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I think the root issue here is that most websites are now designed by people who don't even know HTML. ("You had one job!") From there, we get years of unoptim

by Panino 10y ago

I think the root issue here is that most websites are now designed by people who don't even know HTML. ("You had one job!") From there, we get years of unoptimized, bloated websites made by people drawing pictures with HTML editors. They are exclusively focused on visual presentation and ignore any mechanics under the hood. Not everyone, but most. Finally Google can't take it anymore and creates AMP as an angry middle finger to these people. ("I drink your milkshake!") IMO the right solution is to use speed as an increasingly more important ranking signal. Push crummy bloated websites to the bottom where they belong. I read the article but didn't see Google address this rather obvious idea.

discreditable 10y ago
> I think the root issue here is that most websites are now designed by people who don't even know HTML. ("You had one job!") Yes, I think the ease of publishing has led to a lot of people publishing who don't know what they're doing. I have an issue with our "webmaster" inserting full-resolution >4mb photos into our site pages to display at 200x400 boxes. I've told them several times that they need to keep image sizes down, but the person is never consistent. I wish I could disable caching on that user's PC so they could see how horrible our initial page loads are. I try not to browse our website because I want to fix the bad pieces and it's futile because what I improve is eventually undone when new content is rotated in. I'm just the systems guy, and our website is run by marketing.
acdha 10y ago
> From there, we get years of unoptimized, bloated websites made by people drawing pictures with HTML editors. One look at the source code for most popular sites shows this isn't true – and that makes sense because when you look at the average sluggish site the bloat is mostly JavaScript rather than the HTML source. What's actually happening is that a bunch of people are working hard on something which is important to them but not the user: advertising and analytics, followed by “social” sharing. Since those numbers are associated with revenue, they're directly seen as important whereas concerns about page-weight are more subtle and often an inadequate check on bloat until it gets really bad.
- Panino 10y ago
  > One look at the source code for most popular sites shows this isn't true Although I reject the idea that popular websites are representative of the web in general, let's investigate that anyway. Currently on the HN homepage: 1. Netflix blog post scores 73/100 and 85/100 on Google PageSpeed Insights. 2. Flickr post gets 67/100 and 83/100 on PageSpeed. 3. Google's own post gets 61/100 and 79/100 -- oops! 4. gatech.edu gets 66/100 and 82/100. All bad, decided to stop there. Even many/most popular pages are bad (careful reading shows that I didn't say all) . This jives with what I've seen as someone who looks at Google PageSpeed Insights A LOT. > average sluggish site the bloat is mostly JavaScript rather than the HTML source Someone "drawing pictures with HTML editors" as I said is still going to add JavaScript, images, css, etc. They'll also specifically add tons of unoptimized images that aren't even losslessly optimized, let alone put through manual lossy optimizations. I bet the average webmaster can't even define lossless and lossy. FWIW I think AMP is just awful. In contrast, Google PageSpeed Insights is amazing. I adore the PageSpeed website and recommend it wholeheartedly. It's been a huge help to me. The solution to this mess is competition, not centralization. Make speed a major ranking signal and let the ecosystem say goodbye to those who can't hang. https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/ https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/

by Panino 10y ago

discreditable 10y ago

> I think the root issue here is that most websites are now designed by people who don't even know HTML. ("You had one job!") Yes, I think the ease of publishing has led to a lot of people publishing who don't know what they're doing. I have an issue with our "webmaster" inserting full-resolution >4mb photos into our site pages to display at 200x400 boxes. I've told them several times that they need to keep image sizes down, but the person is never consistent. I wish I could disable caching on that user's PC so they could see how horrible our initial page loads are. I try not to browse our website because I want to fix the bad pieces and it's futile because what I improve is eventually undone when new content is rotated in. I'm just the systems guy, and our website is run by marketing.

acdha 10y ago

> From there, we get years of unoptimized, bloated websites made by people drawing pictures with HTML editors. One look at the source code for most popular sites shows this isn't true – and that makes sense because when you look at the average sluggish site the bloat is mostly JavaScript rather than the HTML source. What's actually happening is that a bunch of people are working hard on something which is important to them but not the user: advertising and analytics, followed by “social” sharing. Since those numbers are associated with revenue, they're directly seen as important whereas concerns about page-weight are more subtle and often an inadequate check on bloat until it gets really bad.

Panino 10y ago
> One look at the source code for most popular sites shows this isn't true Although I reject the idea that popular websites are representative of the web in general, let's investigate that anyway. Currently on the HN homepage: 1. Netflix blog post scores 73/100 and 85/100 on Google PageSpeed Insights. 2. Flickr post gets 67/100 and 83/100 on PageSpeed. 3. Google's own post gets 61/100 and 79/100 -- oops! 4. gatech.edu gets 66/100 and 82/100. All bad, decided to stop there. Even many/most popular pages are bad (careful reading shows that I didn't say all) . This jives with what I've seen as someone who looks at Google PageSpeed Insights A LOT. > average sluggish site the bloat is mostly JavaScript rather than the HTML source Someone "drawing pictures with HTML editors" as I said is still going to add JavaScript, images, css, etc. They'll also specifically add tons of unoptimized images that aren't even losslessly optimized, let alone put through manual lossy optimizations. I bet the average webmaster can't even define lossless and lossy. FWIW I think AMP is just awful. In contrast, Google PageSpeed Insights is amazing. I adore the PageSpeed website and recommend it wholeheartedly. It's been a huge help to me. The solution to this mess is competition, not centralization. Make speed a major ranking signal and let the ecosystem say goodbye to those who can't hang. https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/ https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/