I don't understand what this is saying about links

Post #352,445 by drook 12/26/11 7:52:01 PM Reply	I don't understand what this is saying about links http://wiki.dreamhos...erformance#Markup Use absolute or relative paths When linking to local resources (images, video, JavaScript, etc.) within your documents, use either absolute (also called relative from root) or relative paths. Using a remote path (such as a URL) will cause an additional and unnecessary HTTP request. Every link in an HTML page is a URL. What is this paragraph saying? -- Drew
Post #352,447 by Another Scott 12/26/11 8:10:40 PM Reply	"For best performance, don't hit remote sites." Perhaps?
Post #352,449 by drook 12/26/11 8:18:30 PM Reply	"When linking to local resources" They're specifically talking about local resources, and not using URLs, but instead either absolute or relative paths. Both of which, I believe, are URLs. The only two alternatives for URLs, in fact. -- Drew
Post #352,450 by Another Scott 12/26/11 8:27:40 PM Reply	No doubt it's worded very poorly. I think they're saying - "Make sure you always use local URL paths for local resources. If you refer to a resource on your server via an external URL [why one would want to do that, I don't know], you're going to trigger an HTTP request which will decrease your web page performance." URLs are "uniform resource locations" and can refer to local or remote resources. That's why they're "uniform". At least that's my understanding. I wouldn't think too hard about this. It's just poorly worded. I think, anyway. ;-) HTH a bit. Cheers, Scott.
Post #352,451 by malraux 12/26/11 8:27:47 PM 12/26/11 8:30:48 PM Reply	Have to test it... ... but it sounds inaccurate. Both root relative and relative paths just prepend the current transport://host/ information to the URL, so unless they differ (https vs. http, etc) the browser should be able to pipeline over http 1.1 same as anything else. Either way, the browser has to hit the remote server in some fashion to get the resource. It's not as if it's located locally on the user's machine. Reading it again, actually I think that's what they're saying. How is the user supposed to have a resource locally? That makes no sense, unless they're talking about performance packs such as are used by some HTML games (download a bunch of images, tell the server to point locally to the images and save the server bandwidth). This technique isn't terribly useful for a blog though. However, if you don't use a transport of file://, it's still going to hit the remote server. This doesn't make any sense on multiple levels. Using root relative and relative paths isn't a performance best practice to my knowledge. It's a maintenance and interoperability best practice. Regards, -scott Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson. Edited by malraux Dec. 26, 2011, 08:30:48 PM EST Expand All History
Post #352,456 by folkert 12/26/11 10:12:07 PM Reply	I'd go with ^^^HIS EXPLANATION
Post #352,453 by static 12/26/11 9:06:47 PM Reply	Someone is simply wrong. It sounds like someone with not enough knowledge is trying to describe something they don't know they don't understand. Iincluding a hostname in a URL to the same site is simply semantically unnecessary which is why people say not to do it. It is possible that it changes the order some browsers fetch resources, but I've never heard of that elsewhere, so it's likely to be an abberation on some specific older versions. Wade. Static Scribblings http://staticsan.blogspot.com/
Post #352,454 by drook 12/26/11 9:42:04 PM Reply	That's what I suspected Like Scott said, it helps with maintenance, but I've never heard of a performance hit. -- Drew
Post #352,464 by jay 12/27/11 10:29:27 AM Reply	I can see only one obscure case where that is true When writing something like PHP you can add other documents to your PHP script using commands like include. It is possible to use URLs, and using a URL for something that is a local file would generate extra HTTP requests. However, that is the sort of thing that involves being intentionally stupid to end up there. Jay
Post #352,465 by drook 12/27/11 10:35:04 AM Reply	Okay, that makes sense And yes, "intentional stupidity" about sums it up. -- Drew

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