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How web bloat impacts users with slow devices

danluu.com

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Re: How web bloat impacts users with slow devices

#131

Post by genewitch »

olliej wrote: post #28
layer8 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not just weak connectivity. I know people in rural areas who still have less than 1 Mbps internet speed over their DSL landline. Using the internet there isn’t a lot of fun.

Which is absurd when you think that the internet used to be usable on 14.4k modems. I remember having to plan to take up hours of time on our phone line to download giant files that were smaller than many basic webpages these days (ignoring things like photos where there's obviously a basic size/quality tradeoff + more pixels)

When i first moved to where i live now DSL had a waitlist, so i tried both a verizon hotspot (myfi!) and dialup. Dialup with HTML gmail (for slow connections!) took minutes to load. IRC was completely usable, but hangouts was not. danluu's website would have loaded just fine, as an example. I just remembered that after getting DSL if more than one person decided to watch a youtube video the pings went up in the 1000ms range.

Re: How web bloat impacts users with slow devices

#132

Post by hmottestad »

lelanthran wrote: post #126

This article is basically unreadable for me 48 y/o on desktop). In the dev tools I added the following to the body to make it readable: font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.5em; max-width: 38rem; Now look how readable (and beautiful) it is. I read a lot of Dan Luu's posts, and each time I have to do this sort of thing to make it readable. Seriously, techies, it's an extra 64 Bytes to make your page more readable.

It’s pretty terrible on my phone too. Almost no margins and small font. Thankfully Reader Mode works in Safari, which fixes everything.

Re: How web bloat impacts users with slow devices

#133

Post by extra88 »

lelanthran wrote: post #126

This article is basically unreadable for me 48 y/o on desktop). In the dev tools I added the following to the body to make it readable: font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.5em; max-width: 38rem; Now look how readable (and beautiful) it is. I read a lot of Dan Luu's posts, and each time I have to do this sort of thing to make it readable. Seriously, techies, it's an extra 64 Bytes to make your page more readable.

I agree that they should add some minimal CSS. But using your browser's Reader View also works, a click rather than multiple steps in DevTools.

Re: How web bloat impacts users with slow devices

#134

Post by skydhash »

perardi wrote: post #38
dexwiz wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re getting downvoted but I think despite the tone you are correct. 10 years ago corporate guidance on web dev was backwards compatibility going back several versions. Now it’s hardly any concern for anything more than 6 months old. More than anything I think it’s because corporate IT has had to modernize due to security. Security now wants you to update constantly instead of running old vetted software. You also…

Who is this mythical end-user with an old browser? Because they don’t show up in browser usage statistics. https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-version-market-share Chrome is evergreen, even on Android. Safari, after a bit of a fallow period, is updated fairly aggressively, and though it’s still coupled with OS updates, it’s no longer married to the annual x.0 releases. Mind you, I still believe, and practice, you shou…

Most people auto update their software or they don’t at all. What they don’t do is buy a brand new laptop as soon as it’s out. And the one they have is a cheap one from HP or Dell. To know their pain, try to use one of these.

Re: How web bloat impacts users with slow devices

#135

Post by jagged-chisel »

lelanthran wrote: post #126

This article is basically unreadable for me 48 y/o on desktop). In the dev tools I added the following to the body to make it readable: font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.5em; max-width: 38rem; Now look how readable (and beautiful) it is. I read a lot of Dan Luu's posts, and each time I have to do this sort of thing to make it readable. Seriously, techies, it's an extra 64 Bytes to make your page more readable.

Do you have any idea of the layers of tooling you must use these days to produce those 64 bytes, and how each of those layers change and remove was was fed from all the other layers? To get exactly those bytes out the other end of the tools would be a herculean effort.

Because we can’t just go around trying to understand basic web-based development without the frameworks … can we?

Re: How web bloat impacts users with slow devices

#136

Post by treflop »

gerdesj wrote: post #128
LM358 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could it just be due to lack of hardware video decoding? The Pi3 has x264 HW acceleration and youtube started using other codecs a while ago.

Is YT so impoverished they can't manage some sort of negotiation mechanism that includes x264 and makes it work?

That might be more on the browser that you’re using. It might be saying “yes I can play this format” to a format it can barely play.

Re: How web bloat impacts users with slow devices

#137

Post by extra88 »

LM358 wrote: post #112
genewitch wrote: post #99

as a data point youtube is unusable on raspberry pi 3. This happened within the last year, because prior to that you could "watch" videos at about 10-15FPS which is enough, for instance, to get repair videos in a shop setting (ask me how i know). When the raspberry pi model B - the first one released - came out, you could play 1080p video from storage, watch youtube, play games . I'm not sure what youtube is doing (o…

Could it just be due to lack of hardware video decoding? The Pi3 has x264 HW acceleration and youtube started using other codecs a while ago.

Probably. I remember when YouTube switched to H.264 (it might have been some Flash-based video before that). I had an older Mac mini hooked up to my TV at the time and suddenly video framerates dropped to an unwatchable level because they saved their bandwidth (and mine but I didn't have to care about my Internet service was not metered) at the expense of client-side processing.

Re: How web bloat impacts users with slow devices

#138

Post by blehn »

lelanthran wrote: post #126

This article is basically unreadable for me 48 y/o on desktop). In the dev tools I added the following to the body to make it readable: font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.5em; max-width: 38rem; Now look how readable (and beautiful) it is. I read a lot of Dan Luu's posts, and each time I have to do this sort of thing to make it readable. Seriously, techies, it's an extra 64 Bytes to make your page more readable.

I think your mods are sensible, however if Dan Luu added those CSS rules himself, there would be comments on here lamenting the low density and "excess whitespace". Luu's audience, on the whole, probably prefers the relatively unstyled approach.

Re: How web bloat impacts users with slow devices

#139

Post by zozbot234 »

perardi wrote: post #38
dexwiz wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re getting downvoted but I think despite the tone you are correct. 10 years ago corporate guidance on web dev was backwards compatibility going back several versions. Now it’s hardly any concern for anything more than 6 months old. More than anything I think it’s because corporate IT has had to modernize due to security. Security now wants you to update constantly instead of running old vetted software. You also…

Who is this mythical end-user with an old browser? Because they don’t show up in browser usage statistics. https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-version-market-share Chrome is evergreen, even on Android. Safari, after a bit of a fallow period, is updated fairly aggressively, and though it’s still coupled with OS updates, it’s no longer married to the annual x.0 releases. Mind you, I still believe, and practice, you shou…

Browsers may be self-updating but hardware is not. You can't just download more RAM or a faster CPU.

Re: How web bloat impacts users with slow devices

#140

Post by gnicholas »

lelanthran wrote: post #126

This article is basically unreadable for me 48 y/o on desktop). In the dev tools I added the following to the body to make it readable: font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.5em; max-width: 38rem; Now look how readable (and beautiful) it is. I read a lot of Dan Luu's posts, and each time I have to do this sort of thing to make it readable. Seriously, techies, it's an extra 64 Bytes to make your page more readable.

The first time I saw this blog posted on HN I wondered how it could possibly be popular with such horrendous layout.

The conclusion I came to is that the audience is very tech-savvy and is used to activating Reader Mode when they encounter pages like this.

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