[maemo-developers] WebKit Incremental Layout

[From: Alp Toker]

zaheer ahmad wrote:
> hi,
> can somebody suggest websites where we can see a considerable difference 
> using LOW_BANDWIDTH_DISPLAY or the FOUC  problem.  i dont seem to see 
> the difference  with  most  links i have tried.

The WebKit FOUC with LOW_BANDWIDTH_DISPLAY is quite distracting to me 
both on the desktop and on mobile devices, so much so that I don't think 
it's even worth supporting as an official configure flag right now.

If you didn't notice it, the only possibility I can think of is that you 
passed the wrong CPPFLAGS. It needs to be precisely:

-DWTF_USE_LOW_BANDWIDTH_DISPLAY=1

So, if you are using the configure script and compiling for the Maemo 
mobile platform:

CPPFLAGS="-DMOBILE=1 -DWTF_USE_LOW_BANDWIDTH_DISPLAY=1" ./configure 
--prefix=/opt/webkit --enable-video --disable-xslt --with-hildon

I actually think a throbber or other load notification system is much 
more effective. When users see unstyled content (HTML without CSS), they 
immediately consider it a bug in the browser. Not good.

So in summary, -DMOBILE=1 is good, -DWTF_USE_LOW_BANDWIDTH_DISPLAY=1 is 
not so good. The loader in current builds is significantly faster and 
better at scheduling than those in other mobile browsers so I don't 
think we need hacks like this. Try it out and see what you think :-)