Making Instagram.com faster: Part 3 – cache first
instagram-engineering.com
Making Instagram.com faster: Part 3 – cache first
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Re: Making Instagram.com faster: Part 3 – cache first
#2The trick of properly applying operations to cached posts is cool. But the overall experience is bad. It's so frustrating to see an interesting post appear for a fraction of a second and then disappear. It would be far more usable to simply focus on getting fresh data as quickly as possible.
Re: Making Instagram.com faster: Part 3 – cache first
#3> However, as the product grew, a side effect was that our web performance began to slow. Over the last year we made a conscious effort to improve this.
We’ve [1] been advocating strongly for using performance budgets [2] as a means of protecting hard-earned performance improvements. There’s some depressing stat around performance regressions... something like 25-50% of big sites regress in performance 6 months after a big push to optimize. Don’t quote me on the specific number, I believe it’s mentioned in [3].
[1]: Google Web DevRel
Re: Making Instagram.com faster: Part 3 – cache first
#4The trick of properly applying operations to cached posts is cool. But the overall experience is bad. It's so frustrating to see an interesting post appear for a fraction of a second and then disappear. It would be far more usable to simply focus on getting fresh data as quickly as possible.
That was a common complaint but the newest version doesn't do that anymore. Instead of immediately loading the new content, you instead get a little hover button at the top of the feed that says New Posts - that you now click to load the new content.
Because the old system was indeed super annoying, seeing something cool and then having it disappear in a long feed was annoying beyond belief.
It's a small change with the hover button, but one that is definitely a huge improvement. Sometimes the biggest UX changes are super minor - but their impact on a user's experience is massive.
Re: Making Instagram.com faster: Part 3 – cache first
#5The trick of properly applying operations to cached posts is cool. But the overall experience is bad. It's so frustrating to see an interesting post appear for a fraction of a second and then disappear. It would be far more usable to simply focus on getting fresh data as quickly as possible.
That was a common complaint but the newest version doesn't do that anymore. Instead of immediately loading the new content, you instead get a little hover button at the top of the feed that says New Posts - that you now click to load the new content. Because the old system was indeed super annoying, seeing something cool and then having it disappear in a long feed was annoying beyond belief. It's a small change with…
I was looking to make williamscales's very complaint as soon as I read this. Instagram's latest beta for Android 10 does not include this hover button.
Maybe iOS only for now.
Re: Making Instagram.com faster: Part 3 – cache first
#6The trick of properly applying operations to cached posts is cool. But the overall experience is bad. It's so frustrating to see an interesting post appear for a fraction of a second and then disappear. It would be far more usable to simply focus on getting fresh data as quickly as possible.
The same thing annoys me with youtube - notice something cool as you click something on the home page but then by the time you've clicked something and gone back its disappeared
Re: Making Instagram.com faster: Part 3 – cache first
#7> we immediately present users with a cached copy of their previous feed and stories tray, and then replace it with fresh data once it’s available
I vehemently HATE this pattern.
I'm on a slow connection, and I open the app.
Yay, I see some (cached) content. I start reading.
After a random amount of time EVERYTHING CHANGES, and I can't get back to it. It's gone, for all intents and purposes, forever.
I'd love to have a something which tells me there's fresh content to be had, and that I could - if and when I so wanted - CHOOSE to see it.
Re: Making Instagram.com faster: Part 3 – cache first
#8> we immediately present users with a cached copy of their previous feed and stories tray, and then replace it with fresh data once it’s available I vehemently HATE this pattern. I'm on a slow connection, and I open the app. Yay, I see some (cached) content. I start reading. After a random amount of time EVERYTHING CHANGES, and I can't get back to it. It's gone, for all intents and purposes, forever. I'd love to have…
I'm pretty sure if you touch the feed at all, or it detects you haven't seen the content before it'll put a button there that won't move you to the top of the feed until you tap on it for that very reason.
Re: Making Instagram.com faster: Part 3 – cache first
#9> we immediately present users with a cached copy of their previous feed and stories tray, and then replace it with fresh data once it’s available I vehemently HATE this pattern. I'm on a slow connection, and I open the app. Yay, I see some (cached) content. I start reading. After a random amount of time EVERYTHING CHANGES, and I can't get back to it. It's gone, for all intents and purposes, forever. I'd love to have…
The Google Feed on Android phones does something similar but presents a "Refresh Feed" "pill" button when it detects that there's fresher content to pull. Surprised Instagram doesn't do this.
Re: Making Instagram.com faster: Part 3 – cache first
#10> we immediately present users with a cached copy of their previous feed and stories tray, and then replace it with fresh data once it’s available I vehemently HATE this pattern. I'm on a slow connection, and I open the app. Yay, I see some (cached) content. I start reading. After a random amount of time EVERYTHING CHANGES, and I can't get back to it. It's gone, for all intents and purposes, forever. I'd love to have…
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