The thing is, almost all subresources load asynchronously. The load event exists to tell us when those asynchronous loads have finished. So, I think it follows that an asynchronous resource load may reasonably block the load event. (That's the point of the load event afterall!)<div>
<br></div><div>-Darin</div><div><br><div><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Feb 12, 2010 at 10:10 AM, Nicholas Zakas <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:nzakas@yahoo-inc.com">nzakas@yahoo-inc.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="2" color="navy" face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy">To me “asynchronous”
fundamentally means “doesn’t block other things from happening,”
so if async currently does block the load event from firing then that seems
very wrong to me.</span></font></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="2" color="navy" face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy">-Nicholas</span></font><font color="navy"><span style="color:navy"></span></font></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="2" color="navy" face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy">______________________________________________</span></font><font color="navy"><span style="color:navy"></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="2" color="navy" face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy">Commander Lock: "Damnit Morpheus, not
everyone believes what you believe!"</span></font><font color="navy"><span style="color:navy"></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="2" color="navy" face="Arial"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy">Morpheus: "My beliefs do not require
them to."</span></font></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><b><font size="2" face="Tahoma"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Tahoma;font-weight:bold">From:</span></font></b><font size="2" face="Tahoma"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Tahoma">
<a href="mailto:whatwg-bounces@lists.whatwg.org" target="_blank">whatwg-bounces@lists.whatwg.org</a> [mailto:<a href="mailto:whatwg-bounces@lists.whatwg.org" target="_blank">whatwg-bounces@lists.whatwg.org</a>] <b><span style="font-weight:bold">On Behalf Of </span></b>Brian Kuhn<br>
<b><span style="font-weight:bold">Sent:</span></b> Friday, February 12, 2010
8:03 AM<br>
<b><span style="font-weight:bold">To:</span></b> Jonas Sicking<br>
<b><span style="font-weight:bold">Cc:</span></b> Steve
Souders; WHAT Working Group<br>
<b><span style="font-weight:bold">Subject:</span></b> Re: [whatwg] should async
scripts block the document's load event?</span></font></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt">Right. Async scripts aren't really asynchronous if they block all
the user-visible functionality that sites currently tie to window.onload.</span></font></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt">I don't know if we need another attribute, or if we just need to change
the behavior for all async scripts. But I think the best time to fix this
is now; before too many UAs implement async.</span></font></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt">-Brian</span></font></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt">On Thu, Feb 11, 2010 at 10:41 PM, Jonas Sicking
<jonas@sicking.cc> wrote:</span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt">Though what we want here is a DONTDELAYLOAD attribute. I.e. we want<br>
load to start asap, but we don't want the load to hold up the load<br>
event if all other resources finish loading before this one.<br>
<font color="#888888"><span style="color:#888888"><br>
/ Jonas</span></font></span></font></p>
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On Thu, Feb 11, 2010 at 10:23 PM, Steve Souders
<<a href="mailto:whatwg@souders.org" target="_blank">whatwg@souders.org</a>> wrote:<br>
> I just sent email last week proposing a POSTONLOAD attribute for scripts.<br>
><br>
> -Steve<br>
><br>
> On 2/10/2010 5:18 PM, Jonas Sicking wrote:<br>
>><br>
>> On Fri, Nov 6, 2009 at 4:22 PM, Brian Kuhn<<a href="mailto:bnkuhn@gmail.com" target="_blank">bnkuhn@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br>
>><br>
>>><br>
>>> No one has any thoughts on this?<br>
>>> It seems to me that the purpose of async scripts is to get out of
the way<br>
>>> of<br>
>>> user-visible functionality. Many sites currently attach
user-visible<br>
>>> functionality to window.onload, so it would be great if async
scripts at<br>
>>> least had a way to not block that event. It would help
minimize the<br>
>>> affect<br>
>>> that secondary-functionality like ads and web analytics have on
the user<br>
>>> experience.<br>
>>> -Brian<br>
>>><br>
>><br>
>> I'm concerned that this is too big of a departure from how people are<br>
>> used to<script>s behaving.<br>
>><br>
>> If we do want to do something like this, one possibility would be to<br>
>> create a generic attribute that can go on things
like<img>,<link<br>
>> rel=stylesheet>,<script> etc that make the resource not
block the<br>
>> 'load' event.<br>
>><br>
>> / Jonas<br>
>><br>
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