6 ms·

In reality, people want a page that becomes usable as quickly as possible. Specifically, people use hovers and scrolling to test that a given page is 'ready.'

by malchow 11y ago

In reality, people want a page that becomes usable as quickly as possible. Specifically, people use hovers and scrolling to test that a given page is 'ready.' That is very different from a page that fires DOMContentLoaded as quickly as possible. That metric is pretty much irrelevant to real people. Which is part of why ads aren't quite as nasty as a lot of tech industry people make out.

degenerate 11y ago
When I start scrolling and the page seems ready to use, and then ads start popping in late and breaking the document flow in the first few seconds - you better believe I'm blocking them on your site.
- malchow 11y ago
  I quite agree. There's no excuse for that. Although most of the time it isn't the fault of the website or publisher, but rather of an adtech partner.
  - manigandham 11y ago
    It's both. It's a shared execution and the publishers haven't really put the work in either. Check how well http://www.theguardian.com/ http://www.theguardian.com/ loads and you can see that it's perfect possibly to have plenty of ads while still having a great reading experience.
    - malchow 11y ago
      Do you know what their architecture is? It is fast.
      - manigandham 11y ago
        Some details here: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/developer-blog/2014/dec/29/what-is-the-guardians-tech-stack http://www.theguardian.com/technology/developer-blog/2014/de... It's not really the backend that matters, these days its the front-end setup that makes the biggest difference. Less javascript, less huge unnecessary images, less "interactive" crap and streamlining the loading of content first then ads async can make a site load pretty quick. They also style the ad slot dimensions (since all banners are standard sizes) which keeps the content from moving around when an ad does load. Its just simple effective optimizations, something that should be done but for some combination of bad talent, bad management and poor priorities, just isnt.
hutattedonmyarm 11y ago
On mobile I actually care if the pages continues to load a ton of shit, even if it's usable already
- malchow 11y ago
  I suppose that's right. But it's also kind of a short term worry. I mean, don't you think mobile networks are going to keep getting relatively faster and relatively cheaper and will therefore be more relatively OK with a few ad-related keepalives? Around this time in 1997, the PBS Newshour website[1] was an outrageous 113.7KB, which at the very top end of the GSM GPRS 2G networks of the time, 115 kbit/s, would take 8 long seconds to download. Why? Because of all of those obnoxious Sun Netra banner ads![2] What do you get in 8 seconds on LTE today? Lord of the Rings in 720p. Or a whole bunch of Buzzfeed pages with some ad trackers, sure. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/19970605132107/http://www1.pbs.org/newshour/ https://web.archive.org/web/19970605132107/http://www1.pbs.o... [2] https://web.archive.org/web/19970605132107im_/http://www1.pbs.org/newshour/images/homepage/netra_si.gif https://web.archive.org/web/19970605132107im_/http://www1.pb...

by malchow 11y ago

degenerate 11y ago

When I start scrolling and the page seems ready to use, and then ads start popping in late and breaking the document flow in the first few seconds - you better believe I'm blocking them on your site.

malchow 11y ago
I quite agree. There's no excuse for that. Although most of the time it isn't the fault of the website or publisher, but rather of an adtech partner.
- manigandham 11y ago
  It's both. It's a shared execution and the publishers haven't really put the work in either. Check how well http://www.theguardian.com/ http://www.theguardian.com/ loads and you can see that it's perfect possibly to have plenty of ads while still having a great reading experience.
  - malchow 11y ago
    Do you know what their architecture is? It is fast.
    - manigandham 11y ago
      Some details here: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/developer-blog/2014/dec/29/what-is-the-guardians-tech-stack http://www.theguardian.com/technology/developer-blog/2014/de... It's not really the backend that matters, these days its the front-end setup that makes the biggest difference. Less javascript, less huge unnecessary images, less "interactive" crap and streamlining the loading of content first then ads async can make a site load pretty quick. They also style the ad slot dimensions (since all banners are standard sizes) which keeps the content from moving around when an ad does load. Its just simple effective optimizations, something that should be done but for some combination of bad talent, bad management and poor priorities, just isnt.

hutattedonmyarm 11y ago

On mobile I actually care if the pages continues to load a ton of shit, even if it's usable already

malchow 11y ago
I suppose that's right. But it's also kind of a short term worry. I mean, don't you think mobile networks are going to keep getting relatively faster and relatively cheaper and will therefore be more relatively OK with a few ad-related keepalives? Around this time in 1997, the PBS Newshour website[1] was an outrageous 113.7KB, which at the very top end of the GSM GPRS 2G networks of the time, 115 kbit/s, would take 8 long seconds to download. Why? Because of all of those obnoxious Sun Netra banner ads![2] What do you get in 8 seconds on LTE today? Lord of the Rings in 720p. Or a whole bunch of Buzzfeed pages with some ad trackers, sure. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/19970605132107/http://www1.pbs.org/newshour/ https://web.archive.org/web/19970605132107/http://www1.pbs.o... [2] https://web.archive.org/web/19970605132107im_/http://www1.pbs.org/newshour/images/homepage/netra_si.gif https://web.archive.org/web/19970605132107im_/http://www1.pb...