Re:What feature would improve the web?
by mark242 on Friday October 21, 2011 @01:21PM
(#3140740)
I'd like to see an "enhanced" SPDY added to every browser and web server implementation, one that allows for a package of assets to be concatenated, compressed, and sent in one chunk, rather than waiting for a browser to interpret HTML before starting to request more assets.
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SPDY already supports server push, where a server can tell the client, "I'm sending over some files (e.g. JavaScript and CSS and a bunch of little images) that you're going to want soon. You're welcome." It sounds like exactly what you want.
X-Associated-Content still requires each file to be broken out as its own, doesn't it? I'm thinking more of a single file with a manifest, highly compressed, that only requires one fopen() to push all of the data to the client. Sort of a browser cache warming file. "You need this Javascript, this CSS, and these images for any page on the site. Take this file and you're all set."
Since SPDY multiplexes multiple streams to the same socket, and commonly-used static content will be cached in the server's memory anyway, I don't see much practical difference between what SPDY's X-Associated-Content and what you're proposing.