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The Bullshit Web

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Re: The Bullshit Web

#51

Post by tarr11 »

nickheer wrote: post #48
tarr11 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only that, but it also has 2 trackers on it (google analytics and carbonads). Hard to take this argument seriously.

I don't use Google Analytics, and Carbon's script is restricted by my CSP to showing the display ad. They also have a reasonable privacy policy where they're not tracking users or generating libraries of behavioural data, as far as I know.

Ah, you are right it is piwik. It was blocked by uBlock though and serves the same purpose (user tracking).

Re: The Bullshit Web

#52

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

ukulele wrote: post #45

Unpopular opinion alert: Maybe the "bullshit" is only bullshit to you, the thorny tech-savvy reader. Maybe businesses have tried the plaintext approach, and their business was improved by adding fonts, stylesheets, API calls, spinners, scripts, high-res images, and god knows what else. Maybe speed improvements are not important beyond a certain point. Maybe 5MB doesn't matter to most people. Maybe micro-optimization…

They're not idiots, they just don't give a crap about waste until it affects their bottom line. (Most humans seem to operate on this principle)

A lot of the business-related bullshit is a response to advertising and sales. But a lot is also lazy tech people slapping pieces together until it does a thing, and they don't care that it loads 100x more data than it needs to, because again, doesn't affect their bottom line.

Traffic costs must be pretty low, or nobody's watching that line on the AWS budget, or the CDN is eating the cost.

Re: The Bullshit Web

#53

Post by duxup »

Things are different now.

When I was on a modem... pictures, almost any, were bullshit as far as being big and annoying to download. A lot of the time I hated them.

Nobody thinks about pictures that way anymore. I suspect that goes for a lot of the bullshit listed in that article.

I'm no fan of tracking or auto play videos, but web applications are a thing now and the people visiting sites, building them, and paying for them want more than just a page... they want a whole application. All three of those (viewer, builder, dude who pays / host) aren't on the same page, but they also are largely happy to go down the road of bigger pages.

I'm all for efficiency and kicking some stuff to the curb, but as for size, it is not on the mind of most people.

I'd be all for a class of retro / minimal sites or something, but it is clear for a lot of things web apps is where we're going.

Re: The Bullshit Web

#54

Post by Sir_Cmpwn »

I think I heard this on Hacker News, but I don't recall who from. Whenever I see a popup begging me to sign up for a spam list, I put in postmaster@that-domain.com now.

Re: The Bullshit Web

#55

Post by Alex3917 »

Yes, we should definitely go back to the days where there was only one stylesheet per page and the web wasn't accessible to those with visual impairments. Being blind is clearly just a lifestyle choice, and we shouldn't be catering to the blind agenda. /s

In all seriousness, most of the problem with bloat is on the mobile side. But in another ~1.25 years iPhones will have enough advanced LTE functionality that they will be basically the same speed as desktop computers. To whatever extent this is a real problem, it's not going to be nearly as big of an issue after another two or three years.

Re: The Bullshit Web

#56

Post by koolba »

throwawaymath wrote: post #31
soared wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think thats a meaningful comparison. Moby Dick is a book, written by 1 guy and maybe an editor or two. NYT employs 1,300 people. When you read a book all you get is the text. NYT has text, images, related articles, analytics, etc. Moby Dick doesn't have to know what pages you read. NYT needs to know how long you spent, on which articles, etc. They need data to produce the product and you can only achieve that…

> NYT needs to know how long you spent, on which articles, etc. They need data to produce the product and you can only achieve that with javascript tracking pixels (Server logs aren't good enough). No they don't. They really don't need to know any of that. They don't even get a pass on tracking because they're providing a free whatever - I pay for a subscription to the NYT. The business, or a meaningfully substantial…

Interestingly if you pay them, and thus are logged in when you view an article, then they can better track you.

In contrast if you never sign up, disable JS, and periodically clear your cookies, then the entire site works fine and none of the third party trackers work. At best they can link your browser user agent and IP to a hit on the server side.

Re: The Bullshit Web

#57

Post by SilasX »

pasta wrote: post #32

What I think is difficult is that most people think a website should be an experience. The client wants this, the designer wants this, the marketeer wants this and even most users want this. So that's how huge headers with high res photo's are born. After that the site must be online asap and the developer doesn't have or take the time to load images responsive. Combine this with a framework that takes 200ms to init…

Which designer wants an unmovable header that takes 1/3rd of the screen and makes me feel like I'm looking at it through blinds, as I typically see on mobile?

Re: The Bullshit Web

#58

Post by nickheer »

tarr11 wrote: post #51
nickheer wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't use Google Analytics, and Carbon's script is restricted by my CSP to showing the display ad. They also have a reasonable privacy policy where they're not tracking users or generating libraries of behavioural data, as far as I know.

Ah, you are right it is piwik. It was blocked by uBlock though and serves the same purpose (user tracking).

Fair. I take what I think is a reasonable and respectful approach, though: it takes only a partial IP address (which I don't look at), it respects Do Not Track, it anonymizes as much as possible, and it's basically a glorified hit counter. It's pretty lightweight, it's the only analytics script I use, and it's localized rather than sending users' data to a giant company.

This article should not be seen as an all-or-nothing approach. It's more the amount and type that concerns me.

Re: The Bullshit Web

#59

Post by SilasX »

ukulele wrote: post #45

Unpopular opinion alert: Maybe the "bullshit" is only bullshit to you, the thorny tech-savvy reader. Maybe businesses have tried the plaintext approach, and their business was improved by adding fonts, stylesheets, API calls, spinners, scripts, high-res images, and god knows what else. Maybe speed improvements are not important beyond a certain point. Maybe 5MB doesn't matter to most people. Maybe micro-optimization…

I don't think you're wrong, but you may be overestimating how quickly they converge on an optimal balance, and what fraction of the bloat is necessary for business purposes. I frequently see sites that slow down my browser and mobile sites that become near unusable, and I doubt that is all necessary for making it pretty and having the right analytics. I've also frequently reviewed the work of front-end devs who just didn't see the easy optimizations they could make.

The bloat persists until there's a clear relationship between some unit of bloat and some concrete loss, but that might not be easy to see, because you don't see the people who long since gave up on your site.

Edit: One illustrative example is disability access accommodations. A lot of them are a net loss to the business, but some of them were obvious improvements no one had thought to do: "Oh, crap, it really does help to have a lip on the curb so you can roll stuff up!"

Re: The Bullshit Web

#60

Post by textmode »

nostromo wrote: post #15

It's not just publishers. My current org uses SalesForce and it's frustratingly slow. Opening a single record takes several seconds as every single interface element is generated dynamically and then populated, seemingly one at a time. When it's finally done loading, you click on a dropdown, and then the dropdown just shows you a loading spinner, as your client asks the server what should be populated in the dropdown…

Salesforce uses a large quantity of DNS indirection, more than even the large CDNs. I measure the amount of lookups that sites and apps require, and the delay it causes. Most sites on the www only require two lookups.

This is perhaps an example of "... the benefits primarily accrue to the developers of the app and not to the customer."

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