The web sucks if you have a slow connection

Post by CaptSpify » Thu, Feb 09, 2017, 4:23 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #503

rev_bird wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If browsers could expose the available bandwidth I don't know why this seems like such an imposition, but I think I'd be uncomfortable with my browser exposing information about my actual network if it didn't have to. I have a feeling way more people would be using this to track me than to considerately send me less data. That said, browser buy-in could be a huge help, if only to add a low-tech button saying, "reque…

Indeed; as an user, I don't want the site to decide what quality to serve me based on probing my device. It'll only lead to the usual abuse. I want to specify I want a "lightweight" version or "full experience" version, and have the page deliver an appropriate one on demand.

Post by emodendroket » Thu, Feb 09, 2017, 4:33 PM UTC

flukus wrote: post #386

emodendroket wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You aren't necessarily, though. Efforts spent optimizing the existing functionality are not being spent adding new features.

But your optimizing things people are using frequently, not adding things they probably aren't. Adding features is usually diminishing returns as well.

Post by tangue » Thu, Feb 09, 2017, 4:39 PM UTC

witty_username wrote: post #541

estsauver wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Hello from Kenya) There are usually CDN nodes in India. Cloudfront has edge nodes there, google's cdn does. There's also a Mumbai AWS datacentre. When you get far away from the common edges, it gets real noticeable.

~$ ping imgur.com PING imgur.com (151.101.40.193) 56(84) bytes of data. 64 bytes from 151.101.40.193 (151.101.40.193): icmp_seq=1 ttl=53 time=342 ms imgur.com works fine ~$ ping python.org PING python.org (23.253.135.79) 56(84) bytes of data. 64 bytes from 23.253.135.79 (23.253.135.79): icmp_seq=1 ttl=48 time=267 ms python.org works fine news.ycombinator.com and reddit.com also works fine even though I'm logged in (t…

Post by j_s » Thu, Feb 09, 2017, 4:54 PM UTC

EvilTerran wrote: post #131

SwellJoe wrote: post #40

I travel fulltime and my primary internet is 4G LTE. But, even though I spend $250 per month on data, I still run out, and end up throttled to 128kbps for the last couple days of the data cycle. The internet is pretty much unusable at that rate. I can leave my email downloading in Thunderbird for a couple of hours and that's usable (gmail, however is not very usable), and I can read Hacker News (but not the articles…

Incidentally, you may find GMail's "basic HTML view" works better when your connection's throttled: https://support.google.com/mail/answer/15049 And as for reddit, their old mobile view is still available at the "i." subdomain - it's so much lighter-weight than the dreadful JS-laden one they introduced a while back, it's the only way to use reddit on mobile IMO: https://i.reddit.com

Post by hinkley » Thu, Feb 09, 2017, 5:16 PM UTC

CaptSpify wrote: post #539

milesrout wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, back when things actually buffered properly on the internet. The way YouTube buffers now: not actually loading more than a few seconds of the video ahead of where I'm watching, even when it KNOWS my internet is spotty, really frustrates me.

This drives me INSANE . I'd rather let it buffer for 10 min, then watch it in 360p because you guys can't figure out your buffering. The same goes for netflix!