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Browsers are pretty good at loading pages

carter.sande.duodecima.technology

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Re: Browsers are pretty good at loading pages

#31

Post by RandomInteger4 »

hoorayimhelping wrote: post #28
jakobegger wrote: post #3

I don't get client side navigation. It's a worse experience in every way. It's slow, often doesn't support things like command-click, it usually breaks the back button, and even if it doesn't it breaks the restoration of the scroll position. The only thing worse is a custom scroll UI. Why do people try to reinvent the most basic features of a webbrowser? And if they do, why do they always only do a half-assed job at…

I have no idea. I do a lot of front end work in React, and the assumption that an SPA is a better experience for people because you don't have to do a page reload to see a new page is really baffling to me. It's widespread too - across industries and disciplines and age ranges, as if the people suggesting these things have never used SPAs.

Because page reloads are jarring and discontinuous experiences. They run counter to a good user experience. That's not to say that every SPA is a good user experience, but just that a page reload is not part of the recipe for a good user experience.

Re: Browsers are pretty good at loading pages

#32

Post by moksly »

thrwaway48295 wrote: post #20

What I can't get over is Chrome and Gmail. They're the same company, but managed to make an abstraction between these two groups where it takes several seconds to load and display a list of text fields on a mid-range PC. The HTML version is instant.

It takes a little longer to load, but it also lets you continue working while your train goes through a no-internet zone.

Re: Browsers are pretty good at loading pages

#33

Post by arethuza »

RandomInteger4 wrote: post #31
hoorayimhelping wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no idea. I do a lot of front end work in React, and the assumption that an SPA is a better experience for people because you don't have to do a page reload to see a new page is really baffling to me. It's widespread too - across industries and disciplines and age ranges, as if the people suggesting these things have never used SPAs.

Because page reloads are jarring and discontinuous experiences. They run counter to a good user experience. That's not to say that every SPA is a good user experience, but just that a page reload is not part of the recipe for a good user experience.

HN uses the "old fashioned" approach of rendering everything server side and every link forces a page reload and I wouldn't describe the experience as "jarring and discontinuous".

I'd rather have a fast full page reload than looking at a spinner while complex client side stuff does its stuff.

[NB I really like React and when good SPAs are very very good - but a lot aren't].

Re: Browsers are pretty good at loading pages

#34

Post by [deleted] »

Endy wrote: post #17

It's highly amusing to find out about this, as someone who disables ECMAScript on every browser I use. Why is it that certain groups of web authors seem to be under the impression that more "tech" = better? Why can't they be satisfied with what works in a simple and easily-accessed manner? For that matter, why does anyone engage in this constant race to the bottom? If more web authors and developers were to make a st…

[deleted]

Re: Browsers are pretty good at loading pages

#35

Post by spankalee »

cj wrote: post #21
csande17 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I made the video in the article using Chrome's "low-end mobile" throttling preset, which simulates a ~300 kbit connection IIRC. But I saw very similar behavior on my actual phone with an actual 128 kilobit connection in Canada.

Thanks for the clarification. Do the conclusions hold up when testing with a broadband network connection?

Do all MDN users have low-latency, high-bandwidth connections?

Re: Browsers are pretty good at loading pages

#37

Post by drdaeman »

jakobegger wrote: post #3

I don't get client side navigation. It's a worse experience in every way. It's slow, often doesn't support things like command-click, it usually breaks the back button, and even if it doesn't it breaks the restoration of the scroll position. The only thing worse is a custom scroll UI. Why do people try to reinvent the most basic features of a webbrowser? And if they do, why do they always only do a half-assed job at…

I believe the only upside is that site framing (headers, navbars, side menus, etc etc) doesn't flicker or jump around reflowing as you navigate across pages. Which is I think why almost every "webapp" out there does this - to provide visually continuous experience, even if this client-side intra-screen navigation is slower.

Surely, on a fast-enough connections this flicker is essentially invisible, but if your connection is far from perfect (crappy hotel WiFi or poor cellular reception), it is certainly well noticeable.

Also, it's easier to persist some state across the navigations. Like making it trivial for those (annoying) on-page support chat overlays not losing message history.

This rationale only applies to web "apps", not documents, of course.

Re: Browsers are pretty good at loading pages

#38

Post by SilasX »

arethuza wrote: post #33
RandomInteger4 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because page reloads are jarring and discontinuous experiences. They run counter to a good user experience. That's not to say that every SPA is a good user experience, but just that a page reload is not part of the recipe for a good user experience.

HN uses the "old fashioned" approach of rendering everything server side and every link forces a page reload and I wouldn't describe the experience as "jarring and discontinuous". I'd rather have a fast full page reload than looking at a spinner while complex client side stuff does its stuff. [NB I really like React and when good SPAs are very very good - but a lot aren't].

Well, the up/downvote transition is client side, but otherwise, yes.

Re: Browsers are pretty good at loading pages

#39

Post by marcosdumay »

jakobegger wrote: post #3

I don't get client side navigation. It's a worse experience in every way. It's slow, often doesn't support things like command-click, it usually breaks the back button, and even if it doesn't it breaks the restoration of the scroll position. The only thing worse is a custom scroll UI. Why do people try to reinvent the most basic features of a webbrowser? And if they do, why do they always only do a half-assed job at…

> And if they do, why do they always only do a half-assed job at it?

Oh, that's the easy one. It's half-assed because it's hard as hell to do a good job replacing the browser navigation. It shouldn't be surprising, since browsers are huge pieces of software made basically for displaying content and navigation, it's not reasonable to expect every web page to competently replace half of that job.

Re: Browsers are pretty good at loading pages

#40

Post by yazboo »

> A big one we’re seeing here is called progressive rendering: browsers download the top part of the page first, then show it on the screen while the rest of the page finishes downloading

I question your reasoning here -- I don't think this is how progressive rendering works in browsers. The browser has to download the entire document to construct the DOM, and CSS in the head tag all has to be downloaded and parsed into the CSSOM before the browser can make smart decisions about what to render.

For a simple page, I also doubt that progressive rendering could account for a >1s difference in rendering time. I would suspect the disparity in loading time is related to network IO.

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