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YSlow (Legacy)

YSlow: Avoid empty src or href

Overview

Empty src or href attributes can cause multiple problems.

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Details

You might expect a browser to do nothing when it encounters an element with an empty src or href attribute, however this is not the case in a considerable number of browsers. As of 2016, IE and Edge will both make a request to the page’s parent directory, while Firefox and older Webkit browsers (like Safari) will re-request the page itself! This behavior could potentially corrupt user data, waste server computing cycles generating a page that is never viewed, or in the worst case, cripple your servers by sending them a large amount of unexpected traffic.

Problem Element–Attribute Pairs in Modern Browsers

According to our research, these three pairs will cause needless requests in IE 10+ & all versions of Edge:

  <html manifest="">
  <embed src="">
  <object data="">

Likewise, these two appear to affect all versions of Firefox:

  <video poster="">
  <script src="">

Additional Problem Pairs in Older Browsers

While their later versions aren’t affected, Safari < 5.1, IE < 9, iOS < 6, and Android < 4.4 all make needless requests in the presence of many of these element–attribute pairs:

  <link rel="stylesheet" href="">
  <img src="">
  <input type="image" src="">
  <audio src="">
  <video src="">
  <source src="">

Summary

Content
High
Easy

YSlow recommends:

Empty image tags occur more often than you might expect. They can appear in two form:

  1. Straight HTML
    <img src="">
  2. JavaScript
    var img = new Image();
    img.src = "";

Both forms cause the same effect: the browser makes another request to your server.

  • Internet Explorer makes a request to the directory in which the page is located.
  • Safari and Chrome make a request to the actual page itself.
  • Firefox 3 and earlier versions behave the same as Safari and Chrome, but version 3.5 addressed this issue (bug 444931) and no longer sends a request.
  • Opera does not do anything when an empty image src is encountered.

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