viewready

Viewready is a term used in software development to describe the state of an asset, component, or dataset that is prepared and safe to present to a user. It is not a formal standard but a pragmatic concept used across disciplines such as web UI, media streaming, and content delivery to indicate that no further preparation is required before rendering or playback. A viewready item has resolved dependencies, valid formatting, and the necessary metadata to be interpreted by the consumer.

In front-end development, a component or page is considered viewready once required data has loaded, client-side processing completed, and layout calculations are stable. This typically includes ensuring accessibility attributes, error handling, and performance optimizations like preloading critical resources and reducing layout thrash. The viewready state can be used to toggle between loading indicators and the actual UI.

In streaming and digital media, viewready describes assets that are encoded, packaged, and indexed for immediate playback or display. For example, a video file may be deemed viewready after initialization of the player, decoding pipelines are set, and the manifest provides all necessary segments and metadata.

Common approaches to achieving viewready include prefetching, skeleton screens, progressive hydration, caching strategies, and feature flags. Testing focuses on ensuring proper state transitions from loading to viewready in various network or device conditions.

Origin and usage: Because there is no formal standard, the exact meaning of viewready may vary between teams and platforms. It is sometimes used interchangeably with terms like 'ready to render' or 'display-ready'.