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The Website Obesity Crisis (2015)

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Re: The Website Obesity Crisis (2015)

#11

Post by gwu78 »

"This is a screenshot from an article on NPR discussing the rising use of ad blockers. It is 12 megabytes in size..."

Hmmm. When I save this page from my browser it's 116k.

"... in a stock web browser."

Ah-ha. Perhaps the web browser I am using is not "stock".

If so, I can still read the article without a "stock" browser, so not sure what is behind this "stock" idea.

I am assuming reading the article is the goal?

Could it be the "stock" browser, whatever that is, is the root cause/enabler of the "web page obesity crisis"?

"Unfortunately complexity has become a bit of a bragging point."

Does that include "stock" web browsers?

Re: The Website Obesity Crisis (2015)

#12

Post by gerdesj »

dmitrygr wrote: post #8

Wonderfully put, especially this sad tidbit: I tried to capture a movie of myself scrolling through the Verge Apple watch review, but failed. The graphics card on my late-model Apple laptop could literally not cope with the load.

I have just run down that page in Chrome on a i7 with four cores/eight threads and gobs of RAM. All of the threads jumped to 65-90% constantly, according to the Plasma widget on my desktop which is currently showing low single digits. If I had unplugged the charger I'd be draining the battery at the same rate as the watch timeline graphic but in real-time.

Re: The Website Obesity Crisis (2015)

#14

Post by tonmoy »

gwu78 wrote: post #11

"This is a screenshot from an article on NPR discussing the rising use of ad blockers. It is 12 megabytes in size..." Hmmm. When I save this page from my browser it's 116k. "... in a stock web browser." Ah-ha. Perhaps the web browser I am using is not "stock". If so, I can still read the article without a "stock" browser, so not sure what is behind this "stock" idea. I am assuming reading the article is the goal? Cou…

Try opening the "116K webpage" with your internet connection turned off.

Re: The Website Obesity Crisis (2015)

#15

Post by mwfj »

I first realized Javascript/Frontend/client developers were a danger to society about 10 years ago.

We were trying to figure out why some particular, quite globally popular web site did not work when transcoded in our Opera Mini transcoder.

The page itself looked perfectly static, no fancy effects or anything. Turns out the site had decided to re-implement the "click a link" feature entirely in javascript, down to the "create a click listener for entire document, then create a click router based on X, Y, width, height coordinates" level. We patched it somehow, had a laugh about the stupidity, but the sour feeling of insanity got stuck with me. It did not provide any feature beyond what a simple 'a' tag would have done.

It was just so absurd. We spent some time to try to figure out if there was a legitimate reason for it but we couldn't find any.

Re: The Website Obesity Crisis (2015)

#16

Post by rybosome »

Terr_ wrote: post #7
Analemma_ wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In reality, it seems that people have just settled on a response time that's acceptable and devs try to stay within that window in most cases. More specifically, every time CPUs or browsers get better, publishers look at their metrics and go "Oh! PLT at 95th percentile is down! Great, now we can add more trackers while still hitting our perf target!" and so the gain is immediately gobbled up -- we're in a Red Queen…

I agree with your sentiment, and I think it's just one facet of a broader issue with how advertising/marketing is rampant. For example, you can pay to see a movie in a theater, and still get shown ads.

Some airlines do it, too. It makes me absolutely furious, but there have been many occasions when, just sitting in my seat TRYING TO SLEEP, the screens will all flip on an ad with audio simultaneously. It's insane that these aren't even the airline fluff pieces about themselves, but actual, literal advertisements.

I've heard that airplane fuel is becoming prohibitively expensive and consumer demand for flights is relatively elastic, so this (and all the other ways they behave miserly) are attempts to remain solvent without drastically raising prices. I feel somewhat sympathetic to that argument (if it's actually true), but it seems like that should be a signal for technology to step in and innovate around the problem rather than attempting to blunder through with more advertisements.

Re: The Website Obesity Crisis (2015)

#17

Post by alexbecker »

gwu78 wrote: post #11

"This is a screenshot from an article on NPR discussing the rising use of ad blockers. It is 12 megabytes in size..." Hmmm. When I save this page from my browser it's 116k. "... in a stock web browser." Ah-ha. Perhaps the web browser I am using is not "stock". If so, I can still read the article without a "stock" browser, so not sure what is behind this "stock" idea. I am assuming reading the article is the goal? Cou…

When you save this page it doesn't save every resource downloaded. The correct way to measure is to use the devtools and load the page with cache disabled (to mimic a first load), then check the total content transferred. I get 1.8MB with uBlock origin on, and 2.3MB without. I imagine that the author either got a particularly bad set of ads, or NPR wasn't compressing some large asset at the time.

Re: The Website Obesity Crisis (2015)

#18

Post by gerdesj »

mwfj wrote: post #15

I first realized Javascript/Frontend/client developers were a danger to society about 10 years ago. We were trying to figure out why some particular, quite globally popular web site did not work when transcoded in our Opera Mini transcoder. The page itself looked perfectly static, no fancy effects or anything. Turns out the site had decided to re-implement the "click a link" feature entirely in javascript, down to th…

Sounds like a rehash of this: https://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_map.asp in JS, perhaps designed by someone unable to construct an adequate search engine query to solve the problem they thought they had but having access to a manual for JS. Compound that with the religious zeal that invariably (well - quite often) follows initiation into the sect around a newly discovered programming language. The manual may not actually exist but consist of a few links to Stackoverflow.

"Never attribute to malice that ..." as Mr Halon might say. I've found out later that I've re-invented the wheel with a system more than once (mine obviously sported Fandango tyres) and laughed at several other single axis rotation optimised load bearing solution implementations with minimised frictional components and thrust load resistance.

Experience is a wonderful thing - your's and theirs (and mine)

Cheers Jon

Re: The Website Obesity Crisis (2015)

#19

Post by arkx »

rybosome wrote: post #16
Terr_ wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your sentiment, and I think it's just one facet of a broader issue with how advertising/marketing is rampant. For example, you can pay to see a movie in a theater, and still get shown ads.

Some airlines do it, too. It makes me absolutely furious, but there have been many occasions when, just sitting in my seat TRYING TO SLEEP , the screens will all flip on an ad with audio simultaneously. It's insane that these aren't even the airline fluff pieces about themselves, but actual, literal advertisements. I've heard that airplane fuel is becoming prohibitively expensive and consumer demand for flights is re…

> I've heard that airplane fuel is becoming prohibitively expensive

Why not verify what you've heard? Kerosene prices have actually fallen dramatically from just a few years ago.

https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=E...

Re: The Website Obesity Crisis (2015)

#20

Post by frogfuzion »

This is a repost. I'm guessing due to the blowup of the electron post.

There is no right answer. A huge fat bloated website can be successful (see BuzzFeed for the general population), or a lightweight text based informational website can be successful (see hacker news for you guys).

Same thing for the electron debate. A bloated web app ported to desktop could just be as successful as a native app and vice versa.

The problem is that it just sucks. The choices we have to make suck and everything sucks right now.

Development is now "pop." This is why websites are fat and web development is going to the desktop.

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