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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

#211

Post by MrRadar »

coldpie wrote: post #64
geforce wrote: post #3

Sad 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 ag…

Firefox on Android supports uBlock Origin.

I also use an add-on called Decentraleyes. It caches various common scripts from popular CDNs within the add-on itself so your device doesn't need to make any network requests for them. It was originally meant as a privacy to but the caching seems to be at least as valuable.

Re: The web sucks if you have a slow connection

#212

Post by Balgair »

__jal wrote: post #84
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…

> 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?" Horses on highways would cause accidents. I have yet to see a fast-moving web page crash in to a slow-moving one and shut down the router. Analogies work better when there is connective tissue between the concepts in play. More generally, the vast bulk of the problem is…

> Horses on highways would cause accidents.

You are right, they are not the best, but people make do: http://www.mapministry.org/news-and-stories/amish-buggy-acci...

Re: The web sucks if you have a slow connection

#213

Post by ericd »

iLoch wrote: post #117
__jal wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?" Horses on highways would cause accidents. I have yet to see a fast-moving web page crash in to a slow-moving one and shut down the router. Analogies work better when there is connective tissue between the concepts in play. More generally, the vast bulk of the problem is…

> More generally, the vast bulk of the problem is not human readability or interactivity over http, but more a matter of insane amounts of unnecessary gunk being included in web pages because of faulty assumptions about the width of pipes. Doesn't affect the vast majority of users. > But I realize I'm in a minority. Yes, your statements are pretty anecdotal and don't really relate to the vast majority of internet use…

If you've ever traveled internationally, you'll know that a lot of English-language sites become unbearably slow to use over mediocre hotel wifi, let alone cellular. Lightweight sites like HN become relatively MUCH more pleasant to use.

Re: The web sucks if you have a slow connection

#214

Post by CaptSpify »

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.

As a JS hater....

I completely agree. I think the problem is that bad designers are misusing a good tool. It's like salt: If I add a little to my meal, it makes it better. If I add a LOT of it to my meal, it doesn't keep getting better.

Unfortunately this causes a knee-jerk reaction to anything JS. Although I don't think JS is to blame, I think the hatred of JS comes from a good reason.

Re: The web sucks if you have a slow connection

#215

Post by accountface »

smacktoward wrote: post #56

Looking at that first table, one question jumps out at me: what the heck is Jeff Atwood doing on pages at Coding Horror that makes them weigh 23MB? I mean, I'm all for avoiding premature optimizations, but 23MB for one page is just... wow. EDIT: As a sanity check, I just tried loading the CH home page from a cold cache myself. Total weight: 31.26MB . Yowch.

Appears to be mostly lack of image optimization (and he loves gifs). A common issue with blogs.

Re: The web sucks if you have a slow connection

#216

Post by gnud »

neuland wrote: post #190
gabemart wrote: post #158

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…

One hack-y way to do it would be to load it via JavaScript. For example, see this stackoverflow [0]. Obviously not a great solution, but it works if your dying for something . I bet people w/ slow connections are much more likely to disable javascript, though. let loadTime = window.performance.timing.domContentLoadedEventEnd- window.performance.timing.navigationStart; if (loadTime > someArbitraryNumber) { // Disable…

It's too late to disable loading heavy things at that point - the loading is already started.

Do the opposite, start loading heavy things if the page loaded quickly.

A clean way would be to set one of two classes, connection-slow or connection-fast, on the body element. Then you could use those classes in CSS to choose the correct assets for background images, fonts and so on.

Re: The web sucks if you have a slow connection

#217

Post by chiph »

dba7dba wrote: post #107
ikeboy wrote: post #74

>When I was at Google, someone told me a story about a time that “they” completed a big optimization push only to find that measured page load times increased. When they dug into the data, they found that the reason load times had increased was that they got a lot more traffic from Africa after doing the optimizations. The team’s product went from being unusable for people with slow connections to usable, which cause…

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…

The original designers of the interstates didn't want the roads to go through the downtown areas. The idea was for the high-speed roads to go near cities, and have spur roads (3-digit interstate numbers that start with an odd number) connect them - like the design of the original Autobahn.

But there was a coalition of mayors and municipal associations that pressured Congress to have the roads pass through their towns (jobs! progress!). President Eisenhower was not amused, but he found out too late to change the design.

A consequence of this was the bulldozing of historically black-owned property to make way for the new roads.

Re: The web sucks if you have a slow connection

#218

Post by neuland »

gnud wrote: post #216
neuland wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One hack-y way to do it would be to load it via JavaScript. For example, see this stackoverflow [0]. Obviously not a great solution, but it works if your dying for something . I bet people w/ slow connections are much more likely to disable javascript, though. let loadTime = window.performance.timing.domContentLoadedEventEnd- window.performance.timing.navigationStart; if (loadTime > someArbitraryNumber) { // Disable…

It's too late to disable loading heavy things at that point - the loading is already started. Do the opposite, start loading heavy things if the page loaded quickly. A clean way would be to set one of two classes, connection-slow or connection-fast, on the body element. Then you could use those classes in CSS to choose the correct assets for background images, fonts and so on.

Well, I meant to leave the heavy things out of the HTML you send over to the browser and then inject them only if they can be loaded.

So, yeah totally agree with you. Should have been clearer.

Re: The web sucks if you have a slow connection

#219

Post by anigbrowl »

I really wonder how much time designers and developer actually spend on thoughtful testing vs. a/b or automated testing. Sometimes the problems on websites just seem so....clueless.

My current pet hate is news sites that float up a modal window asking me to turn off my ad blocker because bidness. OK, I turn off AdBlock Pro for that domain, turn off HTTP switchboard, and it still won't load. Why? I dunno, try again, still won't load. OK, guess I'm never coming back. Obviously it must be some other extension, but without any technical details how can I tell?

For that matter why did anyone think it was ever a good idea to float dialogs over web pages to get people to share (not submit) their email address? Has anyone ever looked at how poorly these display on mobile devices? Or how making it hard to close floating dialogs is a really good way to annoy people?

Re: The web sucks if you have a slow connection

#220

Post by ericd »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #202
iLoch wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> More generally, the vast bulk of the problem is not human readability or interactivity over http, but more a matter of insane amounts of unnecessary gunk being included in web pages because of faulty assumptions about the width of pipes. Doesn't affect the vast majority of users. > But I realize I'm in a minority. Yes, your statements are pretty anecdotal and don't really relate to the vast majority of internet use…

> don't really relate to the vast majority of internet users. It's not that they don't. It's that you don't care. Because why should you care about something that doesn't meaningfully increase ad revenue or sales? Why should you care that the 2 extra seconds of pageload on a fat pipe, and a fraction of a cent of extra electricity burned, when multiplied by a million of your US users add to over 500 man-hours and few…

And the funny thing is that it's even been shown that increasing speed increases usage and revenue/sales, so there's not even that excuse. Slow pages break flow, which cause people to realize that they've already wasted too much time on your site, and were supposed to have done xyz 15 minutes ago.
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