Incremental rendering

Last updated

Incremental rendering refers to a feature built into most modern Web browsers. Specifically, this refers to the browser's ability to display a partially downloaded Web page to the user while the browser awaits the remaining files from the server. [1] The advantage to the user is a perceived improvement in responsiveness, both from the Web browser and from the web site.

The purpose of incremental rendering is similar to the purpose of the interlaced JPEG, which improves the presentation speed to the user by quickly displaying a low-resolution version of an image which improves to a high-resolution, rather than an image that slowly paints from top to bottom.

Without incremental rendering, a web browser must wait until the code for a page is fully loaded before it can present content to the user. Earlier web browsers offered something of a compromise - displaying the HTML page once the entire HTML file had been retrieved, and then inserting the images one-by-one as they were retrieved afterwards.

Although the utility of incremental rendering seems intuitively obvious, making it happen is something of an art as well as a science. The sequence in which the various elements of a Web page render is almost never strictly top-to-bottom. The programming that fills in the missing pieces must do a certain amount of guesswork to determine how to best display partial content. Images in particular are virtually always loaded following the HTML page, as the browser must consult the HTML file in order to know which images to request from the server - as the server doesn't present them automatically without the follow-up request. Web designers and web design software often include hints that assist with this process - for example, including the expected heights and widths of images in the HTML code so the browser may allocate the correct amount of screen space before the image is actually retrieved from the server.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">World Wide Web</span> Linked hypertext system on the Internet

The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling information to be shared over the Internet through simplified ways meant to appeal to users beyond IT specialists and hobbyists, as well as documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet according to specific rules, the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Website</span> Set of related web pages served from a single domain

A website is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Websites are typically dedicated to a particular topic or purpose, such as news, education, commerce, entertainment or social networking. Hyperlinking between web pages guides the navigation of the site, which often starts with a home page. As of May 2023, the top 5 most visited websites are Google Search, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Web design encompasses many different skills and disciplines in the production and maintenance of websites. The different areas of web design include web graphic design; user interface design ; authoring, including standardised code and proprietary software; user experience design ; and search engine optimization. Often many individuals will work in teams covering different aspects of the design process, although some designers will cover them all. The term "web design" is normally used to describe the design process relating to the front-end design of a website including writing markup. Web design partially overlaps web engineering in the broader scope of web development. Web designers are expected to have an awareness of usability and be up to date with web accessibility guidelines.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">HTTP 404</span> Internet error message

In computer network communications, the HTTP 404, 404 not found, 404, 404 error, page not found or file not found error message is a hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) standard response code, to indicate that the browser was able to communicate with a given server, but the server could not find what was requested. The error may also be used when a server does not wish to disclose whether it has the requested information.

Inline linking is the use of a linked object, often an image, on one site by a web page belonging to a second site. One site is said to have an inline link to the other site where the object is located.

In the context of a web browser, a frame is a part of a web page or browser window which displays content independent of its container, with the ability to load content independently. The HTML or media elements in a frame may come from a web site distinct from the site providing the enclosing content. This practice, known as framing, is today often regarded as a violation of same-origin policy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dynamic web page</span> Type of web page

A server-side dynamic web page is a web page whose construction is controlled by an application server processing server-side scripts. In server-side scripting, parameters determine how the assembly of every new web page proceeds, and including the setting up of more client-side processing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Same-origin policy</span> Security measure for client-side scripting

In computing, the same-origin policy (SOP) is an important concept in the web application security model. Under the policy, a web browser permits scripts contained in a first web page to access data in a second web page, but only if both web pages have the same origin. An origin is defined as a combination of URI scheme, host name, and port number. This policy prevents a malicious script on one page from obtaining access to sensitive data on another web page through that page's Document Object Model.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Opera Mini</span> Mobile browser developed by Opera Software

Opera Mini is a mobile web browser made by Opera. It was primarily designed for the Java ME platform, as a low-end sibling for Opera Mobile, but as of 2022 only the Android build was still under active development. It had previously been developed for iOS, Windows 10 Mobile, Windows Phone 8.1, BlackBerry, Symbian, and Bada.

Pagination, also known as paging, is the process of dividing a document into discrete pages, either electronic pages or printed pages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">YUI Library</span>

The Yahoo! User Interface Library (YUI) is a discontinued open-source JavaScript library for building richly interactive web applications using techniques such as Ajax, DHTML, and DOM scripting. YUI includes several core CSS resources. It is available under a BSD License. Development on YUI began in 2005 and Yahoo! properties such as My Yahoo! and the Yahoo! front page began using YUI in the summer of that year. YUI was released for public use in February 2006. It was actively developed by a core team of Yahoo! engineers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Features of the Opera web browser</span> List of software application features

This article details features of the Opera web browser.

In fields employing interface design skills, slicing is the process of dividing a single 2D user interface composition layout (comp) into multiple image files of the graphical user interface (GUI) for one or more electronic pages. It is typically part of the client side development process of creating a web page and/or web site, but is also used in the user interface design process of software development and game development.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ThunderHawk</span> Web browser

ThunderHawk is a discontinued web browser from Bitstream available for a full range of operating systems in high end and mass-market mobile phones and personal digital assistants. It is basically meant for mobile operators and original equipment manufacturers and not meant to download for normal users.

A single-page application (SPA) is a web application or website that interacts with the user by dynamically rewriting the current web page with new data from the web server, instead of the default method of a web browser loading entire new pages. The goal is faster transitions that make the website feel more like a native app.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Web page</span> Content provided by a website

A web page is a hypertext document on the World Wide Web. Web pages are delivered by a web server to the user and displayed in a web browser. A website consists of many web pages linked together under a common domain name. The name "web page" is a metaphor of paper pages bound together into a book.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lively Kernel</span> Open-source web programming environment

The Lively Kernel is an open-source web programming environment, developed by Dan Ingalls when he was at SAP Research. It supports desktop-style applications with rich graphics and direct manipulation abilities, but without the installation or upgrade troubles of conventional desktop applications. Development began at Sun Microsystems Laboratories in Menlo Park, California, and later moved to the Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam-Babelsberg near Berlin.

Web performance refers to the speed in which web pages are downloaded and displayed on the user's web browser. Web performance optimization (WPO), or website optimization is the field of knowledge about increasing web performance.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Adaptive web design</span> Display a web page to fit a certain device and screen size

Adaptive web design (AWD) promotes the creation of multiple versions of a web page to better fit the user's device, as opposed to a single static page which loads the same on all devices or a single page which reorders and resizes content responsively based on the device/screen size/browser of the user.

ASP.NET Web Forms is a web application framework and one of several programming models supported by the Microsoft ASP.NET technology. Web Forms applications can be written in any programming language which supports the Common Language Runtime, such as C# or Visual Basic. The main building blocks of Web Forms pages are server controls, which are reusable components responsible for rendering HTML markup and responding to events. A technique called view state is used to persist the state of server controls between normally stateless HTTP requests.

References

  1. US7346843B2,Hind, John R.; Schaeck, Thomas& Topol, Brad B.,"Low-latency, incremental rendering in a content framework",issued 2008-03-18