I just read an interesting alert for Web Designers by Khoi Vinh. Apparently, Google Web Accelerator is causing havoc on some HTML-based web applications with its prefetch behavior. By trying to prefetch all content linked from a page, it effectively ends up "clicking" on each link. On a normal web site, this would probably be safe enough. But what about a traditional (HTML-based) web application?

Imagine you're checking your web mail using an HTML-based webmail application. You log in. Google starts prefetching links, starting with the "Delete All" link! You get the picture.

Not surprisingly, SWF-based web applications (Rich Internet Applications or RIAs built using Flash, Flex, etc.) are not affected by this.

The Google Web Accelerator reveals flaws in traditional web applications article by Aral Balkan, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 UK: England License.