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www.google.com – The page is blank when accessed

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Re: www.google.com – The page is blank when accessed

#301

Post by stephenr »

sangnoir wrote: post #298
stephenr wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's wild to think that everything we've collectively learned as an industry is being forgotten, just 20 years later. - We're on the verge of another browser monopoly, cheered on by developers embracing the single controlling vendor; - We already have sites declaring that they "work best in Chrome" when what they really mean is "we only bothered to test in Chrome". - People are not only using UA sniffing with inevita…

> People are not only using UA sniffing with inevitable disastrous results, they're proclaiming loudly that it's both necessary and "the best" solution. Since you're replying to my comment and paraphrasing a sentence of mine, I'm guessing I'm "people". I'm curious to hear from you on what - if any - is a better alternative that can be used to determine the browser identity or characteristics (implied by name and vers…

I'm sorry you're going to have to pick an argument and stick to it before I can possibly hope to respond. Either performance is so critical that a few kb to do feature detection is too much, or line performance has improved so much that 2MB of JavaScript for a text box and two buttons is "acceptable". You can't have it both ways.

Re: www.google.com – The page is blank when accessed

#302

Post by hansvm »

sangnoir wrote: post #297
stephenr wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The important word in the question you quoted is needed . Google homepage is 2MB. Two fucking megabytes. Without JS, it's 200K. I can't be the only person who remembers when Google was known for even omitting technically optional html tags on their homepage, to make it load fast - they even documented this as a formal suggestion: https://google.github.io/styleguide/htmlcssguide.html#Option...

> I can't be the only person who remembers when Google was known for even omitting technically optional html tags on their homepage, to make it load fast This was back when a large fraction of search users were on 56k modems. Advances in broadband connectivity, caching, browser rendering, resource loading scheduling, and front-end engineering practices may result in the non-intuitive scenario where the 2MB Google hom…

I've definitely had to code up alternative front-ends routed through a server I own to access Google on slow connections. If it takes too long your browser just gives up, and the site isn't just "unusable" (slow to the point of being painful), it's actually unusable.

Re: www.google.com – The page is blank when accessed

#303

Post by sangnoir »

stephenr wrote: post #300
sangnoir wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can't be the only person who remembers when Google was known for even omitting technically optional html tags on their homepage, to make it load fast This was back when a large fraction of search users were on 56k modems. Advances in broadband connectivity, caching, browser rendering, resource loading scheduling, and front-end engineering practices may result in the non-intuitive scenario where the 2MB Google hom…

I'm sorry you're going to have to pick an argument and stick to it before I can possibly hope to respond. Either performance is so critical that a few kb to do feature detection is too much, or line performance has improved so much that 2MB of JavaScript for a text box and two buttons is "acceptable". You can't have it both ways.

> You can't have it both ways.

Your argument goes against empirical evidence in this instance. You can have it "both ways" when client-side feature detection is the slower choice on high bandwidth connections and you want to consistently render the UI within 200ms.

Performance goes beyond raw bandwidth, and as with all things engineering, involves tradeoffs: client-side feature detection has higher latency (server-client-server round trip and network connection overheads) and is therefore unsuitable for logic that executes before the first render of above-the-fold content. All of this is pragmatic, well-known and not controversial among people who work on optimizing FE performance. Your no-serverside-detection absolutism is disproved by the many instances of UA-string parsing in our present reality.

Re: www.google.com – The page is blank when accessed

#304

Post by sangnoir »

hansvm wrote: post #302
sangnoir wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can't be the only person who remembers when Google was known for even omitting technically optional html tags on their homepage, to make it load fast This was back when a large fraction of search users were on 56k modems. Advances in broadband connectivity, caching, browser rendering, resource loading scheduling, and front-end engineering practices may result in the non-intuitive scenario where the 2MB Google hom…

I've definitely had to code up alternative front-ends routed through a server I own to access Google on slow connections. If it takes too long your browser just gives up, and the site isn't just "unusable" (slow to the point of being painful), it's actually unusable.

I don't doubt your experience - but my mention of the 99th percentile was intentional.

Re: www.google.com – The page is blank when accessed

#305

Post by hansvm »

sangnoir wrote: post #304
hansvm wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've definitely had to code up alternative front-ends routed through a server I own to access Google on slow connections. If it takes too long your browser just gives up, and the site isn't just "unusable" (slow to the point of being painful), it's actually unusable.

I don't doubt your experience - but my mention of the 99th percentile was intentional.

99th percentile is fairly arbitrary. At Google's scale, that's a $2B yearly loss in customers they could have satisfied who went elsewhere. That's roughly 200FTEs who could be dedicated to the problem more efficiently than working on their other business concerns. Is not delivering a shit website when the connections are garbage that hard of a problem?

Re: www.google.com – The page is blank when accessed

#306

Post by stephenr »

sangnoir wrote: post #303
stephenr wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry you're going to have to pick an argument and stick to it before I can possibly hope to respond. Either performance is so critical that a few kb to do feature detection is too much, or line performance has improved so much that 2MB of JavaScript for a text box and two buttons is "acceptable". You can't have it both ways.

> You can't have it both ways. Your argument goes against empirical evidence in this instance. You can have it "both ways" when client-side feature detection is the slower choice on high bandwidth connections and you want to consistently render the UI within 200ms. Performance goes beyond raw bandwidth, and as with all things engineering, involves tradeoffs: client-side feature detection has higher latency (server-cl…

> Your no-serverside-detection absolutism is disproved by the many instances of UA-string parsing in our present reality.

By your logic, because McDonalds is popular, it must be a healthy choice then.

Re: www.google.com – The page is blank when accessed

#307

Post by lightedman »

denschub wrote: post #179
lightedman wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"There are various people whose job involves triaging issues filed on that repo, and communicating with the issue authors where necessary e.g. to figure out additional steps required to reproduce the reported problem." And exactly where are the various QUALITY CONTROL testers that should've caught such a dead-simple problem like "This won't work with Google Search" before it ever happened in the first place?

This issue was caused by Google on their server-side, without any relation to a change in Firefox, so I'm not sure why you feel the need to yell at my Mozilla-colleague.

As a quality control technician, I have several tests, including checking against third party resources for compatibility.

If I were a web browser coder, making sure my software worked with the major websites of the internet would be the FIRST thing to test. I don't release until I know it works.

This exact same mindset is why I make the expensive stuff where I work, and nobody else.

I'm also not yelling. That you think text is yelling is quite something I'll never understand from anyone. Two capitalized words isn't yelling.

Re: www.google.com – The page is blank when accessed

#308

Post by alcoholic_byte »

Here is a nafarious interpretation of events: (I assume we all remember how Alphabet, in order to drive Chrome adoption, sabotaged youtube when a Firefox-browser was detected?)

Only breaking for new FF-versions will give the untechnical user the impression that FF broke through an upgrade.

So I call this another not so feeble, but very evil(yes I think we expect nothing less of them right now), attempt of Google go tighten the grip on the Browser-eco-system.

Not the least that it only impacts FF on Android.

On Android the means to inspect are limited without a computer(so they might hope for users to switch because they need access and then forget to switch back). That is also, to me, a sign that it was intentional, just because how specific, browser-centric this is.

Re: www.google.com – The page is blank when accessed

#309

Post by alcoholic_byte »

forward1 wrote: post #286
michaelt wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back when competition law used to be enforced, if you used your ~90% market share in one area (such as PC operating systems) to give yourself an unfair advantage in another area (such as web browsers) the government forced you to stop doing that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor... . If the laws were still being enforced, a company that has a very large market share in web browsers, and a…

Do you put "accidentally" in quotes to support your baseless accusation? Because you have provided no evidence of any wrongdoing, only biased speculation.

If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck and looks like a duck......

Re: www.google.com – The page is blank when accessed

#310

Post by alcoholic_byte »

mglz wrote: post #97
Draiken wrote: post #93

Another reason to stop using Google. Don't waste the opportunity! Switched to DDG ages ago, and even though it's not amazing, it's already better than Google. Although, if we're honest, searching these days is absolutely atrocious everywhere. Any keyword search will only net you ads or "top X" articles full of SEO garbage most likely written by AI at this point...

For people who don't know them yet: use DDG bangs. For example "!m restaurant [citynmae]" will immediately bring you to Google maps, "!w chemistry" will open Wikipedia etc. Super easy and powerful :)

I agree, it is nice and privacy respecting, but I take umbrige with the google-maps. I am not really using Gmaps and I have everyone in my orbit exposed to alternatives. Just because.... like cato used to say...... I believe that Google should be destroyed.
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