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Apposite, I'm working on a personal WP theme currently. Got HTML, CSS and JS down to under 20k so far for a reasonably presentable responsive front page, less o

Apposite, I'm working on a personal WP theme currently. Got HTML, CSS and JS down to under 20k so far for a reasonably presentable responsive front page, less on the wire gzipped. CSS and JS minified. Experimenting with inlining "critical" CSS, ie "above fold" content. JS is for parallel loading of CSS to prevent delays in rendering, so content displays before styles are applied (may reverse this decision). This means the critical CSS has to focus on layout, font sizes etc to minimise that awful reshuffling that happens when styling is applied. It's turning out to be quite a fun challenge, reminiscent of early web days when I'd muck about trying to shave 2k off a JPEG. Hopefully notions such as "critical" CSS and inlining to reduce requests might encourage the re-emergence of lean yet visually pleasant websites.

laumars 10y ago
I don't understand why 20k is such a challenge for web developers. I don't think I've ever gone even near 20K for HTML, CSS and JS combined. My current blog, which is the most bloated one I've ran yet, is still only around 17K. I do roll all my own code (never touched jQuery et al), mostly because I can and I find it weirdly enjoyable. But threads like these do make me wonder if all these nice tools we have these days are really just a crutch for bad programming practices. I mean I know tech jumps exponentially with each iteration but I swear the performance gained by newer technology is just eaten up straight away by developers writing heavier code to accomplish the same things as before. I know this all sounds hyper-cynical and I do like my compositing display manager with wobbly windows et al so I'm hardly in a position to moan about bloat. But I guess my rant is about how poor web markup is for expressing modern documents (let alone full blown web applications). Well that, and I just needed to rant because I'm stuck in a hospital waiting room at 1 in the morning...
- Radim 10y ago
  Does anyone remember "Volkov Commander"? An old DOS file manager [1], written in assembly. Super fast and responsive, tiny size -- a fraction of Norton Commander &co's, never mind any modern tools. Whenever I have to deal with the insanely inconvenient cluster fuck that is modern file managers (OSX Finder!), I probably feel the way you do about "modern web development". Hope your hospital visit goes well. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkov_Commander https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkov_Commander
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  I'm with you. I have the same feeling about web, desktop and smartphone - each iteration of software does the same or less than previous one, while eating up any resource surplus created by advancements in hardware and optimizations of software stack. I hope your visit went well.
- austinjp 10y ago
  Agreed. I'm building this theme because a search for "lightweight" WP themes didn't turn up anything usable, aesthetically tolerable, and non-bloated. Hope the hospital visit turned out okay.

laumars 10y ago

I don't understand why 20k is such a challenge for web developers. I don't think I've ever gone even near 20K for HTML, CSS and JS combined. My current blog, which is the most bloated one I've ran yet, is still only around 17K. I do roll all my own code (never touched jQuery et al), mostly because I can and I find it weirdly enjoyable. But threads like these do make me wonder if all these nice tools we have these days are really just a crutch for bad programming practices. I mean I know tech jumps exponentially with each iteration but I swear the performance gained by newer technology is just eaten up straight away by developers writing heavier code to accomplish the same things as before. I know this all sounds hyper-cynical and I do like my compositing display manager with wobbly windows et al so I'm hardly in a position to moan about bloat. But I guess my rant is about how poor web markup is for expressing modern documents (let alone full blown web applications). Well that, and I just needed to rant because I'm stuck in a hospital waiting room at 1 in the morning...

Radim 10y ago
Does anyone remember "Volkov Commander"? An old DOS file manager [1], written in assembly. Super fast and responsive, tiny size -- a fraction of Norton Commander &co's, never mind any modern tools. Whenever I have to deal with the insanely inconvenient cluster fuck that is modern file managers (OSX Finder!), I probably feel the way you do about "modern web development". Hope your hospital visit goes well. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkov_Commander https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkov_Commander
TeMPOraL 10y ago
I'm with you. I have the same feeling about web, desktop and smartphone - each iteration of software does the same or less than previous one, while eating up any resource surplus created by advancements in hardware and optimizations of software stack. I hope your visit went well.
austinjp 10y ago
Agreed. I'm building this theme because a search for "lightweight" WP themes didn't turn up anything usable, aesthetically tolerable, and non-bloated. Hope the hospital visit turned out okay.