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Google, Twitter and Publishers Seek Faster Web

32 points by dankohn1 11y ago

xbmcuser 11y ago
My lament with Facebook has always been the corraling of the web into a private network instead of the privacy that has stayed in the news. Apps for different things has made things worse. Today rarely a new business open a website they just post their details on Facebook or an app specific to the industry. And we have to install an app or login to Facebook to access the data. Google and twitter helping publishers might be good for publishers and the open web but I dont think its enough to save it.
ilaksh 11y ago
Maybe they are talking about using the HTML AppCache/manifest and a script or something that downloads all of the resources in the manifest and background-preloads them in the Google/Facebook/Twitter etc. page/app. Maybe you don't need a script, just a frame. Maybe a special 'article.html' resource or something that is not allowed to have ads/popups/JS etc. As long as they don't limit that to certain favored organizations.
- tdyen 11y ago
  Yeah, I'm not sure I trust Google so much anymore and I trust Facebook even less. It'd have to be a W3 group somehow with all the players involved. Definitely some of them would play spoiler like Microsoft did back in the day. Apple would probably play spoiler with this, they like their App Store it makes them money.
CodingGuy 11y ago
Kick the ads, analytics, visitor spy scripts out and you have a fast website...
- organsnyder 11y ago
  And no revenue or analytics.
  - tdyen 11y ago
    Fair point but the real solution would be to do those things all fast from the one site somehow. Not many url's many resources etc. How to do that I dunno.
  - seiji 11y ago
    You are not entitled to ad revenue or client-side analytics. The fact they work at all is just an odd combination of historical missteps that will be corrected in time. That is, if we can ever get people to stop using Chrome. Chrome is Google's Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. Release open browser, add features, then restrict features like adding a default embedded "YouTube App" inside Chrome to get around ad blockers. Add default "Google Apps" apps to make Google services better than any other service you can use, because Chrome secretly loaded native pre-cached client-side, not web, apps on your computer. It turns out your default content consumption applications shouldn't be written by corporations intertwined with advertising revenue. It'll take the US government another 40 years to re-define monopoly scenarios capable of handling current abuses of power. In the meantime, sit back and enjoy the land grabs, rising stock prices, and shuttered startups who can't compete with bundled platforms.
    - sukii 11y ago
      We have to learn clever tricks to avoid these land mines. Get ourselves anti-parasite injections etc...wise guys like you can help?
hanlec 11y ago
I assume this is the (counter) reaction to Facebook's instant articles. The lack of details doesn't help though.
thomasfoster96 11y ago
Can someone who works on web development for a major publisher please try and explain why such sites take so long to load? Just by opening devtools in Chrome I can tell that a lot of sites aren't bothering to minify HTML, aren't bothering to asynchronously load JavaScript, include more frameworks and widgets than anyone could possibly use and don't bother to cache anything (or cache very little). And with all the pointless junk they include, they still can't use proper HTML tags and attributes nor include some basic accessibility features. I really hate having to reload pages because something didn't load properly or having to turn off JavaScript and/or images just because a site is loading a huge file that is blocking the display of a paragraphs of text. I know some people like to use something like Lynx or only allow HTML to be loaded - but my web browsing shouldn't have to become sadistic. Making Google, Twitter or Facebook load news articles is a terrible alternative. Given the wide array of compression tools, caching (including service workers on >40% of browsers, appcache on >90% and pretty much everyone having HTTP caching) and the sheer amount of information on improving website performance that's out there, making news websites load fast really should be a solved problem that doesn't need Google to solve it.
- pornel 11y ago
  > Can someone who works on web development for a major publisher please try and explain why such sites take so long to load? 1. The ad/tracking industry seems to be incapable of writing JavaScript that is not awful. I don't have insight why that happens, but all the scripts I had to deal with were layers upon layers of document.write, iframes, redirects and copy&pasted JS from the Netscape 4 era. Even when somebody tries to fix it, the best they can do is to add one more layer of scripts on top of the rotting pile. 2. Business deals are made with no consideration of 3rd party's code quality and performance impact. Once the deal is signed the developers are just tasked with integrating all of the crap the 3rd party vendor wants. It's impossible to object: the vendor is not going to rewrite all of their shitty scripts, especially after the deal is already in place. Even when it's really bad, arguing about it just results in endless meetings, conference calls and at best the 3rd party vendor saying they'll think about putting some little tweak in the backlog for some future release.
  - 11y ago
bobajeff 11y ago
"People often favor mobile apps because they are faster, cleanly formatted and are constantly updated to take advantage of the evolving features of new smartphones." That's all conjecture. The truth is that the reasons people will use an App over a website is subjective. Whatever reasons people have should be gathered from research and studies and not just theories based off of a narrative from site owners. I still use the YouTube app but not the Twitter app. I prefer to use Google's site over the widget/app but will sometimes on the spur of the moment.

32 points by dankohn1 11y ago

My lament with Facebook has always been the corraling of the web into a private network instead of the privacy that has stayed in the news. Apps for different things has made things worse. Today rarely a new business open a website they just post their details on Facebook or an app specific to the industry. And we have to install an app or login to Facebook to access the data. Google and twitter helping publishers might be good for publishers and the open web but I dont think its enough to save it.

ilaksh 11y ago

Maybe they are talking about using the HTML AppCache/manifest and a script or something that downloads all of the resources in the manifest and background-preloads them in the Google/Facebook/Twitter etc. page/app. Maybe you don't need a script, just a frame. Maybe a special 'article.html' resource or something that is not allowed to have ads/popups/JS etc. As long as they don't limit that to certain favored organizations.

tdyen 11y ago
Yeah, I'm not sure I trust Google so much anymore and I trust Facebook even less. It'd have to be a W3 group somehow with all the players involved. Definitely some of them would play spoiler like Microsoft did back in the day. Apple would probably play spoiler with this, they like their App Store it makes them money.

CodingGuy 11y ago

Kick the ads, analytics, visitor spy scripts out and you have a fast website...

organsnyder 11y ago
And no revenue or analytics.
- tdyen 11y ago
  Fair point but the real solution would be to do those things all fast from the one site somehow. Not many url's many resources etc. How to do that I dunno.
- seiji 11y ago
  You are not entitled to ad revenue or client-side analytics. The fact they work at all is just an odd combination of historical missteps that will be corrected in time. That is, if we can ever get people to stop using Chrome. Chrome is Google's Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. Release open browser, add features, then restrict features like adding a default embedded "YouTube App" inside Chrome to get around ad blockers. Add default "Google Apps" apps to make Google services better than any other service you can use, because Chrome secretly loaded native pre-cached client-side, not web, apps on your computer. It turns out your default content consumption applications shouldn't be written by corporations intertwined with advertising revenue. It'll take the US government another 40 years to re-define monopoly scenarios capable of handling current abuses of power. In the meantime, sit back and enjoy the land grabs, rising stock prices, and shuttered startups who can't compete with bundled platforms.
  - sukii 11y ago
    We have to learn clever tricks to avoid these land mines. Get ourselves anti-parasite injections etc...wise guys like you can help?

hanlec 11y ago

I assume this is the (counter) reaction to Facebook's instant articles. The lack of details doesn't help though.

thomasfoster96 11y ago

Can someone who works on web development for a major publisher please try and explain why such sites take so long to load? Just by opening devtools in Chrome I can tell that a lot of sites aren't bothering to minify HTML, aren't bothering to asynchronously load JavaScript, include more frameworks and widgets than anyone could possibly use and don't bother to cache anything (or cache very little). And with all the pointless junk they include, they still can't use proper HTML tags and attributes nor include some basic accessibility features. I really hate having to reload pages because something didn't load properly or having to turn off JavaScript and/or images just because a site is loading a huge file that is blocking the display of a paragraphs of text. I know some people like to use something like Lynx or only allow HTML to be loaded - but my web browsing shouldn't have to become sadistic. Making Google, Twitter or Facebook load news articles is a terrible alternative. Given the wide array of compression tools, caching (including service workers on >40% of browsers, appcache on >90% and pretty much everyone having HTTP caching) and the sheer amount of information on improving website performance that's out there, making news websites load fast really should be a solved problem that doesn't need Google to solve it.

pornel 11y ago
> Can someone who works on web development for a major publisher please try and explain why such sites take so long to load? 1. The ad/tracking industry seems to be incapable of writing JavaScript that is not awful. I don't have insight why that happens, but all the scripts I had to deal with were layers upon layers of document.write, iframes, redirects and copy&pasted JS from the Netscape 4 era. Even when somebody tries to fix it, the best they can do is to add one more layer of scripts on top of the rotting pile. 2. Business deals are made with no consideration of 3rd party's code quality and performance impact. Once the deal is signed the developers are just tasked with integrating all of the crap the 3rd party vendor wants. It's impossible to object: the vendor is not going to rewrite all of their shitty scripts, especially after the deal is already in place. Even when it's really bad, arguing about it just results in endless meetings, conference calls and at best the 3rd party vendor saying they'll think about putting some little tweak in the backlog for some future release.
- 11y ago

bobajeff 11y ago

"People often favor mobile apps because they are faster, cleanly formatted and are constantly updated to take advantage of the evolving features of new smartphones." That's all conjecture. The truth is that the reasons people will use an App over a website is subjective. Whatever reasons people have should be gathered from research and studies and not just theories based off of a narrative from site owners. I still use the YouTube app but not the Twitter app. I prefer to use Google's site over the widget/app but will sometimes on the spur of the moment.