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The web sucks if you have a slow connection

danluu.com

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Re: The web sucks if you have a slow connection

#41

Post by freehunter »

Someone1234 wrote: post #21

I found out this the hard way. T-Mobile used to offer 2G internet speeds internationally in 100+ countries included in Simple Choice subscriptions. 2G is limited to 50 kbit/s, that's slower than a 56K modem. While this absolutely fine for background processes (e.g. notifications) and even checking your email, most websites never loaded at these speeds. Resources would time out, and the adverts alone could easily exce…

Yeah when I used to run over my T-Mobile data allotment (in the US) and they dropped me to whatever speed they throttle you to when your "high speed" data is gone, Google Maps wouldn't load, Facebook wouldn't load, YouTube wouldn't load. I remember using all of those things back in the days when a 3G connection was a luxury, back when Windows was the best smartphone platform. What happened between then and now that suddenly nothing works?

Re: The web sucks if you have a slow connection

#44

Post by chickenfries »

minikites wrote: post #30
jmcdiesel wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a matter of whether the internet is global, its who your audience is... if you audience is primarily in developed nations, then the rest of the world isn't much of an issue.

If you're running a purely domestic web store, maybe, but people in developing nations are not that different from people in developed nations, they can be just as interested in a a wide variety of topics, that's what makes the internet so appealing and wonderful.

Sure, we're humans and all, but jmcdiesel isn't saying that people in the developing world aren't interested in similar things, just that many businesses do have audiences which are limited to certain countries.

Much of the internet is a business, not a passion project. There are plenty of businesses that are completely OK with being inaccessible to users on 2g/3g in the developing world.

Re: The web sucks if you have a slow connection

#45

Post by thinkloop »

meriobrudar wrote: post #4

Wow, 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…

JavaScript is not the enemy here, it's very possible and easy to make full SPAs with judicious use of micro libs, lazy loading of images/assets, non-blocking styles/fonts/code, and ad-free. The problem is just not caring or knowing - misuse of the technology, rather than the technology itself.

Re: The web sucks if you have a slow connection

#46

Post by iLoch »

ferbivore wrote: post #35
iLoch wrote: post #16

> Why shouldn’t the web work with dialup or a dialup-like connection? Because we have the capability to work beyond that capacity now in most cases. That's like asking "why shouldn't we allow horses on our highways?" > Pretty much everything I consume online is plain text, even if it happens to be styled with images and fancy javascript. No doubt, pretty much everyone who works on web apps for long enough understands…

I don't think the point is that everything should be human parse-able. But most things on the web are not complex applications. Dan Luu isn't trying to use Google Maps over HSCSD, he's trying to read hypertext blogs and Twitter. Do you seriously think Twitter qualifies as a "complex application"?

The concept behind Twitter? No. Twitter? Maybe..? They have a user experience they want to deliver to 9X% of their users, so they optimize for that. For most of Twitter's users, their connection speeds aren't the limiting factor in their experience. If you optimize for the lowest common denominator, that 9X% almost certainly gets a worse experience.

Re: The web sucks if you have a slow connection

#47

Post by mynameisvlad »

minikites wrote: post #30
jmcdiesel wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a matter of whether the internet is global, its who your audience is... if you audience is primarily in developed nations, then the rest of the world isn't much of an issue.

If you're running a purely domestic web store, maybe, but people in developing nations are not that different from people in developed nations, they can be just as interested in a a wide variety of topics, that's what makes the internet so appealing and wonderful.

Even if you're running an international web store, shipping to developing countries plus the increased rate of fraud and different payment technologies generally mean that you're not keen to expand to those places anytime soon.

Re: The web sucks if you have a slow connection

#48

Post by Symbiote »

atbentley wrote: post #34

> if we just look at the three top 35 sites tested in this post, two send uncompressed javascript over the wire, two redirect the bare domain to the www subdomain, and two send a lot of extraneous information by not compressing images So uncompressed javascript and images are bad, but I thought apex domain to www subdomain redirection was an optimisation as the apex domain can often only point to a single server but…

The apex domain can only use A records, i.e. point directly to an IP address. It can have multiple A records, ebay.com does so:

  host ebay.com
  ebay.com has address 66.135.216.190
  ebay.com has address 66.211.162.12
  ebay.com has address 66.211.181.123
  ebay.com has address 66.211.185.25
  ebay.com has address 66.211.160.86
  ebay.com has address 66.135.209.52
Without a CNAME (alias) record, eBay need to control the DNS resolution. Most people using a CDN don't, so they must use a subdomain.

Re: The web sucks if you have a slow connection

#49

Post by Jakob »

Someone1234 wrote: post #21

I found out this the hard way. T-Mobile used to offer 2G internet speeds internationally in 100+ countries included in Simple Choice subscriptions. 2G is limited to 50 kbit/s, that's slower than a 56K modem. While this absolutely fine for background processes (e.g. notifications) and even checking your email, most websites never loaded at these speeds. Resources would time out, and the adverts alone could easily exce…

Disable JavaScript. You’ll be surprised at how most of the web still works and is much faster. Longer battery life on mobile, too.

Re: The web sucks if you have a slow connection

#50

Post by whiddershins »

After spending a month in Mexico, including regions with spotty/inconsistent service from one minute to the next, I think the problem goes deeper.

Browsers are IMO terrible at mitigating intermittent and very slow connections. Nothing I browse seems to be effectively cached other than Hacker News. Browsers just give up when a connection disappears, rather than holding what they have and trying again in a little bit.

The only thing I used which kept working was DropBox. DropBox never gives up, it just keeps trying to sync and eventually it will succeed if there is any possibility of doing so.

I understand the assumptions of the web are different than an app like Dropbox, but I think it might be a good idea to reexamine those assumptions.

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