[Webkit-unassigned] [Bug 50115] Please implement async=false for dynamic script loading (REGRESSION: LABjs is broken)

bugzilla-daemon at webkit.org bugzilla-daemon at webkit.org
Thu Dec 30 06:17:23 PST 2010


https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=50115





--- Comment #43 from Kyle Simpson <getify at gmail.com>  2010-12-30 06:17:22 PST ---
@Adam-

> Which sites are broken today with the WebKit nightly?

I've listed several major sites which are using LABjs that *will* break in Webkit nightlies.

* Twitter
* Zappos
* Vimeo
* Mefeedia
* Formspring

The reason you don't see this breakage right now is for a few different reasons, but the bottom line is most of these sites have the "preloading" feature of LABjs turned off, mostly for "safety" reasons until this is all sorted out.

Basically, that means these sites have chosen to have LABjs operate in "serial-load-serial-execute" mode, which is loading each script one at a time, executing it, then loading the next, and so on.

Obviously, this is horribly worse performance than if they just used script tags (and ditched a script loader altogether), because with script tags in the markup, the browser automatically loads in parallel but executes in order.

I am personally in communication with the development teams for many of these major sites using LABjs, and keep them up to speed on the progress of this issue. They are aware of the danger of Webkit being "broken" on preloading. If Webkit refuses to address this use case, and a major browser release (Chrome or Safari) comes out with that broken behavior baked in, most of those sites will have to abandon using a script loader and go back to using regular script tags.

There's quite a bit of performance optimization that will be lost on these sites if they are forced to go back to using script tags and abandon using script loader techniques. This would be a huge loss for the web community to have Webkit not be forward-thinking (ahead of the spec) and address this obviously needed use case. 

Mozilla realized this same thing and that's why they acted with a stop-gap measure to address the need before the spec catches up. I'm asking Webkit to do the same.

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