Since 2000, I've observed the internet shift from free sharing of information to aggressive monetization of every piece of knowledge. So I suspect that is the culprit. If you use the mobile web on the latest iPhone you'll find its unusable without an ad-blocker.
How web bloat impacts users with slow devices
61–70 of 613 posts
Re: How web bloat impacts users with slow devices
#62I only recently moved from a 6-year old LG flagship phone to a shiny new Galaxy, and the performance difference is staggering. It shouldn't be - that was a very high-end phone at release, it's not that old, and it still works like new. I know it's not just my phone, because the Galaxy S9s I use to test code have the same struggles. I would like to have seen Amazon in the tests. IME Amazon's website is among the absol…
Re: How web bloat impacts users with slow devices
#63google web engines (blink/geeko) and apple web engines with their SDK are sickening. They are an insult to sanity. They well deserve their hate.
It's the websites/web developers that are the problem.
Re: How web bloat impacts users with slow devices
#64Earlier 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…
Re: How web bloat impacts users with slow devices
#65I only recently moved from a 6-year old LG flagship phone to a shiny new Galaxy, and the performance difference is staggering. It shouldn't be - that was a very high-end phone at release, it's not that old, and it still works like new. I know it's not just my phone, because the Galaxy S9s I use to test code have the same struggles. I would like to have seen Amazon in the tests. IME Amazon's website is among the absol…
Re: How web bloat impacts users with slow devices
#66As for users with the lowest-end devices like the Itel P32, Dan's chart seems to prove that no amount of incremental optimization would benefit them. The only thing that might is a wholesale different client architecture that sacrifices features and polish to provide the slimmest code possible. That is, an alternate "lite/basic" mode. Unfortunately, this style of approach has rarely proved successful: the empathy problem returns in a different guise, as US-based developers often make the wrong decisions on which features/polish are essential to keep versus discarded for performance reasons.
Re: How web bloat impacts users with slow devices
#67That would be an interesting direct comparison.
Re: How web bloat impacts users with slow devices
#68Anecdotally, Google Search loads ~500ms faster than DuckDuckGo on the OG Pinephone.
Re: How web bloat impacts users with slow devices
#69Not only the user is affected by this. The difference between a 2MB and a 150KB CSS file can be a lot of bandwidth. The difference between a bad and good framework can be a lot of CPU power and RAM. Companies pay for this. But I guess most have no clue that these costs can be reduced. And some companies just don't care as long as money is coming in.
Re: How web bloat impacts users with slow devices
#70If you don't have a good phone and a high speed connection, you don't have any money to spend on either the sites products or the products of their advertisers. When looked at from that angle, bloat is a feature. It's not reasonable to have an expectation of quality when it comes to the web.