--- /dev/null	Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 1970 +0000
+++ b/README	Wed Jul 21 15:57:39 2010 -0400
@@ -0,0 +1,81 @@
+Pageload Test Component
+=======================
+
+Usage:
+
+  ./firefox -tp file:///path/to/manifest.txt [-tpargs...]
+
+See ./firefox -help for other arguments.
+
+
+Manifest file format
+====================
+
+Comments in the manifest file start with a #.  Each line may be:
+
+* a URL (absolute or relative to the manifest)
+
+This URL is added to the list of tests.
+
+* one or more flags, followed by whitespace, followed by a URL
+
+The only flag supported currently is '%', which indicates that
+a test will do its own timing.  (See Self-timing Tests below.)
+
+* "include" followed by whitespace, followed by a URL
+
+Parse the given manifest file.
+
+Self-timing Tests
+=================
+
+Most timing tests are interested in timing how long it takes the page
+to load; that is, from the start of page loading until the 'load'
+event is dispatched.  By default, this is what the pageloader will
+time.  However, if a test URL has the % flag, the test is expected to
+report its own timing.  For this purpose, the pageloader will provide
+a function named "tpRecordTime" in the test's global object that it
+should call once it has performed whatever timing it wants to do.
+The given value will be used as the timing result for this test.
+
+Output format
+=============
+
+The result is a dump to stdout via dump() --
+browser.dom.window.dump.enabled must be set to true in the profile.  A
+number of output formats can be specified via the -tpformat command
+line option, currently 'js', 'text', and 'tinderbox' are supported.
+
+Sample 'js' format output:
+
+([({page:"1280x1024-PNG/index.html", value:133, stddev:20.049937655763422}),({page:"bugzilla.mozilla.org/index.html", value:233, stddev:36.66606060105176}),({page:"espn.go.com/index.html", value:117.6, stddev:1.2}),({page:"home.netscape.com/index.html", value:97.8, stddev:47.41898354035017}),])
+
+Sample 'text' format output:
+
+============================================================
+    Page                                     mean  stdd   min   max raw
+  0 1280x1024-PNG/index.html                  133    20   121   297 297,173,122,121,124,125
+  1 bugzilla.mozilla.org/index.html           233    37   192   395 395,273,223,192,198,279
+  2 espn.go.com/index.html                    118     1   116   254 254,117,116,119,119,117
+  3 home.netscape.com/index.html               98    47     3   124 3,121,120,124,124,121
+============================================================
+
+Sample 'tinderbox' format output:
+
+__start_tp_report
+_x_x_mozilla_page_load,778.5,NaN,NaN
+_x_x_mozilla_page_load_details,avgmedian|778.5|average|766.75|minimum|NaN|maximum|NaN|stddev|NaN|0;file:///c:/proj/mozilla-cvs/perf/tp2/base/www.cnn.com/index.html;778.5;766.75;722;1027;1027;788;777;722;780|...
+__end_tp_report
+
+Note that the minimum, maximum, stddev are not calculated; they're
+always reported as NaN.  (They were the minimum and maximum values of
+any sampled value, and the standard deviation across all sampled
+values -- not very useful.)
+
+TODO
+====
+
+* Command line option to choose whether to run with or without browser chrome.  Currently runs without.
+
+* Tinderbox-dropping style output
+  * better yet would be to teach tinderbox about JSON