Bug with IE's defer attribute

Hi all,

In a recent post I had recommended that the defer attribute be used
for any scripts that did not need to be loaded to render HTML.  This
is meant to reduce the time to render the page.  Unfortunately, this
feature is plagued by yet another of IE's misguided attempts to
improve performance through aggressive caching.  

It appears that IE has a serious flaw when using this attribute.  When
there are two or more script tags using the defer attribute, only the
first script that is not already cached is retrieved!  The following
scripts are not retrieved at all.  

Each time the user visits the page (or refreshes it), the browser
loads an additional one of the deferred scripts since it has cached
the previous ones.  If you revisit the page enough times, eventually
they'll all be loaded.  

Of course, this can cause any number of javascript errors, including
the oh-so-descriptive "Object expected" error.  

This is easy to reproduce in IE 5.01, 5.5 or 6.0:

<SCRIPT type="text/javascript" src="primaryFuncs.js" defer></SCRIPT>
<SCRIPT type="text/javascript" src="secondaryFuncs.js" defer></SCRIPT>
<SCRIPT type="text/javascript" src="yetMoreFuncs.js" defer></SCRIPT>

Mozilla and Safari act as expected.  They appear to load all of the
deferred files after rendering the page, but before calling any
javascript events (like body.onload).  

Has no one seen this before?  Or am I just late in figuring this one out?

Thanks!

-- John

http://e-numera.com/
http://ajax-web2.com/







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