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I think I kind of hate lazy loading

shkspr.mobi

31–40 of 182 posts

Re: I think I kind of hate lazy loading

#31

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…

Instead of all the complexity and code and branch predication, how about just send the page and the images? If lazy loading is super important, the browser can lazy load and render off screen. Don't make thousands of solutions for thousands of platforms on the server side.

Re: I think I kind of hate lazy loading

#32

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…

I agree. A simple way to solve it is to make the article readable without images. Good old alt tags! A data science heavy article may not benefit. But a dozen words can paint a picture.

Re: I think I kind of hate lazy loading

#33
post #8
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.

It is the web developers choice to decide whether or not to deal with bad/poor internet connections. Most do not. Lazy loading makes it impossible to do anything to manage a poor connection.

In this case it's also the choice of the user, they could choose to ignore the lazy loading tags (I know OP mentions their browser doesn't supports it, but they could choose another browser)

Re: I think I kind of hate lazy loading

#34

There used to be a time where you can load up a YouTube video on the site and go offline then watch the video. You can't do that any more, unless you actively find a way to download the said video.

You can do it with YouTube premium

Or use whatever YouTube-dl is called now.

Re: I think I kind of hate lazy loading

#35

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…

Instead of all the complexity and code and branch predication, how about just send the page and the images? If lazy loading is super important, the browser can lazy load and render off screen. Don't make thousands of solutions for thousands of platforms on the server side.

I agree but changing the world to that would be quite a fuss. But if that was already where we are at it would be better. But the JS as an Operating System per site ship has sailed.

Re: I think I kind of hate lazy loading

#37
post #8
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.

It is the web developers choice to decide whether or not to deal with bad/poor internet connections. Most do not. Lazy loading makes it impossible to do anything to manage a poor connection.

> Lazy loading makes it impossible to do anything to manage a poor connection.

This was the exact problem lazy loading was supposed to solve

Re: I think I kind of hate lazy loading

#38
post #12

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.

You're thinking of your own costs; the developer is more likely thinking of their own than yours.

Re: I think I kind of hate lazy loading

#39

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 t…

For you, they are uncommon edge cases. For me, they are everyday usage.

Re: I think I kind of hate lazy loading

#40
post #15

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…

In the early days, google used those alt tags to help its SEO, but now we have the Eli Parsier Google filter bubble to give us the SEO experience we are looking for as it tries to combat those bots manipulating Search.
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