[wp-trac] [WordPress Trac] #63032: Adjust speculative loading selector exclusions to allow for classes to apply on parent element

[WordPress Trac]

#63032: Adjust speculative loading selector exclusions to allow for classes to
apply on parent element
-------------------------+------------------------------------------
 Reporter:  flixos90     |      Owner:  flixos90
     Type:  enhancement  |     Status:  assigned
 Priority:  normal       |  Milestone:  6.8
Component:  General      |    Version:
 Severity:  normal       |   Keywords:  needs-patch needs-unit-tests
  Focuses:  performance  |
-------------------------+------------------------------------------
 The speculative loading implementation in Core, as one of the lesser
 discussed features, currently excludes any links from prerendering that
 use a `no-prerender` class on them, and it excludes any links from
 prefetching that use either a `no-prefetch` or a `no-prerender` class on
 them.

 In the current implementation, this may be beneficial for some plugins or
 classic themes, but it misses out on another valuable opportunity, which
 is block themes. Many blocks allow adding a custom class to the block
 wrapper element itself, and this would be a perfect candidate to allow
 advanced end user customization of speculative loading. But there is no UI
 to add a class to a link (`a`) specifically.

 While WordPress Core's philosophy is "decisions, not options", the UI to
 add a class is in itself already considered advanced, so allowing it to
 control this kind of exclusion would make sense.

 And it's an easy win: All we need to do is to also allow the exclusion for
 `.no-prefetch a` and `.no-prerender a`, instead of just `.no-prefetch` and
 `.no-prerender`.

 Also see the related discussion in
 https://github.com/WordPress/performance/issues/1156#issuecomment-2616505930.
 It includes additional classes, but those are out of scope for this ticket
 as they require more discussion. This ticket is merely about "fixing" the
 current exclusions to be controllable via the block class UI.

-- 
Ticket URL: <https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/63032>
WordPress Trac <https://core.trac.wordpress.org/>
WordPress publishing platform