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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

#411

Post by john61 »

teamonkey wrote: post #388
john61 wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usually bad web software correlates with bad content. Therefore having a slow device is an excellent filter helping to avoid garbage.

Unfortunately the modern web has consolidated to a point where you need to use them. For example, small local businesses that don’t have a web site but do have a Facebook page.

Having only a facebook page and forcing people on that toxic platform, is a strong indication that they do not value freedom (of the web) and ethics. Again a good filter for business / people I want to avoid.

Re: How web bloat impacts users with slow devices

#412

Post by nottorp »

withinboredom wrote: post #393
ponector wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not to build a cathedral if someone else is paying? I've never seen companies where developers are rewarded for performance improvement or any kind of improvement. Did an improvement? Nice! Good job! And that's it.

The point is, you build a shack so you can build a cathedral where it’s warranted. If you are stuck maintaining a cathedral you can’t move on to bigger better things.

Yep, you build a shack and charge the users the price of a starbucks latte per month because "it's just a starbucks latte".

Then you wonder why the solo founder saas has no customers.

Re: How web bloat impacts users with slow devices

#413

Post by geraldhh »

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?

every yt video is available as x264 but vp9 is cheaper (smaller) and has better quality

Re: How web bloat impacts users with slow devices

#414

Post by nottorp »

gruez wrote: post #408
nottorp wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By all accounts client devices' energy consumption is a rounding error in terms of contribution to climate change. It adds up? How many devices are there? Tens of billions? Web 345 devs just don't care because the costs are borne by the customer.

The customer doesn't care either because a page that takes 5s longer to load on a 1W TDP SoC costs them around one-millionth of a penny. Even if you're refreshing 100 times per day it's only around 0.05 kWh per year, which at any reasonable electricity prices is a sum that's simply not worth worrying about. You'd get more savings from getting people to turn off their led light bulbs for a few minutes.

US centric electricity prices view :)

Also, it's not just your site. It's every site. And the customer pays all those millionths of a penny added up out of their pocket. And all those 5 second delays out of their lifetime.

Edit: btw at a quick glance you underestimated cell phone soc TDP by a 2-4 factor.

Re: How web bloat impacts users with slow devices

#415

Post by geraldhh »

wonnage wrote: post #240
hinkley wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They encode videos ahead of time and they likely decided that whatever hardware you’re judging them by is only .9% of the market so fuck those guys. Big companies use percentages in places they shouldn’t and it gets them in trouble. .1% when you have a billion users is a million people you’re shitting on. For me that might be a dozen people. Very different.

Encoding and storing billions of videos in a format used by 0.1% of users feels like a waste though

robustness is only wasted if you're lucky

Re: How web bloat impacts users with slow devices

#416

Post by nicce »

pimlottc wrote: post #246
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…

YouTube is definitely getting heavier. My early 2021 MacBook Air (Intel) now gets random video pauses under moderate load, something that never used to happen.

Could be just ads that adblocker tries to block. Google is trying new ways all the time to bypass adblockers.

Re: How web bloat impacts users with slow devices

#417

Post by geraldhh »

antisthenes wrote: post #230
genewitch wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i did a full apt dist-upgrade to try and get the h264ify plugin to install and if i remember correctly i never was able to get it to install. I upgraded from "chromium" to "chromium-browser" and set all the compositing and other settings recommended for the RPI. and to reply to another sibling, "yt-dlp" isn't workable, this is for a senior citizen that does small motor repairs. I got an HP elitedesk that's a few year…

RPI 3 for a senior citizen seems like a poor solution in the first place. I would have opted for a small business-pc that is x86 based and 3-4 years old.

a used laptop that can play youtube videos can be had for about the same money

Re: How web bloat impacts users with slow devices

#418

Post by khiqxj »

the web is a pile of horse shit why is this even news. the best part is how all the SJW apple tesla cloud smart tech yuppies in tech dont care about how 99% of the world who cant afford to buy a new machine every year have an experience on their product worse in every way than dial up as they force every formerly paper transaction onto web. just opening firefox with blank home page can take deciseconds and even minutes. even opening a new blank tab is unresponsive and lags up the UI. on anything but mid-high range desktop hardware.

how does this even have 200 upvotes? i cant count more than 1 or 2 websites that doesnt have infinite bloat for useless nonsense like the cookie popup social media whatever 10 meme frameworks and 100 js libs injected into the page. HNers just read "bad stuff bad", respond "yup" like a zombie, and continue doing bad stuff

Re: How web bloat impacts users with slow devices

#419

Post by nottorp »

wraptile wrote: post #406
nottorp wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> max-width: 38rem; Now look how readable (and beautiful) it is. How is it readable when you're limiting text width and not taking advantage of the whole screen you paid for? [Turning 48 next month and wearing glasses.]

FYI the optimal line length is 50-75 characters and that has been the standard for text since the type writers. You don't want to move your neck when you read a single line that's kinda silly.

> that has been the standard for text since the type writers

I have a feeling it was the standard because they used the minimum font size to make the letters readable, and that's how much it fit on the physical page width. Which was standardized before typewriters for unknown historical reasons?

> You don't want to move your neck when you read a single line that's kinda silly.

I don't have to move my neck to read the article spread across the full width of my monitor. On 13" laptop or 24" desktops. Are you using a 21:9 utrawide?

Re: How web bloat impacts users with slow devices

#420

Post by BlackFingolfin »

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 just activate reader mode on his pages, works great. (Not disagreeing with you, just stating another workaround)

Also wish his pages had dates on them (one or both of first posted / last updated) AFAIK he intentionally leaves them out, I don't get why.

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