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I think I kind of hate lazy loading

shkspr.mobi

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Re: I think I kind of hate lazy loading

#11

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

A weird complaint if you ask me.

Browsers and developers should try to do their best with limited resources. So it most cases that means making predictions about user behavior. Sometimes that means preloading content (e.g. if you're on a landing page, preloading content from the next likely page will make the it feel much more performant) and sometimes lazy loading to not waste resources if a user isn't going to see content in the first place.

But of course there will be "bad branch predictions" sometimes. I think "having a page load before I get into the tunnel but not scroll down enough to have content load before I lose Internet connection" certainly seems like a case that it's fair not to optimize for.

Re: I think I kind of hate lazy loading

#12

Post by xnx »

I generally dislike lazy loading. My time is almost always worth more than data transfer costs, so I'd much rather load up a bunch of stuff I might not see so that in the office chance I fast scroll down the page I don't have to wait for anything.

Re: I think I kind of hate lazy loading

#13

Post by dylan604 »

mvdtnz wrote: post #5
ttfkam wrote: post #2

It's curious that some folks hate the side effects of insufficient infrastructure while missing that the lack of modern infrastructure is the root problem. It is entirely possible to get a cell signal on a train, even in tunnels. We as a society just choose not to build out the necessary infrastructure.

As a software developer I have very little control over rail infrastructure. However I have almost total control over the HTML attributes I emit.

[flagged]

Re: I think I kind of hate lazy loading

#14

Post by dylan604 »

gonzo41 wrote: post #3
ttfkam wrote: post #2

It's curious that some folks hate the side effects of insufficient infrastructure while missing that the lack of modern infrastructure is the root problem. It is entirely possible to get a cell signal on a train, even in tunnels. We as a society just choose not to build out the necessary infrastructure.

Europe has the benefit of having had a lot of roads created by the Romans. Infrastructure takes time.

But it burns in a day?

Re: I think I kind of hate lazy loading

#15

Post by nicbou »

I live in Germany and so do most of my users, so I take the spotty internet rather seriously. There are lots of holes in the coverage even in the capital. Then there is the underground.

However loading the images early wastes bandwidth, and it hurts SEO. In my case the user can live without those images, so it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make. I hope that descriptive alt tags will help.

On the other hand, the whole text is there from the start and every other way is wrong.

Re: I think I kind of hate lazy loading

#19

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

forgotmypw17 wrote: post #7

Lazy loading breaks a lot of functionality. For example, I open a webpage and then go offline. Later, I scroll down, but the content is missing. Another time, I open a webpage and save it. But most of the content is not saved, because it has not been loaded. The network activity is actually higher for a page with lazy-loading elements. All-around, it does not make any sense to me, personally.

Both of these seem like uncommon edge cases. I can't remember the last time I actually "saved a webpage" - I think in my using the web for nearly the past 30 years that functionality hardly ever worked well in the first place. I do use print-to-PDF fairly often, but honestly don't know how lazy load works in that scenario. If you choose to print all pages and it doesn't include lazy loaded images, I'd just consider that a bug.
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