Albatross browser request merging depends upon the functionality provided by the <al-option> tag. If you do no use this tag in applications then the standard request merging will not work.
Currently <al-option> tags must be immediate children of the enclosing <al-select> (5.2.3) tag otherwise they are ignored. The following illustrates the limitation.
>>> import albatross
>>> ctx = albatross.SimpleContext('.')
>>> albatross.Template(ctx, '<magic>', '''
... <al-select name="sel">
... <al-option>I am here!</al-option>
... <al-if expr="1 == 1">
... <al-option>Where did I go?</al-option>
... </al-if>
... </al-select whitespace>
... ''').to_html(ctx)
>>> ctx.flush_content()
<select name="sel"><option>I am here!</option></select>