This guy doesn't know what AMP does. AMP is a subset of HTML that can be validated safe to prerender. That means instant page loads for the user, not merely fast.
Neither PWA nor AMP are needed to make a website load fast
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Re: Neither PWA nor AMP are needed to make a website load fast
#12Well yeah but the author is missing the point: these tools allow your site to load faster than the theoretical limit without them. AMP buys you Google's CDN and prefetching on Search. And PWA buys you a 0 distance cache hit on your second visit, the ability to prefetch unvisited resources, and with the ability to update the cache in the background. Not saying these aren't negligible on a 15MB site but they are tools…
This assumes that Google's CDN is providing a significant advantage in connectivity, when in actuality you'll often have more available bandwidth between say OVH and your ISP at peak times, as compared to relying on Google's congested peering to certain large ISPs. Amazon S3 can be really paimfully slow at peak times too, I often see sub-1MB/s, while fast.com (Netflix) or OVH can fill the pipe.
Re: Neither PWA nor AMP are needed to make a website load fast
#13The author says you can do these things anyway without AMP, but what he doesn't get is that web developers were not doing them. It took the nudge of AMP to get decent performance on the mobile web.
He also failed to mention a key AMP rule: all CSS is in the head, a max of 50 KB. There is no external CSS at all. That's crucial. It reverses a persistent anti-pattern in web development that calls for a bunch of separate files for CSS and JS. Almost all CSS on most webpages is unused (this is still true of a lot of AMP sites -- 50 KB is way too much CSS for an article).
I think the reality here is that early 21st-century web developers are terrible at web development. They stuff massive amounts of JS and CSS down users throats, distributed across 50 or a 100 requests, and call themselves "engineers".
AMP, or something even better, needs to be the default way to build websites.
Re: Neither PWA nor AMP are needed to make a website load fast
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
on a 15MB site Good lord, friend. Why put your users through this to begin with?
If it's just a website, then I agree that is indeed excessive. If, however, it's 15mb of useful functionality (perhaps an app that lets you edit and encode video), then in my eyes, it's acceptable, and probably a good candidate to be a PWA. I know a lot of people hate the idea of doing everything in the browser, but seriously, it's the one ubiquitous platform that we have, which even competing entities have agreed to…
If, however, it's 15mb of useful functionality (perhaps an app that lets you edit and encode video), then in my eyes, it's acceptable
You either have an abundance of high speed internet access, or benefit from internet usage that isn't metered by the amount of data consumed, or both.
Functionality or not, heavy web experiences leave out a lot of people who would otherwise be willing and capable users of %product% if it weren't for the excessive payloads they're often expected to consume just to be a user when that payload could quite trivially be reduced and still accomplish the goal of delivering content and information to the end user.
So here's my question: forget about people who hate doing everything in the browser, what about the users who just don't have access to Cable+ internet speeds, want to use the product, but perhaps can't because they're downloading 15, 20, 30MB websites just to fill out a form element because the browser is all this user is familiar with?
Not everyone on the internet is a regular of HackerNews who groks native applications versus web apps. At what point do we start focusing on the content and asking ourselves "Do I REALLY need this animation library just to indicate 'Start here' is where they should be interacting with my webform"?
To answer that rhetorical question for you: probably, quite likely not.
Re: Neither PWA nor AMP are needed to make a website load fast
#15Well yeah but the author is missing the point: these tools allow your site to load faster than the theoretical limit without them. AMP buys you Google's CDN and prefetching on Search. And PWA buys you a 0 distance cache hit on your second visit, the ability to prefetch unvisited resources, and with the ability to update the cache in the background. Not saying these aren't negligible on a 15MB site but they are tools…
on a 15MB site Good lord, friend. Why put your users through this to begin with?
Exactly! There can never be any reason whatsoever for any site anywhere on the entire World Wide Web to be 15MB. Absolutely not! I mean, I don't even know what the site does, but 15MB can not possibly be justified.
Re: Neither PWA nor AMP are needed to make a website load fast
#16But you do need "PWA" if you want your site to work offline. PWAs were never really sold as something that would make your site's initial load time faster. Not really sure how the author got that impression. It's almost like saying "you don't need jQuery to make your site faster" - to those who understand the purpose of jQuery, it's a bit of a nonsensical statement.
Can't you just use ServiceWorkers in a regular webpage? Seems like you can. That would allow you to have an offline persistent website while still using a webpage. https://caniuse.com/#feat=serviceworkers
Re: Neither PWA nor AMP are needed to make a website load fast
#17This guy doesn't know what AMP does. AMP is a subset of HTML that can be validated safe to prerender. That means instant page loads for the user, not merely fast.
What do you mean by “safe to prerender?”
Re: Neither PWA nor AMP are needed to make a website load fast
#18[deleted]
Re: Neither PWA nor AMP are needed to make a website load fast
#19This guy doesn't know what AMP does. AMP is a subset of HTML that can be validated safe to prerender. That means instant page loads for the user, not merely fast.
The outside bits of a Trojan horse are attractive for a reason.
Re: Neither PWA nor AMP are needed to make a website load fast
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
If it's just a website, then I agree that is indeed excessive. If, however, it's 15mb of useful functionality (perhaps an app that lets you edit and encode video), then in my eyes, it's acceptable, and probably a good candidate to be a PWA. I know a lot of people hate the idea of doing everything in the browser, but seriously, it's the one ubiquitous platform that we have, which even competing entities have agreed to…
If, however, it's 15mb of useful functionality (perhaps an app that lets you edit and encode video), then in my eyes, it's acceptable You either have an abundance of high speed internet access, or benefit from internet usage that isn't metered by the amount of data consumed, or both. Functionality or not, heavy web experiences leave out a lot of people who would otherwise be willing and capable users of %product% if…
> but perhaps can't because they're downloading 15, 20, 30MB websites just to fill out a form element?
Parent post (in fact, the segment you quoted) literally says that it's okay when it is useful functionality, i.e. not when it's just to fill out a form.
Sadly, these aren't going to get to experience a decent chunk of the internet anyway, since video, gifs, and images all frequently weigh significantly more when put together.