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The Verge's web sucks

blog.lmorchard.com

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Re: The Verge's web sucks

#51

Post by otis_inf »

wiremine wrote: post #50

As a consultant, I only see web site producers making an effort to curb poor web practices when Google forces them to: Google's move to boost mobile-friendly design in the rankings has driven us a TON of responsive design work. I wonder if that is going to be what it takes to fix today's bloat problems: Google takes the hammer to sites that too much advertising cruft. Otherwise, I don't see business makers seeing muc…

> I wonder if that is going to be what it takes to fix today's bloat problems: Google takes the hammer to sites that too much advertising cruft.

That could get interesting: Google, using the argument that all those ad-related scripts make things slow, ranking sites with a lot of them lower than sites which don't, and at the same time hitting their competitors hard: after all, Google makes money through ads, if their competitors are forced to be used less (by Google's own actions) more people might be using Google ad networks.

Re: The Verge's web sucks

#52

Post by [deleted] »

dvh wrote: post #8

After I started working on my own RSS reader, I started converting more and more website to RSS feeds (e.g. twitter, youtube, all news site) where I only extract interesting bits. It's faster and cleaner, not to mension no ads.

[deleted]

Re: The Verge's web sucks

#53

Post by sudioStudio64 »

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #38
sudioStudio64 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't the site just collect some data from the client and forward it to the ad networks on the backend? All of this stuff needs to happen out of band.

Because the trend is for the client to bear the burden.

It sounds like the Mozilla solution of building some kind of intelligence around advertising might be the way to go then. Injecting all this stuff in the page load is crazy.

Re: The Verge's web sucks

#55

Post by cheshire137 »

mdevere wrote: post #34

The Verge has some interesting long-form from time to time but it's subsidised by endless clickbait and empty 'conversation-starter' content. Not to mention their recent move to close Comments being a cynical strategy to get people using their forums. Realise that's OT but wanted to get it off my chest.

What's this about comments? Do their articles not have comments and a form at the bottom anymore?

Re: The Verge's web sucks

#56

Post by mdevere »

cheshire137 wrote: post #55
mdevere wrote: post #34

The Verge has some interesting long-form from time to time but it's subsidised by endless clickbait and empty 'conversation-starter' content. Not to mention their recent move to close Comments being a cynical strategy to get people using their forums. Realise that's OT but wanted to get it off my chest.

What's this about comments? Do their articles not have comments and a form at the bottom anymore?

Temporarily disabled by default but they turn them on for certain articles.

They claimed this was because comments had become too negative. It is possible they are genuinely just trying to protect the mental health of their staff who are usually the targets of more aggressive comments but somehow I doubt it.

Re: The Verge's web sucks

#57

Post by jeremiep »

insin wrote: post #31

> We keep things like Adblock Plus at arm's length for plausible deniability - but everyone I know uses it. I wish this had been included in the main body of this post, with some metrics; everyone you know uses it because it makes the web suck so much less. Loading The Verge's article in a Chrome incognito window: 19.6 MB transferred, finished in 41.9 s, huge ad covering the entire page above the developer console I…

I've replaced Adblock with uBlock and uMatrix and couldn't be happier. It seems to have a smaller footprint in the browser and better results at filtering away unwanted requests.

The only thing that would make this perfect is if they would also run on my Android phone.

Re: The Verge's web sucks

#58

Post by gorhill »

insin wrote: post #31

> We keep things like Adblock Plus at arm's length for plausible deniability - but everyone I know uses it. I wish this had been included in the main body of this post, with some metrics; everyone you know uses it because it makes the web suck so much less. Loading The Verge's article in a Chrome incognito window: 19.6 MB transferred, finished in 41.9 s, huge ad covering the entire page above the developer console I…

Default-deny is the best answer against bloat -- though not for everybody unfortunately, but I did try to make it as straightforward as possible with uBlock Origin[1]. Using default-deny in uBlock Origin/Chromium[2] and with the page displaying properly, I get from Network pane in dev console:

- 62 requests

- 508 KB transferred

Once you start using default-deny mode, it's difficult to go back to anything less restrictive as one get quickly used to how fast pages load -- and with such virtuous "side-effects" as foiling most 3rd-party tracking/data mining by default. Once usual sites are "unbroken" and ruleset saved, using default-deny become less and less of a annoyance over time. For example, I already had the only two rules necessary to unbreak The Verge so the page appeared correctly the first visit.

Another example of ridiculous amount of bloat: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Tips-and-tricks-water...

* * *

[1] sorry if this sounds like a plug, I do feel strongly about users re-claiming control about where their computer connects.

[2] using suggested default-deny ruleset at https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Dynamic-filtering:-de...

Re: The Verge's web sucks

#59

Post by leavjenn »

cheshire137 wrote: post #55
mdevere wrote: post #34

The Verge has some interesting long-form from time to time but it's subsidised by endless clickbait and empty 'conversation-starter' content. Not to mention their recent move to close Comments being a cynical strategy to get people using their forums. Realise that's OT but wanted to get it off my chest.

What's this about comments? Do their articles not have comments and a form at the bottom anymore?

Verge: We're turning comments off for a bit http://www.theverge.com/2015/7/6/8901115/were-turning-commen...

Re: The Verge's web sucks

#60

Post by _lce0 »

otis_inf wrote: post #51
wiremine wrote: post #50

As a consultant, I only see web site producers making an effort to curb poor web practices when Google forces them to: Google's move to boost mobile-friendly design in the rankings has driven us a TON of responsive design work. I wonder if that is going to be what it takes to fix today's bloat problems: Google takes the hammer to sites that too much advertising cruft. Otherwise, I don't see business makers seeing muc…

> I wonder if that is going to be what it takes to fix today's bloat problems: Google takes the hammer to sites that too much advertising cruft. That could get interesting: Google, using the argument that all those ad-related scripts make things slow, ranking sites with a lot of them lower than sites which don't, and at the same time hitting their competitors hard: after all, Google makes money through ads, if their…

nah, that wont work.

that would surely end up in legal battle, from the ad agencies saying that Google used their monopolistic power on the search industry just to boost their analytics product.

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