Modifying a browser for the Sahara desert [closed]

Question

Closed. This question needs to be more focused. It is not currently accepting answers.

---

Want to improve this question? Update the question so it focuses on one problem only by editing this post.

Closed 9 years ago.

Improve this question

I'm modifying a browser (Chrome or Firefox) to work in the Sahara desert - or any environment with very poor connectivity. I can configure the browser, recompile it, or even insert a custom coded proxy. The goal is to make it operate well with spotty, slow connectivity.

I've found the biggest problem to be that even when you get the main page, the browser will often hang, waiting for the CSS and JS etc to load. How can I force the browser to "Render the page right away, don't worry about other resources?"

Answer 1

The page isn't waiting for the resources to render, browsers generally always render HTML as soon as they have it available. However, the CSS and JS files are likely being sent before the generic HTML for the page, as web designers don't generally like their page to go through multi-step formatting processes while the CSS page loads in, nor do most users. You're likely getting almost none of the HTML until after the CSS or JS loads. Presumably, if you have full control of the browser's functionality, you may be able to tell it to skip these or save the address to load in later? I wouldn't recommend this behavior though, as it could break a lot of functionality, especially with JS.

If images are missing, they should show the alt text. If they're loading, they may not. Again, with full control of the browser, I don't see why this should be a problem for you.

There is no 'generic' CSS. CSS rules are largely customized based on classes and identities defined by the author. More modern webpages which make use of newer HTML5 elements have more semantic information available to guide display without a stylesheet. Short of this, you need the accompanying stylesheet for proper display. You could attempt to guess or reengineer, but the vast majority of the time this will fail, as there was little to no convention prior to HTML5 bringing in more semantic elements.