

Should browsers allow manual .paint() calls? - danschumann

With the advent of react.js showing that browsers are slow if you call paint too many times, do you think at some point browsers should allow you to stop the automatic updating of the DOM, and allow you to manually trigger paint only when you choose to?
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striking
This seems more like a StackOverflow question, but I'll bite; my opinion leans
toward "no." The HTML of a page should immediately reflect its presentation,
as the HTML and the presentation are inextricably linked. Furthermore, the
browser repaints and realigns at times that JavaScript doesn't cause such as
CSS (animations or :hover states or what have you) and manually painting only
when updates happen would effectively break all of those things.

Also, you'd have to keep two copies of the DOM: one that is "now" and another
that is "soon-to-be." Memory usage of browsers is already horrendous, no need
to exacerbate it.

