Text-only CNN

#1

Post by ekimekim » Sun, Sep 10, 2017, 1:32 AM UTC

Text-only CNN
lite.cnn.io

Re: Text-only CNN

#2

Post by unreal6 » Sun, Sep 10, 2017, 4:04 AM UTC

It's amazing what happens to rendering times when only the actual content is being loaded.

Re: Text-only CNN

#3

Post by ascom » Sun, Sep 10, 2017, 4:09 AM UTC

EDIT: As I wrote this, someone deployed a server-side rendered version of the site. Now the site is perfect. :)

This site appears to load ~350 KB of JavaScript, which I think is a bit excessive for a "lite" text-only site. From the sourcemaps, I found a long list of libraries, including:

* react

* redux

* redux-thunk

* react-router

* axios

* base64-js (why not window.atob/btoa?)

* core-js

* fbjs

* react-hot-loader (should not be in a production build)

* ...a bunch of other smaller modules

There's only about 10 KB of non-library application code. Note that I ignore gzip when evaluating this sort of stuff, since that many bytes of code still need to be parsed, no matter how much it compresses.

For the person who made this site, I would replace React with Preact (or Inferno), which should remove most of the bloat. Server side rendering would also be nice for those who don't have JavaScript enabled and would also improve the loading time.

At least it's still better than cnn.com. http://www.webpagetest.org/result/170910_C8_e78305788a19b0fb...

Re: Text-only CNN

#4

Post by a9entroy » Sun, Sep 10, 2017, 4:09 AM UTC

Wow. After all these years of taking steps backwards, finally 100 steps forward.

Re: Text-only CNN

#5

Post by cmac2992 » Sun, Sep 10, 2017, 4:12 AM UTC

I'm getting a totally blank page on Android 7.0 chrome 61.

Re: Text-only CNN

#6

Post by rjbwork » Sun, Sep 10, 2017, 4:14 AM UTC

Bookmarked. Please drop the excessive JS and image tho cnn.

Re: Text-only CNN

#7

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Sep 10, 2017, 4:14 AM UTC

unreal6 wrote: post #2

It's amazing what happens to rendering times when only the actual content is being loaded.

[deleted]

Re: Text-only CNN

#8

Post by DalekBaldwin » Sun, Sep 10, 2017, 4:15 AM UTC

My laptop can run computationally-intensive physics simulations and play streaming hi-def video with no problem, but if I click a link to a mainstream news article it just about keels over and dies. How did our grandparents ever manage to load the news on an underpowered machine called "paper"?

Re: Text-only CNN

#9

Post by crabasa » Sun, Sep 10, 2017, 4:16 AM UTC

ascom wrote: post #3

EDIT: As I wrote this, someone deployed a server-side rendered version of the site. Now the site is perfect. :) This site appears to load ~350 KB of JavaScript, which I think is a bit excessive for a "lite" text-only site. From the sourcemaps, I found a long list of libraries, including: * react * redux * redux-thunk * react-router * axios * base64-js (why not window.atob/btoa?) * core-js * fbjs * react-hot-loader (s…

>> At least it's still better than cnn.com.

That's literally the entire value prop of the website. The author isn't obligated to use your personal list of approved web tools.

Re: Text-only CNN

#10

Post by a012 » Sun, Sep 10, 2017, 4:18 AM UTC

Does this belong to CNN? It's great to read news without clutter, just clear contents. I hope there are many sites like this, it saves you from load the whole page then click the reader mode or similar.