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Despite faster broadband every year, web pages don't load any faster

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Re: Despite faster broadband every year, web pages don't load any faster

#171

Post by jstarfish »

dylan604 wrote: post #144
alkonaut wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Writing a progress bar is basically still impossible. If you are doing a single slow thing like rendering or uploading etc then you can make a progress bar. But if you are making something that has multiple phases and you want to use a single progress bar then that isn't goingt to progress nicely from 0 to 100 it's just impossible. You'll either have to make an overall progress bar for the different phases, or just i…

>Writing a progress bar is basically still impossible. So then why try it? I would much rather see some sort of update like when you run "yum update" and it spits out 3/15, 11/15, etc. You don't have to show all of the lines scrolling, but you could do similar to a "\r" instead of a "\n" in the progress window with an update that is very intuitive. You know how many steps you must take to accomplish the user's reques…

Your alternative was already attempted with Windows 98.

During startup, the console would display the modules after it loaded them. People attributed failure to load the next module as a failure of the last one visible.

This ended with mup.sys being blamed for every failure.

Re: Despite faster broadband every year, web pages don't load any faster

#172

Post by dredmorbius »

xuki wrote: post #102
preya2k wrote: post #95

The title of this post is annoying: Typically we say "faster broadband", when we talk about bandwidth, not about "speed" (which would be latency). So obviously, as long as your website is not larger than your bandwidth capacity, nothing is gonna get "faster", when you upgrade your broadband bandwidth. This is the same as saying "Despite larger pipes every year, water still doesn't reach your house any faster".

Bandwidth = data per unit of time. So for the same amount of data, faster bandwidth absolutely decreases load time.

Expanding on this point:

If a website is transferring more data to render content, or worse, before starting to display content, then bandwidth matters as it will move that data more quickly.

If a website requires multiple round trips to complete a given request, then latency will also matter, and sets an absolute minimum floor to time-to-display (TTD) regardless of bandwidth. The higher your latency, the slower that process.

In theory it's possible for an SPA (single-page application) to be more responsive despite an overall larger page weight as it can incrementally request and present additional content. In practice such pages often perform worse on time to display due to both increased total data transfer and round-trip request requirements. A lightweight HTTP/2 HTML+CSS only site can be far more performant if it's based on static pages and request/load dynamics.

Re: Despite faster broadband every year, web pages don't load any faster

#173

Post by dham »

imgabe wrote: post #69

I got a new M2 Macbook and it's astonishing how much faster the web is. It seems a lot of the lag must just be javascript execution time and not content loading.

Don't worry web developers will come up with more ways to over-engineer a form with 2 inputs.

Re: Despite faster broadband every year, web pages don't load any faster

#174

Post by dham »

AStrangeMorrow wrote: post #130
zxienin wrote: post #128

On similar note: Despite faster hardware every year, laptops don't perform any better, running applications. Usage experience with typical specs of 2022 (500G SSD and 16G RAM) is as good or bad as ones from 20 years back (say, 20G HDD and 128M RAM).

Actually curious, what do you mean exactly by "doesn't perform better" in this context? My experience doesn't go as far (10-15 years), but while I agree a whole subset of softwares don't feel much different (text editors, web browsers), in some other domains I can feel the difference (video games, programing IDEs and the tools they offer). Where I imagine I agree is if a computer hardware becomes 10x more performant,…

I started software professionally in 2008 and I honestly can't tell a difference between literally anything in this time period. I was using Netbeans and doing Java EE / JSF and the feedback loop feels about the same as it does today. I do remember going from Java EE to Play Framework and it being a little faster feedback loop. Sublime Text still works about the same as it did on Leopard. The only noticeable speed bump I've felt in this time period was going to an M1 from 2019 Intel MacbookPro. I think the reason is the 2019 Intel Macbook pro is one of the slowest computers to ever be released and while throttled (99% of the time) it was slower than my 2015 Macbook Pro and maybe even my 2013. I'm sure the M1 will be eaten up with React and Electron apps soon enough.

Re: Despite faster broadband every year, web pages don't load any faster

#175

Post by dylan604 »

jstarfish wrote: post #171
dylan604 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Writing a progress bar is basically still impossible. So then why try it? I would much rather see some sort of update like when you run "yum update" and it spits out 3/15, 11/15, etc. You don't have to show all of the lines scrolling, but you could do similar to a "\r" instead of a "\n" in the progress window with an update that is very intuitive. You know how many steps you must take to accomplish the user's reques…

Your alternative was already attempted with Windows 98. During startup, the console would display the modules after it loaded them. People attributed failure to load the next module as a failure of the last one visible. This ended with mup.sys being blamed for every failure.

I don't know the specifics to mup.sys you mentioned or Win98 at all, but isn't this pretty much the same for every OS/application debugging? The message can't be updated to the screen until the process has completed. I thought it typical debugging knowledge that you look at the processing after what ever the last completed message was. It's kind of common sense when you actually think about the logging process.

Re: Despite faster broadband every year, web pages don't load any faster

#176

Post by renonce »

mod wrote: post #169
modeless wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are right. It is not a technology problem. It is a problem of incentives. The people writing the software don't have the right incentives to make it pleasant to use.

Some of them do, and then we end up with social media that doesn't take 15 seconds to load. This site, for instance.

It's not the incentives that make this site load in 15 seconds. The site just doesn't have the incentives found in the majority of sites to make it any more complex than it has to be.

Re: Despite faster broadband every year, web pages don't load any faster

#177

Post by midoridensha »

jstarfish wrote: post #171
dylan604 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Writing a progress bar is basically still impossible. So then why try it? I would much rather see some sort of update like when you run "yum update" and it spits out 3/15, 11/15, etc. You don't have to show all of the lines scrolling, but you could do similar to a "\r" instead of a "\n" in the progress window with an update that is very intuitive. You know how many steps you must take to accomplish the user's reques…

Your alternative was already attempted with Windows 98. During startup, the console would display the modules after it loaded them. People attributed failure to load the next module as a failure of the last one visible. This ended with mup.sys being blamed for every failure.

>During startup, the console would display the modules after it loaded them. People attributed failure to load the next module as a failure of the last one visible.

Then why didn't they print a message before loading a module? This is really simple stuff, and would immediately show the problem. This is pretty normal in printing to logfiles in software: print messages both before and after an action is taken, so if it gets stuck in the action, you see that it never succeeded though it was started.

Re: Despite faster broadband every year, web pages don't load any faster

#178

Post by yawnxyz »

Gigachad wrote: post #37
yawnxyz wrote: post #3

Despite faster computers every year, my computers don't seem to run any faster, either

Computer speed is a lot like driving traffic times. The amount of time it takes is pretty fixed as it’s based on what people find acceptable which doesn’t change. With faster computers just comes more features at the same speed.

Atlanta keeps adding new lanes to highways, but the traffic jams never get any better! (There's probably better throughput though)
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