[whatwg] about:blank synchronicity

[Ian Hickson]

On Wed, 13 Jan 2010, Henri Sivonen wrote:
> 
> Gecko (with the old parser) has these two characteristics:
>  1) If a browsing context that has no document object is asked to return 
> its document object, an about:blank-like DOM is generated into the 
> browsing context synchronously.
>  2) When a browsing context is navigated to about:blank, a task is 
> posted to the task queue. When that task is run, about:blank is parsed 
> to completion during the single task queue task.

The spec currently distinguishes between the initial about:blank load 
(creation of a new browsing context), which actually doesn't involve 
navigation, and navigating to about:blank.

It seems like simply making the first one synchronous, but making the 
latter asynchronous, would satisfy your use case. Would other vendors be 
ok with this?

Would it have other problems? Are there cases other than navigation where 
about:blank being synchronous is detectable? (I couldn't find any.)

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'