Though I don't know what shape this will take, I think this is definitely worth vigorous research and discussion.
Without trying to derail this effort, I am somewhat interested in how this thinking can be applied to Web Components, since components may want to be coupled with various assets. :DG< On Tue, Feb 14, 2012 at 1:24 AM, Paul Bakaus <pbak...@zynga.com> wrote: > Hi everybody, > > This is a proposal to add a packaging format transparent to browsers to the > charter. At Zynga, we have identified this as one of our most pressuring > issues. Developers want to be able to send a collection of assets to the > browser through a single request, instead of hundreds. > > Today, we misuse image and audio sprites, slicing them again as base64 only > to put them into weird caches. These are workarounds, and ugly ones, as > well. None of the workarounds is satisfying, either in terms of robustness, > performance or simply, a sane API. Coincidentally, this is also one of the > most pressuring issues of WebGL. Since you are dealing with a lot of assets > with WebGL games, proper solutions must be found. > > A ticket at Mozilla, describing the issue further, has been opened by us > here: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=681967 > > Here's an actual code draft I attached to the ticket: > > window.loadPackage('package.webpf', function() { > var img = new Image(); > img.src = "package.webpf/myImage.png"; > }) > > > Or alternatively, with a local storage system (I prefer option one): > > window.loadPackage('package.webpf', function(files) { > files[0].saveTo('myImage.png'); > var img = new Image(); > img.src = "local://<absolute path of url of site>/myImage.png"; > }) > > > No big deal if the whole API looks entirely different when it's done. The > format needs to be able to handle delta updates well, and must be cacheable. > It needs to be transparent to the browser, and assets of uncompressed web > packages need to be able to be included from CSS. I am aware this is a more > inconvenient addition to work on, but there is immediate need. > > This is also a call for implementors, testers and editors. I am > unfortunately not experienced enough to handle any of those jobs. > > Thanks, I'm looking forward to feedback! > > Paul Bakaus > W3C Rep and Studio CTO, Zynga
