Why do some page requests hang when fetching Javascript/image assets using Safari and Apache 2.2.3?

Question

Some of the users of our Ruby on Rails app have complained that page requests occasionally hang indefinitely under Safari (a couple have noticed it under Firefox, but it\'s over

Answer 1

Some things that might help, in no particular order:

1. Use asset hosts, they are extremely easy to setup: http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActionView/Helpers/AssetTagHelper.html
2. Make sure that Javascript is loaded near the bottom of the page, when possible.
3. Make sure that Apache/Nginx/whatever correctly sets the Expires-In HTTP header.
4. Run Google Speed Page under Firefox, this will provide lots of good info.