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The average size of Web pages is now the average size of a Doom install

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Re: The average size of Web pages is now the average size of a Doom install

#321

Post by dasil003 »

Razengan wrote: post #304
jessriedel wrote: post #15

I'm skeptical that developers talking to each other about how bad web bloat is will change anything. They will still face the same incentives in terms of ad revenue, costs of optimization, etc. Here's a random idea that might have more potential: create an adblocker browser plugin that also colors URLs based on how slow they are expected to load, e.g., smoothly from blue to red. The scores could be centrally calculat…

I think a more radical departure is needed. It's about time to acknowledge that the web is increasingly being used to access full-blown applications more often than "webpages." Web browsers have more or less become mini operating systems, running elaborate virtual machines. There's way too much complexity for everyone involved — from web devs and browser devs to the users and the people who maintain the standards, th…

I disagree.

This is a backward-looking argument which ignores the unique benefits of the web which made it inevitable that it would evolve into an application platform, regardless of how tortured the results may feel.

The web is the first truly cross-platform development environment. It is not controlled by a single vendor, and anyone implementing a new computing device must support the web (just stop for a second and consider from a historical perspective what a monumental accomplishment that is). Furthermore, it allows casual access of content and applications without any installation requirement. It comes with a reasonable security model baked-in, which, while imperfect, gets far more attention than most OS vendor sandboxing schemes. Last but not least, the web's primitive is a simple page, which is far more useful than an app as a primitive—for every app someone installs they probably visit 100 web pages for information that they would never consider installing an app for.

I agree that the web is sort of abused as an application platform, the problem is there is no central planning method which will achieve its benefits in more app-oriented fashion. No company has the power to create a standard for binary app deliverables that will have anywhere near the reach of the web. And even if one could consolidate the power and mastermind such a thing, I feel like it would run squarely into Gall's Law and have twice as many warts as the web.

Re: The average size of Web pages is now the average size of a Doom install

#323

Post by PavlovsCat »

Razengan wrote: post #304
jessriedel wrote: post #15

I'm skeptical that developers talking to each other about how bad web bloat is will change anything. They will still face the same incentives in terms of ad revenue, costs of optimization, etc. Here's a random idea that might have more potential: create an adblocker browser plugin that also colors URLs based on how slow they are expected to load, e.g., smoothly from blue to red. The scores could be centrally calculat…

I think a more radical departure is needed. It's about time to acknowledge that the web is increasingly being used to access full-blown applications more often than "webpages." Web browsers have more or less become mini operating systems, running elaborate virtual machines. There's way too much complexity for everyone involved — from web devs and browser devs to the users and the people who maintain the standards, th…

> It's about time to acknowledge that the web is increasingly being used to access full-blown applications more often than "webpages."

I think that is orthogonal to bloat. Sure, a complex app will always have more to load and compute than a static page with one blog post on it, but that doesn't mean an app can't be bloated on top of that, just like pages with just a single blog post on them can be bloated.

Re: The average size of Web pages is now the average size of a Doom install

#324

Post by tammer »

Razengan wrote: post #304
jessriedel wrote: post #15

I'm skeptical that developers talking to each other about how bad web bloat is will change anything. They will still face the same incentives in terms of ad revenue, costs of optimization, etc. Here's a random idea that might have more potential: create an adblocker browser plugin that also colors URLs based on how slow they are expected to load, e.g., smoothly from blue to red. The scores could be centrally calculat…

I think a more radical departure is needed. It's about time to acknowledge that the web is increasingly being used to access full-blown applications more often than "webpages." Web browsers have more or less become mini operating systems, running elaborate virtual machines. There's way too much complexity for everyone involved — from web devs and browser devs to the users and the people who maintain the standards, th…

Not sure about the conclusion but you're absolutely right about the problem. This is why the social networks are eating such a great percentage of screen time: pure content, outside of web applications, is better suited in a single format rather than the superfluous loud magazines that currently pepper the web.

Perhaps rather than native apps what we need is the return of gopher. I think that's what Apple's trying to do with Apple News.

Re: The average size of Web pages is now the average size of a Doom install

#325

Post by kirubakaran »

K0nserv wrote: post #264
recursive wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The setting isn't broken. It's not an add-on. It's BMFW's fault, and it's fair to blame it for this. BMFW sets a foreground color, and does not set a background color. Here are the settings in stock Firefox. http://imgur.com/h4SmKYs

The author even addresses the fact that they didn't set the background on the site. "I would've even made this site's background a nice #EEEEEE if I wasn't so focused on keeping declarations to a lean 7 fucking lines." Also the whole site is satire which you seemed to have missed

> the whole site is satire which you seemed to have missed

You seem to have missed it too :-)

> I have taken a lot of inspiration from … http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/

Re: The average size of Web pages is now the average size of a Doom install

#327

Post by PavlovsCat »

nostrademons wrote: post #250
kevincox wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear this argument a lot, and I very much disagree. Now you have browser vendors having to device which libraries are "popular" and shipping them in the initial download of the browser. It turns out that this technology already exists in a much better form. It's called cache. The problem is that almost everyone hosts their own version of jQuery. If everyone simply linked the "canonical" version of jQuery (the CDN l…

> If everyone simply linked the "canonical" version of jQuery (the CDN link is right on their site) then requiring jQuery will be effectively free because it will be in everyone's cache. It's not, though. I ran this experiment when I tried to get Google Search to adopt JQuery (back in 2010). About 13% of visits (then) hit Google with a clean cache. This is Google Search, which at the time was the most visited website…

> The vast majority is filled up with ad-tracking garbage and Facebook videos.

There is the problem then, and the solution? I for one don't make bloated sites nilly-willy, I suck at what I do but at least I do love to fiddle and tweak for the sake of it, not because anyone else might even notice; and I like that in websites and prefer to visit those, too. Clean, no-BS, no hype "actual websites". So I'd be rather annoyed if my browser brought some more stuff I don't need along just because the web is now a marketing machine and people need to deploy their oh so important landing pages with stock photos and stock text and stock product in 3 seconds. It was fine before that, and I think a web with hardly any money to be made in it would still work fine, it would still develop. The main difference is that it would be mostly developed by people who you'd have to pay to stay away, instead of the other way around. I genuinely feel we're cheating ourselves out of the information age we could have, that is, one with informed humans.

Re: The average size of Web pages is now the average size of a Doom install

#328

Post by jakub_g »

nostrademons wrote: post #250
kevincox wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear this argument a lot, and I very much disagree. Now you have browser vendors having to device which libraries are "popular" and shipping them in the initial download of the browser. It turns out that this technology already exists in a much better form. It's called cache. The problem is that almost everyone hosts their own version of jQuery. If everyone simply linked the "canonical" version of jQuery (the CDN l…

> If everyone simply linked the "canonical" version of jQuery (the CDN link is right on their site) then requiring jQuery will be effectively free because it will be in everyone's cache. It's not, though. I ran this experiment when I tried to get Google Search to adopt JQuery (back in 2010). About 13% of visits (then) hit Google with a clean cache. This is Google Search, which at the time was the most visited website…

Interesting data, thanks for sharing.

On top of that, while everyone uses jquery, everyone uses different version of it (say, 1.5.1, 1.5.2, ... hundreds of different versions in total probably).

Re: The average size of Web pages is now the average size of a Doom install

#329

Post by fudged71 »

StavrosK wrote: post #135
jessriedel wrote: post #15

I'm skeptical that developers talking to each other about how bad web bloat is will change anything. They will still face the same incentives in terms of ad revenue, costs of optimization, etc. Here's a random idea that might have more potential: create an adblocker browser plugin that also colors URLs based on how slow they are expected to load, e.g., smoothly from blue to red. The scores could be centrally calculat…

People have an innate metric for "this thing is slow", it's when lots of time passes between its start and end. Why is color-coding more evident than our own perception of time?

The problem is the same as "Downforeveryoneorjustme". Just because a site is loading slow once or twice doesn't necessarily mean that it's the site's fault, it could be any number of issues. But by crowdsourcing this data the truth is revealed.

Re: The average size of Web pages is now the average size of a Doom install

#330

Post by [deleted] »

dasil003 wrote: post #321
Razengan wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a more radical departure is needed. It's about time to acknowledge that the web is increasingly being used to access full-blown applications more often than "webpages." Web browsers have more or less become mini operating systems, running elaborate virtual machines. There's way too much complexity for everyone involved — from web devs and browser devs to the users and the people who maintain the standards, th…

I disagree. This is a backward-looking argument which ignores the unique benefits of the web which made it inevitable that it would evolve into an application platform, regardless of how tortured the results may feel. The web is the first truly cross-platform development environment. It is not controlled by a single vendor, and anyone implementing a new computing device must support the web (just stop for a second an…

[deleted]
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