7 ms·

TIL about window.stop() - the key to this entire thing working, it's causes the browser to stop loading any more assets: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/doc

by simonw 9mo ago

TIL about window.stop() - the key to this entire thing working, it's causes the browser to stop loading any more assets: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Window/stop https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Window/stop Apparently every important browser has supported it for well over a decade: https://caniuse.com/mdn-api_window_stop https://caniuse.com/mdn-api_window_stop Here's a screenshot illustrating how window.stop() is used - https://gist.github.com/simonw/7bf5912f3520a1a9ad294cd747b851d6?permalink_comment_id=5988313#gistcomment-5988313 https://gist.github.com/simonw/7bf5912f3520a1a9ad294cd747b85... - everything after <!-- GWTAR END is tar compressed data. Posted some more notes on my blog: https://simonwillison.net/2026/Feb/15/gwtar/ https://simonwillison.net/2026/Feb/15/gwtar/

8n4vidtmkvmk 9mo ago
Neat! I didn't know about this either. Php has a similar feature called __halt_compiler() which I've used for a similar purpose. Or sometimes just to put documentation at the end of a file without needing a comment block.
moritzwarhier 9mo ago
Not the inverse, but for any SPA (not framework or library) developers seeing this, it's probably worth noting that this is not better than using document.write, window.open and simular APIs. But could be very interesting for use cases where the main logic lives on the server and people try to manually implement some download- and/or lazy-loading logic. Still probably bad unless you're explicitly working on init and redirect scripts.
Lerc 9mo ago
I wonder if this is compatible with Claude Artifacts. I made my own bundler skill that lets me publish artifacts https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/a49d53b6-93ee-4891-b5f1-918ab5160da8 https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/a49d53b6-93ee-4891-b5f1-9... that can be decomposed back into the files, but it is just a compressed base64 chunk at the end. I guess the next question will be if it does work in environments that let you share a single file, will they disable this ability once they find out people are using it.
BobbyTables2 9mo ago
Sounds delicious for poisoning search engine crawlers and other bots…

by simonw 9mo ago

8n4vidtmkvmk 9mo ago

Neat! I didn't know about this either. Php has a similar feature called __halt_compiler() which I've used for a similar purpose. Or sometimes just to put documentation at the end of a file without needing a comment block.

moritzwarhier 9mo ago

Not the inverse, but for any SPA (not framework or library) developers seeing this, it's probably worth noting that this is not better than using document.write, window.open and simular APIs. But could be very interesting for use cases where the main logic lives on the server and people try to manually implement some download- and/or lazy-loading logic. Still probably bad unless you're explicitly working on init and redirect scripts.

Lerc 9mo ago

I wonder if this is compatible with Claude Artifacts. I made my own bundler skill that lets me publish artifacts https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/a49d53b6-93ee-4891-b5f1-918ab5160da8 https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/a49d53b6-93ee-4891-b5f1-9... that can be decomposed back into the files, but it is just a compressed base64 chunk at the end. I guess the next question will be if it does work in environments that let you share a single file, will they disable this ability once they find out people are using it.

BobbyTables2 9mo ago

Sounds delicious for poisoning search engine crawlers and other bots…