Between versions 4.0 to 4.2 there were significant enhancements to the Surf framework and deliberate refactoring of logic from the FreeMarker template into the JavaScript controller of the Share web scripts. Improvements to page load performance were achieved by reducing HTTP requests through the following methods:
- Using MD5 checksums to allow browsers to safely cache resources indefinitely (see Surf Framework).
- Dynamically aggregating JavaScript and CSS dependencies into fewer resources (see Surf Dependency Aggregation).
- Encoding images directly into CSS files (see Surf CSS Data Image Support).
All of these features are leveraged in the improvements and this makes it easier to produce faster, more reliable pages, in less time for Alfresco Share web applications.