Last modified: 2007-01-04 22:09:33 UTC
Tim pointed out on IRC that rendering takes way longer than diffing, so diff loading time would be greatly speeded if diffs didn't display the page below the diff. Furthermore, in the case of very long pages, user agents may experience unnecessary slowness or jerkiness due to the amount of content that needs to be rendered. And if you diff something, do you really expect or want the newer version to be below the diff? Obviously implementation would be trivial if you just cut out the page. However, in case some people want the rendered page, it might be a good idea to have an extra URL parameter or preference setting to show the rendered page, which would be hidden by default.
Personally, I often use the rendered version of the page when viewing diffs. This is particularly the case when the diff contains complicated markup, or when it is the response to a previous post (e.g. on a talk page, or on meta). I will scroll down to the location of the diff in the rendered page to get the full context and see what is actually there, before scrolling back to the top and doing the same for the next diff. Please do not remove this functionality! I would be happy for a new preference to be added, so long as the 'on' setting works as it currently does (as opposed to requiring an extra click each time you want to view the rendered page, or having to flick between windows/tabs).
Personally, I keep a separate tab open anyway whenever I'm viewing more than a couple of diffs, because I generally need a second tab open to respond section by section anyway (as I only usually view a large number of diffs on talk pages), and I don't want to lose my place in the diff regardless. It seems like a user preference is the logical way to go, then, perhaps defaulting to off but with a message on the diff page for a couple of months telling you how to change it back.
*** Bug 7770 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 3446 ***
