Cacheable Web Resources... Oh My!
by David Higgins · 11/19/2007 (11:59 am) · 3 comments
A co-worker of mine brought up a question the other day, and I immediately responded with "Yeah, I was just thinking about that a few days ago when I was messing with [XYZ]".
The question was:
So, he went off on his own and started up a little project he's calling 'CacheFile.net'. Right now, it's in a production evaluation phase and he's basically asking people to check out the 'service' and provide usable feedback. The general idea is that CacheFile.net will host a slue of commonly used Javascript libraries and image Icons. So far, he has quite a collection of Javascript libraries (including various versions of each) hosted. He is openly asking that anyone and everyone take advantage of the service.
The more people who use the service, the more useful the service becomes. The idea behind it is so simple, it almost makes you wonder why it's taken this long for someone to put it together. The files are hosted on his site, and are fed to the client with an HTTP Cache header set for quite a while in the future. So, if Web Site A and Web Site B both point to the 'Prototype.js' file on CacheFile.net, and a client browser comes across Web Site A and downloads the Prototype.js file and then navigates to Website B which is referencing the same location -- the visit to Website B is sped up due to not having to re-download an already cached resource that Website A already referenced.
So, with that said, I thought I'd bring it up to the community ... as I know were all developers of one sort or another, and the one thing we all should have in common is that we develop websites from time to time (gotta promote those games!). So, if your ever developing a website and using a common library, check out CacheFile.net and try to spare your visitors the pain of downloading resources they already have cached.
The question was:
Quote:Why is there no single repository for reusable web resources such as common scripts and image icons?
So, he went off on his own and started up a little project he's calling 'CacheFile.net'. Right now, it's in a production evaluation phase and he's basically asking people to check out the 'service' and provide usable feedback. The general idea is that CacheFile.net will host a slue of commonly used Javascript libraries and image Icons. So far, he has quite a collection of Javascript libraries (including various versions of each) hosted. He is openly asking that anyone and everyone take advantage of the service.
The more people who use the service, the more useful the service becomes. The idea behind it is so simple, it almost makes you wonder why it's taken this long for someone to put it together. The files are hosted on his site, and are fed to the client with an HTTP Cache header set for quite a while in the future. So, if Web Site A and Web Site B both point to the 'Prototype.js' file on CacheFile.net, and a client browser comes across Web Site A and downloads the Prototype.js file and then navigates to Website B which is referencing the same location -- the visit to Website B is sped up due to not having to re-download an already cached resource that Website A already referenced.
So, with that said, I thought I'd bring it up to the community ... as I know were all developers of one sort or another, and the one thing we all should have in common is that we develop websites from time to time (gotta promote those games!). So, if your ever developing a website and using a common library, check out CacheFile.net and try to spare your visitors the pain of downloading resources they already have cached.
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#2
I'm thinking about it from the perspective of "trying to build a large successful site" so it might be a different story for people building much smaller sites.
11/24/2007 (11:52 pm)
What are your thoughts on the risks of having key parts of one's site living on an uncontrolled external service? (e.g. if this service went down or he stopped doing it, potentially many sites could break.)I'm thinking about it from the perspective of "trying to build a large successful site" so it might be a different story for people building much smaller sites.
#3
11/24/2007 (11:53 pm)
Hmm - I looked at the site. Looks like they're using coral cache to offset that risk. Interesting idea.
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