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Bloated

fabiensanglard.net

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Re: Bloated

#61

Post by PinkMilkshake »

romwell wrote: post #34

I am dreaming of a solution to bloat where all mainstream browsers would be throttling per-tab CPU/memory/bandwith usage to Pentium III-on-DSL-circa-2001 levels by default. (The "full speed" option should be there to keep power user from switching, but it should not be obvious to, say, 50% of users). This should be pushed as a feature : now your browser helps make your computer work faster; any slowness in page loadi…

I had a similar idea but I couldn't work out how to resolve all the issues that would cause. For example, things that naturally need more performance, like 3D games. I don't think playing games in your web browser would put you in the category of power user.

Re: Bloated

#62

Post by qwertay »

romwell wrote: post #34

I am dreaming of a solution to bloat where all mainstream browsers would be throttling per-tab CPU/memory/bandwith usage to Pentium III-on-DSL-circa-2001 levels by default. (The "full speed" option should be there to keep power user from switching, but it should not be obvious to, say, 50% of users). This should be pushed as a feature : now your browser helps make your computer work faster; any slowness in page loadi…

The first browser to do this everyone would leave because the others are faster.

Re: Bloated

#63

Post by sbr464 »

romwell wrote: post #34

I am dreaming of a solution to bloat where all mainstream browsers would be throttling per-tab CPU/memory/bandwith usage to Pentium III-on-DSL-circa-2001 levels by default. (The "full speed" option should be there to keep power user from switching, but it should not be obvious to, say, 50% of users). This should be pushed as a feature : now your browser helps make your computer work faster; any slowness in page loadi…

You can hack this now by limiting CPU per process,

Not ideal, I realize,

https://medium.com/@sbr464/limit-dropbox-and-others-on-macos...

Re: Bloated

#64

Post by wlesieutre »

PinkMilkshake wrote: post #61
romwell wrote: post #34

I am dreaming of a solution to bloat where all mainstream browsers would be throttling per-tab CPU/memory/bandwith usage to Pentium III-on-DSL-circa-2001 levels by default. (The "full speed" option should be there to keep power user from switching, but it should not be obvious to, say, 50% of users). This should be pushed as a feature : now your browser helps make your computer work faster; any slowness in page loadi…

I had a similar idea but I couldn't work out how to resolve all the issues that would cause. For example, things that naturally need more performance, like 3D games. I don't think playing games in your web browser would put you in the category of power user.

The key would be a permission prompt like browsers now have for camera access, notifications, geolocation, pop ups, etc.

If a page uses too much CPU it will get throttled and ask the user if they want to unthrottle it.

Website owners currently assume they’re entitled to as much of my processor time and battery life as they want, just as they once assumed they were entitled to display popup ads just because they could. If this behavior is going to change, it will only happen because browsers stop letting them and instead say “No, this is the user’s CPU time, not yours.”

Re: Bloated

#65

Post by cesarb »

romwell wrote: post #34

I am dreaming of a solution to bloat where all mainstream browsers would be throttling per-tab CPU/memory/bandwith usage to Pentium III-on-DSL-circa-2001 levels by default. (The "full speed" option should be there to keep power user from switching, but it should not be obvious to, say, 50% of users). This should be pushed as a feature : now your browser helps make your computer work faster; any slowness in page loadi…

A perhaps more workable solution would be to have per-tab indicators of total bytes downloaded, peak memory used, and total CPU time used (the first one already exists as part of the developer tools, but it's hidden by default). People on fast computers and fast networks do not feel the weight of bloated pages; making it visible to everyone provides an incentive to reduce it.

Re: Bloated

#66

Post by Semiapies »

romwell wrote: post #32
mhink wrote: post #19

With regards to the "usually a news site" part, somebody put me onto CNN's "lite" page the other day, and it's honestly a freaking joy to use. http://lite.cnn.com/en On the other hand, I think there's definitely a case to be made for rich, application-like presentation of content, when it enhances the delivery of information . For instance: http://www.r2d3.us/visual-intro-to-machine-learning-part-1/ The problem is th…

>somebody put me onto CNN's "lite" page the other day, and it's honestly a freaking joy to use. That's neat, but I think having this with some lightweight, web-optimized static images would make this better without being detrimental to lightness. Sometimes a picture does say a thousand words. A photograph of a person being interviewed is something that adds a lot to an article. Plus there's the whole photojournalism…

A literal handful of CSS styles would make it more readable on a variety of platforms. Failing that, a full-text feed for the articles would be very readable in an RSS reader.

Re: Bloated

#67

Post by kllrnohj »

giovannibajo1 wrote: post #20

I think the race to make the web an application platform is responsible for this. Web features are growing every day trying to match native apps, and the media guys leverage them to make us sad. We really need to split the web stack in two somehow, differentiate consumption sites with some basic interaction from full blown applications, handle them completely separately down to the operating system integration level.…

Well, it's also that the "web app" push only ever concerns itself with features never with performance.

You'll frequently see things like "native apps can do X, so the browser should, too" where X is camera, opengl, files, etc...

Not necessarily wrong, but you basically never see anyone pushing the boundaries of performance. I can run games at native resolution in excess of 100fps all day long, but I can't scroll a fucking web page at 60fps? And the round-trip communication with a webworker, the only mechanism whatsoever to leverage the other 75-95% of the system's CPU, is measured in 100s of microseconds to milliseconds?

Being an app platform isn't just features, it's also getting the fundamentals to perform well. And the web just... doesn't.

Re: Bloated

#68

Post by narag »

jodrellblank wrote: post #48
romwell wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>somebody put me onto CNN's "lite" page the other day, and it's honestly a freaking joy to use. That's neat, but I think having this with some lightweight, web-optimized static images would make this better without being detrimental to lightness. Sometimes a picture does say a thousand words. A photograph of a person being interviewed is something that adds a lot to an article. Plus there's the whole photojournalism…

a photograph of a person being interviewed is something that adds a lot to an article. Does it? It seems that it ought to add nothing to the content - unless the content specifically references their appearance. As well as that, unless it's a person you can google independently (like a head of state, or large company CEO) there's very little chance you can know whether the image is actually the person being interview…

Does it? It seems that it ought to add nothing to the content

"Add"? It's a part of the content. It's been in paper for more than a century.

Re: Bloated

#69

Post by caf »

cesarb wrote: post #65
romwell wrote: post #34

I am dreaming of a solution to bloat where all mainstream browsers would be throttling per-tab CPU/memory/bandwith usage to Pentium III-on-DSL-circa-2001 levels by default. (The "full speed" option should be there to keep power user from switching, but it should not be obvious to, say, 50% of users). This should be pushed as a feature : now your browser helps make your computer work faster; any slowness in page loadi…

A perhaps more workable solution would be to have per-tab indicators of total bytes downloaded, peak memory used, and total CPU time used (the first one already exists as part of the developer tools, but it's hidden by default). People on fast computers and fast networks do not feel the weight of bloated pages; making it visible to everyone provides an incentive to reduce it.

Perhaps summarised as "the percentage of your battery this tab has consumed".

Re: Bloated

#70

Post by narag »

iforgotpassword wrote: post #8

This feels like the trillionth time I read a rant like this, but that doesn't make it less true or important. I really wonder from time to time if it's just me, having become and old grumpy "get off my lawn" grandpa unable to cope with the world keeping turning and moving forward. "You can't write everything from scratch every time" "That's just how it's done today" "Cmon, people aren't running IE5 on a pentium 2 any…

I really wonder from time to time if it's just me, having become and old grumpy "get off my lawn" grandpa...

I don't think it's just you. At the very least, us :-)

Seriously, I think there are different kinds of people that don't care:

- Most. They don't know it could be done otherwise. For them bloat is the way web is.

- People that likes bloat. It's obvious if you can see how they dress or their furniture.

- People that works making those websites. There are a lot of them here, so don't expect many upvotes.

- People that repeats what others say: the phrases that make your breath heavy.

I believe that at some moment in the future, there will be a swing to simplicity, because fashion if for no other reason.

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