The default multi-page view of the spec is at http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/

(In reply to comment #1)
> The default multi-page view of the spec is at http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/

Let me reframe the problem, then:  I arrived at the spec via a google search for 
"html5 spec article"

With a google results page of:
https://www.google.com/search?num=20&hl=en&channel=fs&pws=0&q=html5+spec+article

Showing as the first result is this blurb:
HTML5
dev.w3.org/html5/spec/Overview.html
Editor's Draft 7 March 2012. Latest Published Version: http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/; Latest Editor's Draft: http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/Overview.html; Previous ...

Note that the link is to "spec/Overview.html", which immediately redirects to the all-in-one-page spec.  The apparent-ness of a connection between an overview and all the many sections of the spec on one page is tenuous at best.  Regardless, the first result in google -was- the single page spec.

Loading the page itself displays no easy alternative link to a sectioned document, at least above the fold.

The result is that the de facto standard for searching for information from the spec leads directly to a page that will take a very long time to load, and may even cause the browser itself to crash, without a clear alternative location to attempt to use after the first visible section has loaded.  

Overall, a pretty bad user experience, and one I expect will decrease use of the spec as a authoritative primary resource for new developers.



Other pages where the all-on-a-single-page-spec is the first link:
https://www.google.com/search?num=20&hl=en&channel=fs&pws=0&q=html5+spec+section
https://www.google.com/search?num=20&hl=en&channel=fs&pws=0&q=html5+spec+progress
https://www.google.com/search?num=20&hl=en&channel=fs&pws=0&q=html5+spec+time

The list goes on.

(In reply to comment #2)
> With a google results page of:
> https://www.google.com/search?num=20&hl=en&channel=fs&pws=0&q=html5+spec+article
> 
> Showing as the first result is this blurb:
> HTML5
> dev.w3.org/html5/spec/Overview.html
>
> Loading the page itself displays no easy alternative link to a sectioned
> document, at least above the fold.
> 
> The result is that the de facto standard for searching for information from the
> spec leads directly to a page that will take a very long time to load, and may
> even cause the browser itself to crash, without a clear alternative location to
> attempt to use after the first visible section has loaded.  
> 
> Other pages where the all-on-a-single-page-spec is the first link:
> https://www.google.com/search?num=20&hl=en&channel=fs&pws=0&q=html5+spec+section
> https://www.google.com/search?num=20&hl=en&channel=fs&pws=0&q=html5+spec+progress
> https://www.google.com/search?num=20&hl=en&channel=fs&pws=0&q=html5+spec+time
> 
> The list goes on.

OK, point taken. If we were to have the a dialog box pop up after a certain number of seconds, with a link to the multi-page version, would that be helpful or not? (What I mean is, something like what the WHATWG version of the spec at http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/ does)

I decided to run some timing tests, all performed with a pre-primed cache:

Computer specs:
notebook computer (Lenovo ideapad U350 notebook) running ubuntu linux, firefox 10.
This is pretty much the only website that I've seen give this computer trouble.  It's not a powerhouse by any means, but apart from heavy image processing, it never complains on any other sites.

Testing http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/
Full initial load:
70 seconds
(Shortcut to sectioned spec opened after the first 10 seconds, I ignored it to see how long the full spec would take to load.)

Loaded page and then clicked through to multi-page version:
60 seconds.
Second load test: 50 seconds.
20 seconds for initial page to load, another 30 seconds for it to respond to the click and 10 to load the next page.

http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/single-page.html
Firefox: 46 seconds to fully load.
Second load test: 56 seconds to fully load.
20 sec to display content on page.

Google chrome, 26 seconds to fully load.
Second time through, ~20 seconds to load "slow loading?" window, by the time it loaded the page was fully loaded.


Droid 2 Global, Android 2.2 browser:
110 seconds to display any content.
~150 seconds to finish loading the page.
(I actually recommend against testing this on mobile, it made mine very unresponsive)

Firefox loads google.com , in under a second, as usual.  Ditto msn.com.

So what does this suggest to me:  The "loading slowly?" box cuts down on the overall time slightly, and you get a more usable result out of it, but it's by no means a silver bullet.  I suspect that there's something going on here where web pages rarely use so much raw html or something so browsers aren't optimized for using memory efficiently with raw html, as I can, say, run flash and javascript games on this machine just fine.  Obviously avoiding that "all the spec in a single page" load would be ideal, and that may only be accomplishable via some kind of SEO or use of canonical urls targeted at specific elements.

(These tests were by no means empirical, and obviously this machine isn't a powerhouse, but I'm sure there are people using worse, and on mobile it pretty much thrashes the device.)

Thanks for the data. I (re)added the "loading slowly?" thing to the dev.w3.org version in a way that I think should cause it to be displayed in well less than 20 seconds. Please try it now and let me know if it's working any better.

Not at that computer at the moment, so I can't test the effectiveness that well, but from using this (higher powered desktop) computer the pop-up window comes up after 16 seconds of load time, so it A: exists, and B: pops up in short order.

Testing on Android browser:

Window pops up, but only for a few seconds, and then it goes away after a few seconds, for some reason, while the full single page spec continues loading for the next 30-50 seconds.  Perhaps the trigger for the removal of the window should be the completion of the page load, or is it already and the Android browser behavior is just buggy?

I'll also test on my lower-powered machine when I can.

EDITOR'S RESPONSE: This is an Editor's Response to your comment. If you are
satisfied with this response, please change the state of this bug to CLOSED. If
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   http://dev.w3.org/html5/decision-policy/decision-policy.html

Status: Rejected
Change Description: Spec can still be quite long
Rationale: 

In quick searches, the multi-page spec does come up frequently as the first search result. In any case, the multi-page/single page selection option is nearly the first thing in the opening boilerplate, so it should be easy to quickly get to the fast-loading split-up spec.