Client-side content inclusion and the URL renaissance

Just as the amount of data on modern web pages increases, so too does the diversity of the devices through which we access this data. In other words, we as developers are being asked to deliver more stuff in less time to any random interface.

One way to address the speed of content delivery is to simply send less stuff to the end user in the initial resource request. We can do this by breaking up page requests into smaller chunks and leaning on the client to manage the end user's experience, rather than the server. Third-party services like comments from Facebook or Discus already allow us to do this today in certain circumstances.

A client-side assembly strategy also brings us back to the original intent of the URL as a pointer to a specific resource, not a page of disparate content. For mobile devices we can reduce the initially delivered payload while still providing end users with access to the full page experience through intentional interactions such as clicks and scrolls.

Drupal isn't currently optimized to handle multiple small requests for data. During this talk I'll discuss what we can do now with the Drupal AJAX API to speed up page loads and how Drupal will need to adapt to become a content delivery platform rather than a page delivery platform.