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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

#341

Post by supergauntlet »

dclowd9901 wrote: post #314
r1ch wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's still 84 KB of highly compressed javascript code to parse and execute. Even on a 4.4 GHz CPU core and a cached request, jquery takes upwards of 22ms to parse - that's just parsing - not even executing anything! Now add a bunch of other frameworks and utility scripts and your 100ms budget for feeling "fast" is gone before you even reach the HTML content.

How long does it take you to start Word versus loading Google docs? Has everyone gone insane? The web is absolutely incredible and JavaScript is absolutely killing it as a portable application language. Remember the dark days of flash? Stop complaining.

This is disingenuous - he's obviously referring to image and text articles, not complicated web apps. Obviously such a website is going to take longer to load, just as complex native applications take a while to load. But to claim that because Word takes a while that it's okay that A WEBSITE WITH LITERALLY JUST TEXT AND IMAGES is 18 megs big and takes 6000 ms to load is fucking stupid.

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

#342

Post by MustardTiger »

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…

>Web browsers have more or less become mini operating systems

I wish. No, web browsers have become massively bloated operating systems. And since they didn't intend to, they are terrible at it. You have little to no control over anything.

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

#343

Post by stepanhruda »

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…

Isn't WebAssembly a big step towards this?

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

#344

Post by ArkyBeagle »

detaro wrote: post #238
ArkyBeagle wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which network and which latency? My local network runs audio way below the Haas limit - I can record over the network without incurring any latency penalty.

Comparing local-network performance with "random" cross-internet traffic IMHO isn't very useful, because there is a wide range for internet latency. My wired desktop gets DNS responses from 8.8.8.8 nearly as if it were in my network, in way under 10 ms, ping responses in 2 ms or so. Accessing websites hosted in e.g. Korea takes >100 ms. Add a congested wireless connection somewhere (WLAN or mobile network) and you ca…

Perhaps I should have been more explicit - comparing local audio traffic to local web traffic, there's a heck of a lot of difference. That would be the stacks.

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

#345

Post by AndyKelley »

I wanted to see how one of my personal projects compared, so I looked at Groove Basin.

Groove Basin [1] is an open source music player server. It has a sophisticated web-based client with the ability to retag, label, create playlists, stream, browse the library, chat with other users, upload new music, and import music by URL.

I just checked the payload size of a cold load, and it's 68 KB.

I'll just keep doing my thing over here.

[1]: https://github.com/andrewrk/groovebasin

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

#346

Post by cbd1984 »

timr wrote: post #339
dasil003 wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"The web is the first truly cross-platform development environment." No it isn't. Not even close. It's maybe the first cross-platform development "environment" of which millenials are widely aware. But it's only an "environment" in the most ecological sense -- it's a collection of ugly hacks, each building upon the other, with the sort of complexity and incomprehensibility and interdependency of organisms you'd expec…

> But it's only an "environment" in the most ecological sense -- it's a collection of ugly hacks, each building upon the other, with the sort of complexity and incomprehensibility and interdependency of organisms you'd expect to find in a dung heap.

That's what every practical environment is. Only the environments which never get used remain "pristine" in the architectural sense, because you cannot fundamentally re-architect an ecology once you have actual users beyond the development team and a few toy test loads.

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

#347

Post by Razengan »

abiox wrote: post #313
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…

> Android/iOS/OSX/Windows should just work on a better standard mechanism to deliver native apps instead one might imagine that after these competing and incompatible native apps become a headache for crossplatform pursuits, a new platform will emerge that provides a uniform toolset for developing (mostly) native-platform independent applications. perhaps this toolset will utilize a declarative system for specifying…

Well, why do native apps for all the popular websites exist? Surely nobody would need or download the FB/Twitter/Reddit/etc. apps on mobile or desktop if the website itself was the optimum experience...

My point is that even with the web the developers are still going to make the native clients, so either the web has to become good enough for the need for native apps to disappear eventually, and the browser becomes the OS, or native apps become convenient enough to completely replace webapps.

Of course if the browser becomes the OS then the end result would be the same as the suggestion in my original post.

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

#348

Post by Razengan »

mirimir wrote: post #318
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…

Maybe because I don't want a bloody app for every site that I browse? Apps of that sort are just dumb. And huge security risks.

Of course webpages would still be around and needed, and desired for more basic content, but by the time you want to offer something as complex or regularly used as Facebook or Twitter or Reddit or Soundcloud and so on, it'd be better as a native app, as the current native clients for each of those websites already prove.

I mean the UI is undeniably smoother, and they can seamlessly hook into the OS notifications systems and better multitasking (for example I see separate entries for each native app in the OS's task switcher, but have to go through the extra step of switching into a browser then its tabs for webapps) and energy saving and everything else.

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

#349

Post by mirimir »

Razengan wrote: post #348
mirimir wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe because I don't want a bloody app for every site that I browse? Apps of that sort are just dumb. And huge security risks.

Of course webpages would still be around and needed, and desired for more basic content, but by the time you want to offer something as complex or regularly used as Facebook or Twitter or Reddit or Soundcloud and so on, it'd be better as a native app, as the current native clients for each of those websites already prove. I mean the UI is undeniably smoother, and they can seamlessly hook into the OS notifications sys…

I don't want seemless and hooked. I want isolated, and sandboxed.

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

#350

Post by dasil003 »

timr wrote: post #339
dasil003 wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"The web is the first truly cross-platform development environment." No it isn't. Not even close. It's maybe the first cross-platform development "environment" of which millenials are widely aware. But it's only an "environment" in the most ecological sense -- it's a collection of ugly hacks, each building upon the other, with the sort of complexity and incomprehensibility and interdependency of organisms you'd expec…

> No it isn't. Not even close. It's maybe the first cross-platform development "environment" of which millenials are widely aware.

Name one then instead of this patronizing BS.

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