though. From what I gather it's effectively two pieces:

1. A backport of a Settings.cpp DNS prefetch change to the stable branch.
2. New code which exposes this setting in the WebKitWebSettings WebKitGTK+ API.

Really it should just be the change to WebKitWebSettings and a request
to merge both changes back into the stable branch. Be aware that we
are desperately close to cutting the stable branch for 1.4.x.

--Martin