A single tweet page is 2.0 MB • Hacker News Board

Re: A single tweet page is 2.0 MB

#91

Post by anigbrowl » Tue, Mar 06, 2012, 12:06 AM UTC

untog wrote: post #5

File this under "annoying to developers and no-one else". Twitter obviously caches 99% of this stuff. I absolutely agree that 2.2MB on one page seems absolutely insane, but that doesn't match up with the experience every time you load the page. And I imagine it's pre-caching code that runs on other pages as well, so you most likely only ever take that download hit once. Yes, they should bring that amount down. No, it…

I'm not a developer, and this is a major reason I never click on links to tweets any more. Particularly when using a smartphone, I find the long load times of many web pages so annoying that I simply avoid visiting such sites altogether.

Re: A single tweet page is 2.0 MB

#92

Post by lordlicorice » Tue, Mar 06, 2012, 1:16 AM UTC

poutine wrote: post #3

His rant doesn't seem too informed: "aggressive anti-performance and apparent contempt for the web by Twitter’s designers" According to his charts most of Twitter's page is JS/CSS and presumably set to heavily cache. Very little is data. Once you've done the first page load Twitter's pages will load quite fast and efficiently. While quite a lot of JS, this is good design, not bad.

Maybe his "contempt for the web" comment is referring to the traditional hyperlink-based Web 1.0 model. Every time I try to view a tweet, I get redirected to https://twitter.com/?_twitter_noscript=1

Re: A single tweet page is 2.0 MB

#93

Post by pyre » Tue, Mar 06, 2012, 1:21 AM UTC

burgerbrain wrote: post #61

Zirro wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In early 2007. Isn't this likely to have changed in five years?

http://samsaffron.com/archive/2012/02/17/stop-paying-your-jq... Apparently Stack Overflow sees similar numbers.

I wouldn't call 20% "similar" to 50%, but it is still a significant number.

Re: A single tweet page is 2.0 MB

#94

Post by mmaunder » Tue, Mar 06, 2012, 1:29 AM UTC

poutine wrote: post #3

His rant doesn't seem too informed: "aggressive anti-performance and apparent contempt for the web by Twitter’s designers" According to his charts most of Twitter's page is JS/CSS and presumably set to heavily cache. Very little is data. Once you've done the first page load Twitter's pages will load quite fast and efficiently. While quite a lot of JS, this is good design, not bad.

Did you know, gmail's entire web app is 1.66 megs once fully loaded? Users visit it many times every day and they've still optimized the hell out of it. Same goes for many other well built web apps. Twitter has been getting away with sloppy engineering since their inception and yet they continue to give others engineering advice.

Re: A single tweet page is 2.0 MB

#95

Post by pyre » Tue, Mar 06, 2012, 1:39 AM UTC

AdamTReineke wrote: post #2

Maybe so, but how much of that 1.65MB of Javascript is cached by the browser?

If the initial load-up time is slow, then you're probably less likely to click that Twitter link knowing that the initial page-load is always slow.

The warm-cache situation only matters to people that are on Twitter all the time, so this possibly has the effect of keeping existing users happy while raising a barrier to new users (or pushing infrequent users to completely abandon the system).

Secondly, you're only looking at download size (the importance of is really to imply a certain amount of time it takes to download those resources). Since Twitter's JS platform is about doing all of the HTML rendering on the client-side that has to be taken into account (this wasn't a concern in the past when it was mostly done on the server-side). If the page takes 3s ~ 5s to load even with a warm cache and a tiny (size) ajax-request, then it sort of defeats the purpose (unless your purpose is to relieve server-load instead of in-browser load times).

Re: A single tweet page is 2.0 MB

#96

Post by shareme » Tue, Mar 06, 2012, 2:01 AM UTC

mmaunder wrote: post #94

poutine wrote: post #3

His rant doesn't seem too informed: "aggressive anti-performance and apparent contempt for the web by Twitter’s designers" According to his charts most of Twitter's page is JS/CSS and presumably set to heavily cache. Very little is data. Once you've done the first page load Twitter's pages will load quite fast and efficiently. While quite a lot of JS, this is good design, not bad.

Did you know, gmail's entire web app is 1.66 megs once fully loaded? Users visit it many times every day and they've still optimized the hell out of it. Same goes for many other well built web apps. Twitter has been getting away with sloppy engineering since their inception and yet they continue to give others engineering advice.

yes but in twitters defense gmail now is 1.6 megs it was over 2.5 megs some time ago..about the time wave was launched..they heavily refactored gwt due to the problems with wave..

Re: A single tweet page is 2.0 MB

#97

Post by skeletonjelly » Tue, Mar 06, 2012, 2:20 AM UTC

DanI-S wrote: post #17

erikabele wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly - just set your phone to EDGE and pull up a tweet page in your mobile browser and you'll see how long it takes. And not only for the 1st page load but for all others too. I can pull up a Facebook page (while being logged in) and have that served to me in a fraction of the time it takes for Twitter. Compare that to the feature-set and your opinion will change quickly. Just try it, no stats & graphs needed, you…

Honestly, Facebook's load time is quite phenomenal. It is one of the most feature-laden and complex consumer web applications out there and they still manage to set the bar with regards to speed and multi-platform usability.

I've often thought this too. I wonder if it's because of HipHop

https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/358/

Re: A single tweet page is 2.0 MB

#98

Post by smeg » Tue, Mar 06, 2012, 2:25 AM UTC

poutine wrote: post #3

His rant doesn't seem too informed: "aggressive anti-performance and apparent contempt for the web by Twitter’s designers" According to his charts most of Twitter's page is JS/CSS and presumably set to heavily cache. Very little is data. Once you've done the first page load Twitter's pages will load quite fast and efficiently. While quite a lot of JS, this is good design, not bad.

"His rant doesn't seem too informed"

Worse than that, he seemed to lack some basic understanding of the modern web. The Twitter webpage is not simply a "page" in the traditional sense - it is one instance of the Twitter client app, that happens to be written in Javascript and runs in a Browser.

2MB for a rich client app? Doesn't sound like overkill to me.

Re: A single tweet page is 2.0 MB

#99

Post by Lagged2Death » Tue, Mar 06, 2012, 2:54 AM UTC

mhurron wrote: post #85

Lagged2Death wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author has responded[1] to some comments made when this was posted to MetaFilter[2]. He knows about caching, and he has some reasons why caching doesn't help as much as you'd think. [1] http://www.metafilter.com/113541/The-Magic-Dollar-Sign#42233... [2] http://www.metafilter.com/113541/The-Magic-Dollar-Sign Google and Yahoo have been preaching for years that even fractions of a second of page load time have a big…

> Google and Yahoo have been preaching for years that even fractions of a second of page load time have a big impact on how likely users are to give up and go somewhere else Well of course they worry about it. I can ditch Google and go to Yahoo, DDG, Bing, hell Lycos might still be around, if the Google homepage takes too long to load. Obviously same for Yahoo. Neither of them produce or host the content (search, new…

Well of course they worry about it. I can ditch Google and go to Yahoo, DDG, Bing, hell Lycos might still be around, if the Google homepage takes too long to load.

It's been a while since I saw the story about this, but I came away with the impression that users weren't leaving for another search engine; rather, they were deciding that searching (for whatever often-trivial thing) was not an engaging use of their time.

I'd think that would be of especial concern to something like Twitter.

Re: A single tweet page is 2.0 MB

#100

Post by moe » Tue, Mar 06, 2012, 2:55 AM UTC

smeg wrote: post #98

poutine wrote: post #3

His rant doesn't seem too informed: "aggressive anti-performance and apparent contempt for the web by Twitter’s designers" According to his charts most of Twitter's page is JS/CSS and presumably set to heavily cache. Very little is data. Once you've done the first page load Twitter's pages will load quite fast and efficiently. While quite a lot of JS, this is good design, not bad.

"His rant doesn't seem too informed" Worse than that, he seemed to lack some basic understanding of the modern web. The Twitter webpage is not simply a "page" in the traditional sense - it is one instance of the Twitter client app, that happens to be written in Javascript and runs in a Browser. 2MB for a rich client app? Doesn't sound like overkill to me.

How would you like it if a new copy of iTunes was spawned every time you click a MP3 in finder? That's about the analogy for the current twitter situation.

I wonder why twitter doesn't simply serve up a static "fake" page for direct links. That could easily weigh in under 100kb and display instantly. Then make all links on that page boot up the "real" twitter.

That way the long wait is at least mitigated until the user actually starts to interact with the page (which in 99% of cases he'll never do because he only wanted to read that one tweet).