[whatwg] should async scripts block the document's load event?

Jonas Sicking jonas at sicking.cc
Wed Feb 10 17:18:40 PST 2010


On Fri, Nov 6, 2009 at 4:22 PM, Brian Kuhn <bnkuhn at gmail.com> wrote:
> No one has any thoughts on this?
> It seems to me that the purpose of async scripts is to get out of the way of
> user-visible functionality.  Many sites currently attach user-visible
> functionality to window.onload, so it would be great if async scripts at
> least had a way to not block that event.  It would help minimize the affect
> that secondary-functionality like ads and web analytics have on the user
> experience.
> -Brian

I'm concerned that this is too big of a departure from how people are
used to <script>s behaving.

If we do want to do something like this, one possibility would be to
create a generic attribute that can go on things like <img>, <link
rel=stylesheet>, <script> etc that make the resource not block the
'load' event.

/ Jonas


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