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I think I kind of hate lazy loading

shkspr.mobi

41–50 of 182 posts

Re: I think I kind of hate lazy loading

#41
post #27

If you open an article on a train you could always scroll to the bottom of the page before you start reading it in order to load all the resources.

There ought to be a "fringe reception mode" (extension, perhaps) which automates that, ideally without the user noticing. Just as TFA calls for.

Re: I think I kind of hate lazy loading

#42
post #21
post #18

Lazy loading also allows any network operator (and FVEY et al) to surveil your progress reading any particular web page based on when the additional image requests are generated.

How are they inspecting your network traffic?

They don't need to. They can infer based on the size and timing of the transfers. Nothing for a while then suddenly a huge download? Probably a picture. If the sizes are unique enough they might even figure out which.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_analysis

To stop this, we'd have to saturate the link 100% of the time even when no useful communications are taking place.

Re: I think I kind of hate lazy loading

#44
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If the problem was out-of-viewport images impeding the receipt of assets that do affect the viewport (CSS, fonts, etc.) then it would be good to postpone fetching those images just until everything else is received, rather than postponing until they're closer to the viewport.

Re: I think I kind of hate lazy loading

#46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The problems lazy loading solves is an everyday issue for me. So ...

I guess the lack of user control here is the annoying part. Hopefully in the next round of standards updates this makes it in.

Re: I think I kind of hate lazy loading

#47
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.

As a web dev… I honestly have never thought of it that way in terms of cost.

I would rather a user see the whole page, consume all the content, it’s not a big cost.

Re: I think I kind of hate lazy loading

#49
Even if network conditions are great, lazy loading breaks browser operations like "Find" with Ctrl-F. It's only gonna search what's in the viewport. I think lazy loading should only be used when there's an actually infinite stream of content to load. But stuff like the twitter replies section shouldn't be this way. I shouldn't have to scroll all the way down to make sure search works.
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