5 ms·

I don't really get what the advantage is for making an big atomic blob as the resource vs independently updateable pieces as h2 streams / etags / client cacheab

I don't really get what the advantage is for making an big atomic blob as the resource vs independently updateable pieces as h2 streams / etags / client cacheable. It's just PUSH gone crazy?

whoopdedo 6y ago
Developers were just nostalgic for SWF, I guess.
- gladskdks 6y ago
  I know I am!
aclelland 6y ago
I think one of the reason larger companies like them is because they may end ad blockers once and for all. You can read a discussion about some of the issues that it causes here - https://github.com/WICG/webpackage/issues/551 https://github.com/WICG/webpackage/issues/551 Of course, the Brave browser also have some concerns about it - https://brave.com/webbundles-harmful-to-content-blocking-security-tools-and-the-open-web/ https://brave.com/webbundles-harmful-to-content-blocking-sec...
- rektide 6y ago
  Widely disputed. If this really did prevent ad blocking no one would expect it to ship. Inside the bundle are the same resources as without a bundle.
  - spankalee 6y ago
    Same resources with the same URLs, access with the same request/response pipeline that's just as visible to blockers. If you can change URLs in the bundle, you can change them outside the bundle. UAs are also completely free to request a resource from the URL rather than the bundle.
- notatoad 6y ago
  People have been saying "AMP prevents adblockers" since the introduction of AMP, and it has never been true. Advertisers don't want to bundle their ads with the content, they can't make any money that way. they want their ads to be dynamically requested each time they are drawn so they can sell ads based on real-time conditions. A standards-based implementation of AMP won't change this. Brave's assertion that "bundles are like PDF" is actually a pretty good analogy - you don't see a whole lot of ad networks popping up trying to sell ad space in PDFs, do you?
dmitriid 6y ago
You have to look at where the proposal comes from. This and Signed Exchanges are Google's rebranding of AMP as "open standards". Signed Exchanges are considered harmful by Mozilla [1] There's concern that Web Bundles are just Google's power play to be the sole gateway to the web [2] [1] https://mozilla.github.io/standards-positions/ https://mozilla.github.io/standards-positions/ [2] https://twitter.com/Rich_Harris/status/1299015418913460226 https://twitter.com/Rich_Harris/status/1299015418913460226
untog 6y ago
I can see the advantages, for example I could send you a page as an email attachment without any problems. There’s clearly a use for it because browsers let you do (more or less) this with their own custom formats.
spankalee 6y ago
A huge fraction of sites today are already bundled, just poorly. WebBundles solves the problem that devs are already working around with tools. HTML, JavaScript, CSS and images are not natively bundleable. So tools like Webpack and Rollup dramatically transform the files to be able to bundle them. JavaScript is recompiled into a single file so that it's impossible to cache the individual files, and many features like dynamic import, asset fetches, and import.meta.url are partially broken. CSS is concatenated, against breaking caching and preventing the use of individual files in separate CSS scopes. WebBundles actually bundles the real files that would have been sent unbundled, and it works with any file/response type. WebBundles have much better compressibility than the unbundled files. So it's is both a better HTTP/2 push, and a better version of what sites are doing with tools. And since WebBundles work with the existing request/response pipeline, the files are individually fed into the network cache (and blockers, btw), which makes it possible to build delta bundles that only include updated files. This gives you the best of both worlds of bundled and unbundled serving.
- yencabulator 6y ago
  > JavaScript is recompiled into a single file That world has largely moved to "chunks", where there are multiple bundles loaded on-demand, based on e.g. user navigating to a less-used part of the web app. Going to a single file as a WebBundle would be downgrade in features. Replacing those JS transforming kludges with a reasonable file format sounds useful, though, and allows combining JS+CSS+images in a new way. It does sound awfully lot like HTTP Push, which as far as I know is largely unused because the idea that the server knows what the client wants hasn't really proven true.
  - spankalee 6y ago
    Why would WebBundles be a downgrade? If you currently serve multiple Rollup bundles, you can instead serve multiple WebBundles.
    - yencabulator 6y ago
      See what I quoted and was replying to.
pcwalton 6y ago
WebBundles exist so that AMP content can look like it came from the original site instead. (I understand that the technology is technically neutral, but AMP is the practical reason why Google is pushing WebBundles.)

I don't really get what the advantage is for making an big atomic blob as the resource vs independently updateable pieces as h2 streams / etags / client cacheable. It's just PUSH gone crazy?

whoopdedo 6y ago

Developers were just nostalgic for SWF, I guess.

gladskdks 6y ago
I know I am!

aclelland 6y ago

I think one of the reason larger companies like them is because they may end ad blockers once and for all. You can read a discussion about some of the issues that it causes here - https://github.com/WICG/webpackage/issues/551 https://github.com/WICG/webpackage/issues/551 Of course, the Brave browser also have some concerns about it - https://brave.com/webbundles-harmful-to-content-blocking-security-tools-and-the-open-web/ https://brave.com/webbundles-harmful-to-content-blocking-sec...

rektide 6y ago
Widely disputed. If this really did prevent ad blocking no one would expect it to ship. Inside the bundle are the same resources as without a bundle.
- spankalee 6y ago
  Same resources with the same URLs, access with the same request/response pipeline that's just as visible to blockers. If you can change URLs in the bundle, you can change them outside the bundle. UAs are also completely free to request a resource from the URL rather than the bundle.
notatoad 6y ago
People have been saying "AMP prevents adblockers" since the introduction of AMP, and it has never been true. Advertisers don't want to bundle their ads with the content, they can't make any money that way. they want their ads to be dynamically requested each time they are drawn so they can sell ads based on real-time conditions. A standards-based implementation of AMP won't change this. Brave's assertion that "bundles are like PDF" is actually a pretty good analogy - you don't see a whole lot of ad networks popping up trying to sell ad space in PDFs, do you?

dmitriid 6y ago

You have to look at where the proposal comes from. This and Signed Exchanges are Google's rebranding of AMP as "open standards". Signed Exchanges are considered harmful by Mozilla [1] There's concern that Web Bundles are just Google's power play to be the sole gateway to the web [2] [1] https://mozilla.github.io/standards-positions/ https://mozilla.github.io/standards-positions/ [2] https://twitter.com/Rich_Harris/status/1299015418913460226 https://twitter.com/Rich_Harris/status/1299015418913460226

untog 6y ago

I can see the advantages, for example I could send you a page as an email attachment without any problems. There’s clearly a use for it because browsers let you do (more or less) this with their own custom formats.

spankalee 6y ago

A huge fraction of sites today are already bundled, just poorly. WebBundles solves the problem that devs are already working around with tools. HTML, JavaScript, CSS and images are not natively bundleable. So tools like Webpack and Rollup dramatically transform the files to be able to bundle them. JavaScript is recompiled into a single file so that it's impossible to cache the individual files, and many features like dynamic import, asset fetches, and import.meta.url are partially broken. CSS is concatenated, against breaking caching and preventing the use of individual files in separate CSS scopes. WebBundles actually bundles the real files that would have been sent unbundled, and it works with any file/response type. WebBundles have much better compressibility than the unbundled files. So it's is both a better HTTP/2 push, and a better version of what sites are doing with tools. And since WebBundles work with the existing request/response pipeline, the files are individually fed into the network cache (and blockers, btw), which makes it possible to build delta bundles that only include updated files. This gives you the best of both worlds of bundled and unbundled serving.

yencabulator 6y ago
> JavaScript is recompiled into a single file That world has largely moved to "chunks", where there are multiple bundles loaded on-demand, based on e.g. user navigating to a less-used part of the web app. Going to a single file as a WebBundle would be downgrade in features. Replacing those JS transforming kludges with a reasonable file format sounds useful, though, and allows combining JS+CSS+images in a new way. It does sound awfully lot like HTTP Push, which as far as I know is largely unused because the idea that the server knows what the client wants hasn't really proven true.
- spankalee 6y ago
  Why would WebBundles be a downgrade? If you currently serve multiple Rollup bundles, you can instead serve multiple WebBundles.
  - yencabulator 6y ago
    See what I quoted and was replying to.

pcwalton 6y ago

WebBundles exist so that AMP content can look like it came from the original site instead. (I understand that the technology is technically neutral, but AMP is the practical reason why Google is pushing WebBundles.)