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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

#491

Post by keyringlight »

amlib wrote: post #375
mik1998 wrote: post #37

I often use a Thinkpad X220 (which still works for a lot of my usage and I'm not too concerned about it being stolen or damaged) and the JS web is terrible to use on it. Mostly resulted in my preference of using native software (non-electron), which generally works perfectly fine and about as well as on my "more modern" computer.

I remember going trough a similar situation when using a netbook. At first they were ok for doing light work and even accessing websites, but as time went on websites and browsers became more and more heavy. Youtube was a struggle, even Google felt laggy. Want to browse a map? You are better off getting a physical one! But, no worry, it was still fine for other low intensity things and some programming projects I wor…

I'm sure there's an odd parable with netbooks, around the time they first started appearing as a hacky project and early commercial products they were lean and mean. Lightweight local software to do things online, compact flash IDE converters versus HDDs (which seems like a precursor to SSDs by proving a market), bare bones linux and there was a new wave of web standards and performance which non-IE browsers were leading in.

Then after going mass market OEMs put full windows and client software on there, and the web became heavier so webmail or simple office/collaboration slowed down. After that mobile/tablets were in competition for the market, and has practically devoured non-professional usage for PCs outside of gaming.

What I keep coming back to is bundling versus unbundling - having one tool to do everything with likely inevitable compromises, versus splitting into a number of precise specialized ones. It's difficult to convince any decent number of people to take something that does less.

Re: How web bloat impacts users with slow devices

#492

Post by geraldhh »

teamonkey wrote: post #466
geraldhh wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

seems fair to correlate "small local businesses that don’t have a web site but do have a Facebook page" with "bad content"

My local butcher provides good content without being terminally online. Unfortunately this means needing to use Facebook to find out if they’re open on a national holiday.

idk if "only facebook" is worse than no online presence at all

Re: How web bloat impacts users with slow devices

#493

Post by nebalee »

RF_Savage wrote: post #488
Timber-6539 wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But then you get the desktop version of the site. Never mind that Reddit has a mobile-friendly version (whose design Reddit has kept on bungling too).

The i.reddit mobile site sadly seems to have stopped working. At least for me.

try adding .i to the end of the url.

Re: How web bloat impacts users with slow devices

#494

Post by fireflash38 »

solatic wrote: post #440
gerdesj wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm 53 and I'm at least five years behind getting my specs sorted out - they are currently perched right on the end of my nose now and I have to get the angle right sometimes (astigmatism). That page is nearly fine for me but I just hit CRTL + to scale up. That works for me. That page is pure text with no or at least minimal fiddling. You have your solution for your use case and I have mine. A blind reader will also…

> That page is nearly fine for me but I just hit CRTL + to scale up. That works for me. How do you do CTRL++ on a mobile phone?

Pinch to zoom, which since basically pinch to zoom was invented should reflow elements.

Re: How web bloat impacts users with slow devices

#495

Post by p_l »

andai wrote: post #480
p_l wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who never worked with some of the bloated sites often forgot third party in the bloating. Marketing team mandating inclusion of at least one "Tag Manager" (if they are especially bad, there will be multiple ). A "Tag Manager" is a piece of JS that is installed together with an API key in the site... and then it downloads whatever extra JS that was configured for given API key. The actual site developer often h…

So marketing department is responsible for web being such a sad and painful experience?

Not the only department.

But consider how much of the bloated JS tends to be from external parties, and pretty much everything that isn't CDN-ed frameworks will be stuff either required by marketing, or flat out added through the use of a tag manager.

Re: How web bloat impacts users with slow devices

#497

Post by literallycancer »

solatic wrote: post #440
gerdesj wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm 53 and I'm at least five years behind getting my specs sorted out - they are currently perched right on the end of my nose now and I have to get the angle right sometimes (astigmatism). That page is nearly fine for me but I just hit CRTL + to scale up. That works for me. That page is pure text with no or at least minimal fiddling. You have your solution for your use case and I have mine. A blind reader will also…

> That page is nearly fine for me but I just hit CRTL + to scale up. That works for me. How do you do CTRL++ on a mobile phone?

In Brave you can do Accessibility - Text Scaling

Re: How web bloat impacts users with slow devices

#498

Post by fuzzfactor »

lukan wrote: post #391
yawaramin wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the case of the devices we're talking about, performance is effectively functionality.

The most performant site is a blank page.

Astute observation.

It should be easy to use this as a "north star" and your only job is to not screw it up hardly at all.

Some people are just worse screw-ups than others.

Re: How web bloat impacts users with slow devices

#499

Post by literallycancer »

gnicholas wrote: post #140
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.

The text fills the entire screen on mobile. That's a lot better than reading something where there's 50% of whitespace.

Re: How web bloat impacts users with slow devices

#500

Post by grishka »

BeFlatXIII wrote: post #454
grishka wrote: post #185

That Discourse guy is a classic example of someone designing their product for the world they wished existed instead of the world we actually live in. Devices with Qualcomm SoCs exist in billions, and will keep existing and keep being manufactured and sold for the foreseeable future. No amount of whining will change that. Get over it and optimize for them. People who use these devices won't care about your whining, t…

Or they take the route to say “not for you”

It only works when you have a coherent vision of your product. "We can't be assed to optimize our code because we value DX above all else" certainly isn't that.
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