Enabling http pipelining?

Hi Prof! 😀

Personally I have not experimented with http pipelining on Safari...but when you mention safarispeed I don't believe that does anything with http pipelining? What it does do is change the page delay setting for Safari (and apparently some other things with the new version). You can change this setting yourself by editing your plist for Safari. Would you be interested in doing this?

Let us know...Reg

Hi again Prof! 😀

Ok open your com.apple.Safari.plist and look for the string near the bottom named "WebKitInitialTimedLayoutDelay." The value should be currently set at 1.0 and you can change the value to .001. As a note, the value to change it to is debatable and the .001 is the value that SafariSpeed changes it to. That's where I have mine set...

You should see a difference but all you're really doing is removing the delay so instead of a more complete page showing all at once you will now get "bits and pieces" of the page coming in. But it certainly seems faster especially to me because my connection is only 384kbps and I'll take what I can get! And just to mention the old SafariSpeed was free but it seems the developer added some things and now charges for it.

Let me know if it works out and I'm assuming you have all the latest (Tiger with Safari 2.0) and if so you should have this string in your plist.

Reg 😀

Hi again Prof! 😀

Yeah I see Safari's plist looks pretty bad in TextEdit. Ideally you would use Property List Editor which comes with Developer Tools. But I see you're using a Powerbook? You should have Omni Outliner installed. Open the plist with that and it will be easy to make the change. I just double checked and I always used Omni Outliner before too...

Let me know...Reg

Hi again Prof! 😀

Ok glad that helped! By the way I'm just curious what kind of connection speed do you have? I just wanted to know if you have a fast connection if it's a big help too? Like I mentioned my connection is on the slow side so it helps. I would assume anyone using a connection like 1-2mbps and up it wouldn't really matter? But I don't know?

Yes it's probably good to keep OmniOutliner on your Mac to edit plists. I don't think it takes up that much space. Note: I believe there's a new version out (Version 4) but it's not free. Unless you ever get Property List Editor that's I think the way to go.

Reg 😀

Hi,

Some background reading on how that trick works from one of the main WebKit developers:

http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/hyatt/archives/2004_05.html#005496

It's almost as much a psychological speedup than a real speedup 🙂

Hi iBod! 😀

Yes that article is good info. I've read it before and it makes sense...anyways the author would know right? 😀

That's why I was curious about the speed of Prof's connection...I'm thinking on a fast connection it won't make that much difference? I'm not sure really? On my slow-end connection where it helps is I can click the link for the next page before the current page is fully loaded...esp on pages I visit frequently...

I remember hearing Steve Jobs introduce movies on the iPod and he referred to 5mbps connections and that's just a dream here in the Philippines, unless you're prepared maybe to spend a lot of money for a business connection or something... 😀

Thanks for the input! But I'm just curious...this is not exactly what they refer to as http pipelining is it?

Reg

Hiya Reggie,

But I'm just curious...this is not exactly what they refer to as http pipelining is it?

You are indeed correct 🙂 Pipelining is a trick to speed up the communications between the user and the webserver, the above mentioned Safari trick is purely a client configuration thing - it just alters how Safari behaves with the incoming data.

Wikipedia has some info on pipelining here.

I'm thinking on a fast connection it won't make that much difference? I'm not sure really?

If anything I would expect the tweak to have a greater impact on a really fast connection. My reasoning being that on a fast connection there's a good chance Safari will have all the data it needs to draw the website within less than the default 1/4 of a second, so in this case, there's no point waiting that long to draw what data you have received. I can see how it helps for the click-through speed up you mentioned as well though 🙂

Hi iBod!

Is there a way to enable http pipelining in Safari? I'm sure Prof. would like to know too?

I use Camino sometimes if I have to and there is a way to enable it there with CamiTools. (There is also a way to change the page loading delay...I think it's 0.5 by default on Gecko browsers?) I believe there are other ways as well and of course on regular Firefox too...

Actually sometimes Camino with these features enabled seems to be faster than Safari...but I stick with Safari. But there are times as you know that a Gecko browser comes in handy...

Reg

Hi Reggie (and Prof. Rockwell),

No, Safari doesn't support pipelining at present. Another member of the WebKit team posted this blog entry a couple of months ago. To quote:

However, I’ll note that we have experimented with using HTTP pipelining for Safari in the past, too many major servers gave garbage results in the face of it. While we may periodically re-evaluate this, we are not holding back on it out of spite or anything.

Sorry it's not better news.

Ok thanks IBod! 😀

Great info...just as a note though the Wikipedia link is missing from previous post... 😀

Reg

Whoops, curse those cut n paste keys! 🙂

This was supposed to be the link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_pipelining