5b document.write scripts block in Firefox

February 10, 2010 5:58 PM

This is the second of five quick posts about some browser quirks that have come up in the last few weeks.

Scripts loaded using document.write block other downloads in Firefox.

Unfortunately, document.write was invented. That problem was made a bzillion times worse when ads decided to use document.write to insert scripts into the content publisher’s page. It’s one line of code:

document.write('<script src="http://www.adnetwork.com/main.js"><\/script>');

Fortunately, most of today’s newer browsers load scripts in parallel including scripts added via document.write. But a few weeks ago I noticed that Firefox 3.6 had some weird blocking behavior in a page with ads, and tracked it down to a script added using document.write.

The document.write scripts test page demonstrates the problem. It has four scripts. The first and second are inserted using document.write. The third and fourth are loaded the normal way (via HTML using SCRIPT SRC). All four scripts are configured to take 4 seconds to download. In IE8, Chrome 4, Safari 4, and Opera 10.10, the total page load time is ~4 seconds. All the scripts, even the ones inserted using document.write, are loaded in parallel. In Firefox, the total page load time is 12 seconds (tested on 2.0, 3.0, and 3.6). The first document.write script loads from 1-4 seconds, the second document.write scripts loads from 5-8 seconds, and the final two normal scripts are loaded in parallel from 9-12 seconds.

The issues with document.write are getting more well known. Some 3rd party code snippets (including Google Analytics) are switching away from document.write. But most 3rd party snippets still use document.write to insert their code into the publisher’s page. Here’s one more reason to avoid document.write.

The five posts in this series are:

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