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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

#151

Post by yellowapple »

gimagon wrote: post #133

Could a lighter weight website serve more users for the same dollar of bandwidth as bloated website? It seems to me there's a business strategy, where rather than pushing for more ads, a website pushes for lighter weight and promises its few advertisers a wider audience.

I actually had a similar idea about radio stations.

Currently, FM radio stations are so typically clogged with commercials that I just switch back and forth whenever the music stops. The sole exception in my area is KZTQ "Bob FM", which has a neat policy: 60 minutes (ish) of nonstop music (aside from their normal station ID stuff), followed by at most two or three commercials, then repeat. I've found that the commercial breaks are short enough that I'm more willing to actually listen to them, since I know that the music will be back in less than a minute or so.

I reckon that has a significant value-add in terms of ad impressions, and thus could offset the normally-decreased ad revenue by charging more per ad.

Re: The web sucks if you have a slow connection

#152

Post by khedoros1 »

andrewstuart2 wrote: post #38

Did most of the web suck when we were on 28k or 56k modems? I'd argue that it didn't, and yet even with the light weight of pages back then, it was incredibly slower than today's pages (even heavy ones) load over our much-faster connections. So really, I think what the author is observing is that having experienced high-speed reliable connections , it is very disappointing to move to a much slower connection. For the…

> Did most of the web suck when we were on 28k or 56k modems?

I'd argue that it did, just like having 32MB of RAM and Windows 95 did. But almost everyone was in the same place, including the people making content for websites we went to, so page load times were as good for their minimal experience as the technology would let them be. Even in 2002, my family was still on dial-up, and it sucked because I knew how much was out there that just wasn't feasible for me to access.

Re: The web sucks if you have a slow connection

#153

Post by snarfy »

antisthenes wrote: post #124
swanson wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is the same anecdote: http://blog.chriszacharias.com/page-weight-matters

One wonders how a user that takes 2 minutes to load 98KB is actually able to watch a video. Even by the most optimistic estimations, a video that is a few minutes long at 480p will weigh in at 10 megabytes, meaning it'll take them OVER 3 HOURS to download the entire thing. You would probably be able to browse (slowly), read comments, but not actually do much else.

I'm guessing you've never downloaded porn from usenet over a 2400 baud modem.

Re: The web sucks if you have a slow connection

#155

Post by swiley »

antisthenes wrote: post #124
swanson wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is the same anecdote: http://blog.chriszacharias.com/page-weight-matters

One wonders how a user that takes 2 minutes to load 98KB is actually able to watch a video. Even by the most optimistic estimations, a video that is a few minutes long at 480p will weigh in at 10 megabytes, meaning it'll take them OVER 3 HOURS to download the entire thing. You would probably be able to browse (slowly), read comments, but not actually do much else.

When I had a slow connection I loved tools like youtube-dl because they didn't expect to be used interactively. Network tools like browsers that just assume they can monopolize your time are probably the most frustating things in these situations.

Re: The web sucks if you have a slow connection

#156

Post by emodendroket »

rhizome wrote: post #119
dba7dba wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny anecdote about the freeway system of southern California. When they were initially planning the system in 1930s, 40s, they were planning to have the system in use for next 100 years. So they built over sized roads (like 10 lane freeway, without having to stop for traffic lights, that go THROUGH center of a major city). When the system proved so car friendly, more and more people moved in and bought cars. Within…

Braess' Paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braess'_paradox

I always wonder about this. You have to reach saturation eventually, right?

Re: The web sucks if you have a slow connection

#157

Post by emondi »

antisthenes wrote: post #124
swanson wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is the same anecdote: http://blog.chriszacharias.com/page-weight-matters

One wonders how a user that takes 2 minutes to load 98KB is actually able to watch a video. Even by the most optimistic estimations, a video that is a few minutes long at 480p will weigh in at 10 megabytes, meaning it'll take them OVER 3 HOURS to download the entire thing. You would probably be able to browse (slowly), read comments, but not actually do much else.

I save the links to download later at some other place and view offline. Before I had ssh access to a server from a friend who copied what I downloaded (he also copies whole debian repositories for me).

Re: The web sucks if you have a slow connection

#158

Post by gabemart »

Something I have had at the back of my mind for a long time: in 2017, what's the correct way to present optional resources that will improve the experience of users on fast/uncapped connections, but that user agents on slow/capped connections can safely ignore? Like hi-res hero images, or video backgrounds, etc.

Every time a similar question is posed on HN, someone says "If the assets aren't needed, don't serve them in the first place", but this is i) unrealistic, and ii) ignores the fact that while the typical HN user may like sparsely designed, text-orientated pages with few images, this is not at all true of users in different demographics. And in those demos, it's often not acceptable to degrade the experience of users on fast connections to accommodate users on slow connections.

So -- if I write a web page, and I want to include a large asset, but I want to indicate to user agents on slow/capped connections that they don't _need_ to download it, what approach should I take?

Re: The web sucks if you have a slow connection

#159

Post by SquareWheel »

thinkloop wrote: post #45
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.

Agreed. I really enjoy building static websites. With no databases, no server-side logic or caching, everything becomes extremely fast and simple. It does mean moving any logic to the client-side with Javascript though.

Re: The web sucks if you have a slow connection

#160

Post by swiley »

Jakob wrote: post #49
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.

hackernews even works without javascript, the whole page just reloads everytime you upvote something.
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