web | Andy's Blog

Cross-site caching of javascript libraries

This is a proposal for extending the script tag of HTML.

The purpose of this proposal is to allow browsers to take advantage of the many great javascript
libraries that are now in common use (prototype, dojo, scriptaculous, e.t.c.) by many different sites
and minimize bandwidth – download times.

The idea is, since I already have (in my browser’s cache) the X javascript library (because site Y uses it),
why do I have to redownload it while visiting site Z ?

So, I propose adding a hash attribute to the script tag. A browsers behaviour will go like this:

if a script tag doesn’t have a hash attribute, continue as normal.
if there’s a hash attribute, check our global javascript cache.
- If found, use library from cache.
- Otherwise, download library and use it. Also, compute its hash, and if it matches the hash attribute add
  it in global cache.

So, what’s your opinion on this? Do you see any potential (security) problems?

2 hours lost due to SF upgrade!

Well, I’m back from vacations in Cyprus (Protaras for sea, Kalopanagiotis for mountain) and I was going to add some new Tapestry components to my sf project, tapfx.

CVS access was not working however, and since it’s been a while since I’ve used it, i thought : ‘Hey, I must be doing something wrong here!’

So, I browsed the docs, and the first thing i see is that it’s advised not to have strange characters in your password (only letters and numbers) because the cvs might not handle them. So I thought, that’s it! I change the pass (from web), wait for 10 mins (for the change to propagate to cvs), try again, but nothing happens.

So, I figure, time to use public/private keys instead of passwords. I set everything up (was the first time i did so), and tried command line access, but again no success.

Somehow I tried different host names, i.e. cvs1.sf.net, cvs2.sf.net, and they allowed access, but this time, my files weren’t there. So, I go to the central SF page, to look for news, but i don’t find anything there. However, by complete accident, I click on Site Status and amongst others i see this:

Project CVS Service: Offline – Scheduled Downtime In-Progress

gggggggrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!!!!!!!!