The web sucks if you have a slow connection
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Re: The web sucks if you have a slow connection
#2Slow connection is okay, it's just slow. Now spotty connection, or high latency, that's the killer.
Webapps that make 50 requests to download all the JavaScript and CSS and talk to the API and get 3 images really really really don't behave well when 12 of those 50 requests fail or take 30 seconds to complete. Honestly, I'd rather have slow internet than packet lossy internet.
Still don't know why, but my Xfinity router routinely gets into a state where it drops the first 10 or so packets of any request. The first `ping 8.8.8.8` takes 3 seconds, the rest are the usual 0.1 second. Terrible.
Re: The web sucks if you have a slow connection
#3Sad thing is that most of the web sucks on rather fast connections too. Pages being almost 5mb of data, making multiple dozens of requests for librairies and ads. Ads updating in the background, consuming evermore data.
I don't notice it much on my PC, since I've got a FTTH connection, but on LTE and 3G, it's very noticeable. Enough that I avoid certain websites. And that's nowhere near slow by his standards.
I do agree that everyone would benefit from slimmer websites.
Re: The web sucks if you have a slow connection
#4Wow, really? Who knew overuse of JS and fancy graphical effects where they're not needed could negatively impact user experience? Could it be that all the web devs using 20 CDNs, cramming 900 frameworks, 100 externally provided analytics, advertisement providers and fancy layout eye-candy were wrong all along? What a surprise!
I'm already sick when I have to visit a webpage and it won't even load ANYTHING if I don't enable scripts on it. At least load the god damn text, I don't care if it'll look like trash, just don't show me a blank page...
The irony is that everyone calls for people to not use Flash, and then they go out of their way to recreate the abysmal experience without it, so really nothing changed as far as UX goes. Remember when pages didn't load at all unless you had flash installed? Well here's some nostalgia for you, won't load unless you run all the JS on the page and then you have to "enjoy" a bloated joke of a website, but Jesus does it have eye-candy!!!
Re: The web sucks if you have a slow connection
#5I'm torn here, in a way. On the one hand light page weights and other such optimizations make the internet better for everyone, on the other, there's a certain point where designing your product to target 3 decades ago (we forget 1990 was 27 years ago) gets a little absurd.
I think the greater tragedy is not that the web is bloated (an issue for sure), but that so much of America has internet worse than 3rd world mobile 2G.
Re: The web sucks if you have a slow connection
#6Bloat: its not just for operating systems.
Re: The web sucks if you have a slow connection
#7Not related to the contents of the article, but please add a max-width styling to your paragraphs. 40em or so is good.
Re: The web sucks if you have a slow connection
#8you don't need to travel from Wisconsin to Washington to experience a slow internet connection.
Try any mainstream commute on the South West Trains Wimbledon to Waterloo (London) and you'll a) still get blackouts for about 1/4 of the 25 minute trip (this is one of the most densely populated areas in Europe - no excuses) and b) at 3 of the 4 stations you'll stop at, your vaunted 4g connection will drop to 1998 speeds due to contention. I generally curse the complex sites in these situations because you'll easily be waiting 30-90 seconds (firmly in your heatmap's red zone) for full load at least once per commute.
Incidentally, kudos on perfectly communicative yet lightweight web page (50Kb).
Re: The web sucks if you have a slow connection
#9Well 3G is as low as you can get somewhere deep in the woods, not really a problem...
Re: The web sucks if you have a slow connection
#10Joey Hess (joeyh) has been writing about this for a long time (because he uses dial-up at his home). Here is a recent thread about a 2016 blog post on this: