The Future of Loading CSS

Jake Archibald of the Google Chrome team explains the upcoming, modern behavior for loading CSS that should replace lazy loading.

The current state-of-the-art of loading CSS:

<head>
  <script>
    // https://github.com/filamentgroup/loadCSS
    !function(e){"use strict"
    var n=function(n,t,o){function i(e){return f.body?e():void setTimeout(function(){i(e)})}var d,r,a,l,f=e.document,s=f.createElement("link"),u=o||"all"
    return t?d=t:(r=(f.body||f.getElementsByTagName("head")[0]).childNodes,d=r[r.length-1]),a=f.styleSheets,s.rel="stylesheet",s.href=n,s.media="only x",i(function(){d.parentNode.insertBefore(s,t?d:d.nextSibling)}),l=function(e){for(var n=s.href,t=a.length;t--;)if(a[t].href===n)return e()
    setTimeout(function(){l(e)})},s.addEventListener&&s.addEventListener("load",function(){this.media=u}),s.onloadcssdefined=l,l(function(){s.media!==u&&(s.media=u)}),s}
    "undefined"!=typeof exports?exports.loadCSS=n:e.loadCSS=n}("undefined"!=typeof global?global:this)
  </script>
  <style>
    /* The styles for the site header, plus: */
    .main-article,
    .comments,
    .about-me,
    footer {
      display: none;
    }
  </style>
  <script>
    loadCSS("/the-rest-of-the-styles.css");
  </script>
</head>
<body>
</body>

When all browsers adopt it, this will be the simpler, better way:

<head>
</head>
<body>
  <!-- HTTP/2 push this resource, or inline it, whichever's faster -->
  <link rel="stylesheet" href="/site-header.css">
  <header>…</header>

  <link rel="stylesheet" href="/article.css">
  <main>…</main>

  <link rel="stylesheet" href="/comment.css">
  <section class="comments">…</section>

  <link rel="stylesheet" href="/about-me.css">
  <section class="about-me">…</section>

  <link rel="stylesheet" href="/site-footer.css">
  <footer>…</footer>
</body>

Currently, Firefox and Edge/IE will load this progressively. Chrome will soon support this. The Safari team knows of this change and are expected to adopt it as well.

Mel Tajon

The Future of Loading CSS →