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Dear Microsoft: Please Do Pinned Menus Like This

blog.theamazingrando.com

11–20 of 37 posts

Re: Dear Microsoft: Please Do Pinned Menus Like This

#11
post #6

I have to agree with this article in that there is FAR too much text being added to the webpage for this functionality. Separating it out into a separate file is the way to go. You know, like CSS already does.

I wonder what the trade off is for 1KB of text or an extra HTTP request.

The main advantage of a separate file is that it can be cached by the client.

Re: Dear Microsoft: Please Do Pinned Menus Like This

#12
I mostly agree, with the exception of two things:

1) It's much easier to stick meta tags in HTML than it is to reference an external file in many cases (blog hosting services, hosted storefronts, etc).

2) Sites that make the best use of that menu will have different data depending on what page is pinned. We didn't do much implementation, but assuming enough people used IE9 we'd probably make that set of meta tags page dependent. Separating it into an external link when it's page specific data doesn't make a bunch of sense. Particularly page specific data that changes frequently.

Also, that 1kb of text is more like 260 bytes gzipped (as it is for us). We'll survive. :)

Re: Dear Microsoft: Please Do Pinned Menus Like This

#13
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder what the trade off is for 1KB of text or an extra HTTP request.

Wouldn't the trade-off be between an extra 1KB on every page vs. a single extra HTTP request per user?

Not exactly. It's more like 250-300 bytes gzipped and it's delivered through an established request.

Re: Dear Microsoft: Please Do Pinned Menus Like This

#14
post #6

I have to agree with this article in that there is FAR too much text being added to the webpage for this functionality. Separating it out into a separate file is the way to go. You know, like CSS already does.

I wonder what the trade off is for 1KB of text or an extra HTTP request.

Bear in mind that a HTTP Request is significantly slower than the bytes in the page. A request could be anything from .25s to 2 whole seconds, if the bandwidth is saturated. Not least problems with blocking other parallel downloads and delaying the initial paint. HTTP requests that are not images or the CSS are to be absolutely avoided!

Re: Dear Microsoft: Please Do Pinned Menus Like This

#15
post #6

I have to agree with this article in that there is FAR too much text being added to the webpage for this functionality. Separating it out into a separate file is the way to go. You know, like CSS already does.

I wonder what the trade off is for 1KB of text or an extra HTTP request.

The external resource can be cached, pre-generated, shared, managed separately from your page templates.

The main argument seems to be that the metadata involved here is to do with the site, not the page, whereas tags should be for resource-specific use.

Re: Dear Microsoft: Please Do Pinned Menus Like This

#17
post #14
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder what the trade off is for 1KB of text or an extra HTTP request.

Bear in mind that a HTTP Request is significantly slower than the bytes in the page. A request could be anything from .25s to 2 whole seconds, if the bandwidth is saturated. Not least problems with blocking other parallel downloads and delaying the initial paint. HTTP requests that are not images or the CSS are to be absolutely avoided!

Since this isn't used until the menu is pinned, and doesn't show on the page, the time it takes to download should only be taken when the user requests that it be pinned. This shouldn't hold up the page being rendered, since it is not page content.

Edit: Additionally, how does what's in the pinned menu get updated? Does it need to make a full page request to get the new items? This will needlessly inflate pageview numbers in that case (I'm sure the "fix" for that will be that Microsoft will change the User Agent to say that it's not the browser but rather than pinned menu making the request). As for implementation, does the browser create the menu from the this and it's static? Or does the URL to the page get passed to the menu bar where it is pinned and then the menu bar is responsible for making the request? Or does the browser actually run the menu bar -- this seems like the wrong kind of integration.

Re: Dear Microsoft: Please Do Pinned Menus Like This

#18
post #6

I have to agree with this article in that there is FAR too much text being added to the webpage for this functionality. Separating it out into a separate file is the way to go. You know, like CSS already does.

I wonder what the trade off is for 1KB of text or an extra HTTP request.

The extra HTTP request only has to be performed on pinning, probably only once (or at least only once in a long time depending on the HTTP headers, and the refresh of the file can be performed asynchronously by the browser when and where it thinks it should check) and only by users actually able to pin (so IE9 users).

Re: Dear Microsoft: Please Do Pinned Menus Like This

#20
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps, if the points to a menu.xml you don't control? I'm not sure what you could do with this that couldn't also be done with ...

Sorry, I wasn't more clear. I meant the browser feature, not the specific implementation. I think the idea in the article was fantastic, and would be much cleaner for developers.

Why was this voted down so harshly?
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