10 ms·

The Website Obesity Crisis (2015)

pdelbarba 10y ago
It's funny to think that Moore's has meant that applications just get less efficient but there is no such concept for internet speeds. In reality, it seems that people have just settled on a response time that's acceptable and devs try to stay within that window in most cases.
- Analemma_ 10y ago
  > In reality, it seems that people have just settled on a response time that's acceptable and devs try to stay within that window in most cases. More specifically, every time CPUs or browsers get better, publishers look at their metrics and go "Oh! PLT at 95th percentile is down! Great, now we can add more trackers while still hitting our perf target!" and so the gain is immediately gobbled up -- we're in a Red Queen Race and websites will never get faster. I cannot wait for the adtech ecosystem to collapse, what a godawful waste of resources this is.
  - Terr_ 10y ago
    I agree with your sentiment, and I think it's just one facet of a broader issue with how advertising/marketing is rampant. For example, you can pay to see a movie in a theater, and still get shown ads.
    - rybosome 10y ago
      Some airlines do it, too. It makes me absolutely furious, but there have been many occasions when, just sitting in my seat TRYING TO SLEEP, the screens will all flip on an ad with audio simultaneously. It's insane that these aren't even the airline fluff pieces about themselves, but actual, literal advertisements. I've heard that airplane fuel is becoming prohibitively expensive and consumer demand for flights is relatively elastic, so this (and all the other ways they behave miserly) are attempts to remain solvent without drastically raising prices. I feel somewhat sympathetic to that argument (if it's actually true), but it seems like that should be a signal for technology to step in and innovate around the problem rather than attempting to blunder through with more advertisements.
      - arkx 10y ago
        > I've heard that airplane fuel is becoming prohibitively expensive Why not verify what you've heard? Kerosene prices have actually fallen dramatically from just a few years ago. https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=EER_EPJK_PF4_RGC_DPG&f=D https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=E...
        pdelbarba 10y ago
        Yea, current JetA prices are pretty low in the grand scheme of things. They're also not likely to go up significantly in the next 5-10 years
  - DonaldFisk 10y ago
    This is Jevons Paradox (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox) applied to the World Wide Web.
thatwebdude 10y ago
Yeah, but that page is ugly.
- kome 10y ago
  It looks great to me.
  - thatwebdude 10y ago
    Yeah, well, that's just like your opinion, man.
    - kome 10y ago
      Indeed.
Terr_ 10y ago
My strategy has been to disable all javascript by default, and whitelist specific sites. So far I'm pleased with the result, especially how fast most of the random HN/Reddit links load.
- gerdesj 10y ago
  Every now (when I break X through a badly chosen compiler flag or whatever) and then I use Lynx. It takes me right back to WAIS n Gopher before this newfangled www thing appeared 8) I used to telnet a VAX, then a X25 PAD, then to the outer reaches of JANET then to NIST (I think). Then I got to fire up Gopher. sigh (not) the good old days. I can't even remember why - probably to download fractal porn or something equally bloody pointless. I spent three months staffing a helpdesk with no users in a rather well funded organisation in '91 ...
  - Neliquat 10y ago
    That sounds like my old msu connection...
- jplayer01 10y ago
  I've started using uMatrix, it makes such a huge difference in performance and usability.
gerdesj 10y ago
There are few websites these days that don't get the cores a fizzing and your laptop gradually doing your thighs to a medium rare, without an ad blocker. The article had me giggling to the point of having to explain myself to wifey.
dmitrygr 10y ago
Wonderfully put, especially this sad tidbit: I tried to capture a movie of myself scrolling through the Verge Apple watch review, but failed. The graphics card on my late-model Apple laptop could literally not cope with the load.
- gerdesj 10y ago
  I have just run down that page in Chrome on a i7 with four cores/eight threads and gobs of RAM. All of the threads jumped to 65-90% constantly, according to the Plasma widget on my desktop which is currently showing low single digits. If I had unplugged the charger I'd be draining the battery at the same rate as the watch timeline graphic but in real-time.
- kakarot 10y ago
  What the hell did you just send me to? If I hadn't already known this was real I would have thought I was on a parody website. A movie that advances frame-by-frame as you scroll? Seriously? What's funny is it looked good and performed very well before I allowed the page to run scripts.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
gwu78 10y ago
"This is a screenshot from an article on NPR discussing the rising use of ad blockers. It is 12 megabytes in size..." Hmmm. When I save this page from my browser it's 116k. "... in a stock web browser." Ah-ha. Perhaps the web browser I am using is not "stock". If so, I can still read the article without a "stock" browser, so not sure what is behind this "stock" idea. I am assuming reading the article is the goal? Could it be the "stock" browser, whatever that is, is the root cause/enabler of the "web page obesity crisis"? "Unfortunately complexity has become a bit of a bragging point." Does that include "stock" web browsers?
- tonmoy 10y ago
  Try opening the "116K webpage" with your internet connection turned off.
- alexbecker 10y ago
  When you save this page it doesn't save every resource downloaded. The correct way to measure is to use the devtools and load the page with cache disabled (to mimic a first load), then check the total content transferred. I get 1.8MB with uBlock origin on, and 2.3MB without. I imagine that the author either got a particularly bad set of ads, or NPR wasn't compressing some large asset at the time.
  - gerdesj 10y ago
    I suspect you might have missed the central thesis of the OP's article. He appears to be a Polish bloke with a command of English that is frankly rather good and runs a successful web business based around bookmark saving. His thesis is that many sites are a bit fat and slow. The OP knows about irony. It is a bit like steely but with less carbon. If you are a web dev or dev ops then why not comment on the article rather than playing with toys. Cheers Jon
    - alexbecker 10y ago
      Not sure I understand your comment--I was replying to gwu78's comment, interpreting their comment as a criticism of Maciej's (aka idlewords, the author of the linked talk) measurement of the size of the NPR page as not reflective of a realistic page load. Their subsequent comment makes it clear that they have a very non-standard browser and are criticizing the standard browsers, so I guess my comment is irrelevant. > If you are a web dev or dev ops then why not comment on the article rather than playing with toys. Not sure what you mean here, or whether I'm supposed to be offended. I don't think I play with toys--I host my own site, carefully keep each page under 100kB total, and am working on a framework to make it easier for others to do so.
mwfj 10y ago
I first realized Javascript/Frontend/client developers were a danger to society about 10 years ago. We were trying to figure out why some particular, quite globally popular web site did not work when transcoded in our Opera Mini transcoder. The page itself looked perfectly static, no fancy effects or anything. Turns out the site had decided to re-implement the "click a link" feature entirely in javascript, down to the "create a click listener for entire document, then create a click router based on X, Y, width, height coordinates" level. We patched it somehow, had a laugh about the stupidity, but the sour feeling of insanity got stuck with me. It did not provide any feature beyond what a simple 'a' tag would have done. It was just so absurd. We spent some time to try to figure out if there was a legitimate reason for it but we couldn't find any.
- gerdesj 10y ago
  Sounds like a rehash of this: https://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_map.asp https://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_map.asp in JS, perhaps designed by someone unable to construct an adequate search engine query to solve the problem they thought they had but having access to a manual for JS. Compound that with the religious zeal that invariably (well - quite often) follows initiation into the sect around a newly discovered programming language. The manual may not actually exist but consist of a few links to Stackoverflow. "Never attribute to malice that ..." as Mr Halon might say. I've found out later that I've re-invented the wheel with a system more than once (mine obviously sported Fandango tyres) and laughed at several other single axis rotation optimised load bearing solution implementations with minimised frictional components and thrust load resistance. Experience is a wonderful thing - your's and theirs (and mine) Cheers Jon
- draw_down 10y ago
  Well, my problem is you think that's JavaScript's fault.
  - talmand 10y ago
    I believe the blame was aimed at javascript developers, not the language.
- 10y ago
frogfuzion 10y ago
This is a repost. I'm guessing due to the blowup of the electron post. There is no right answer. A huge fat bloated website can be successful (see BuzzFeed for the general population), or a lightweight text based informational website can be successful (see hacker news for you guys). Same thing for the electron debate. A bloated web app ported to desktop could just be as successful as a native app and vice versa. The problem is that it just sucks. The choices we have to make suck and everything sucks right now. Development is now "pop." This is why websites are fat and web development is going to the desktop.
- exelius 10y ago
  It was never about the code. It was always about the products.
  - frogfuzion 10y ago
    Agreed and up-voted. I think that is what I was trying to say in my rant. I guess as a developer though it's hard to come to terms with the fact that you are creating crap. I went through the same thing when I was a musician so it stings doubly.
    - exelius 10y ago
      The media fetishized a "techno-genius" that never really existed. Design and development are two very different skills, and it's rare to find a person who is good at both. But all things equal, a good product person can make do with shitty developers. Good developers can never overcome shitty product design. If you want to design apps, go to school for design.
      - michaelmrose 10y ago
        I see what you think are shitty developers and raise you actually shitty developers.
      - knieveltech 10y ago
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
cousin_it 10y ago
This seems like another example of bad stuff happening for game-theoretic reasons, so individual action won't help, the only solution is regulation. Ban tracking for a start. It's similar to banning outdoor billboard ads, which many places have done with good results.
- toomanybeersies 10y ago
  How does the USA ban tracking on a website hosted in Germany?
  - cousin_it 10y ago
    There will always be edge cases, but law enforcement on the internet is surprisingly possible. Look up the EU cookie law and GDPR.
exelius 10y ago
Agree 100%. Advertising is a zero sum game. If an advertiser's budget is $5, they will spend $5. They will spend $5 on as many dumb ads as they can get, and they will spend that $5 using very targeted means if available. There's a tremendous amount of effort expended in the ad industry with very little real effect than to direct ad dollars through that platform and maybe provide a temporary lift to response rates. But honestly, it's all garbage. The more prevalent advertising is, the more people ignore it. Especially targeted ads. Hell, the targeting algorithms aren't even all that good - even in 2017. I bought an electric razor the other day, and I have been getting ads for electric razors ever since. Why? I already bought one. I won't need another for at least a year. These algorithms are stupid and likely don't boost anything. Anyway, once a new generation of ad buyers comes on board, expect the bubble to pop. The fundamentals are garbage.
- lmm 10y ago
  Advertising is not remotely zero-sum, as your own electric razor example demonstrates. Better targeting is win-win-win - the advertiser doesn't want to advertise something you have no interest in buying, you don't want to see an ad for something you have no interest in buying, and the site doesn't want to be associated with irrelevant ads either.
  - exelius 10y ago
    It is in relation to ad budgets. Consumers only have so much attention span. It's been over-saturated for years; more adtech doesn't lead to better conversion -- it's just smoke and mirrors so as networks can justify rates without the return ("but wait, this new feature will boost your campaigns by 5%!") Also consider that the #1 advertising category (automobiles) are about to head off a cliff in the next decade... there's a reason Wall Street thinks Tesla (whose 10 year plans are almost certainly to stop selling cars to consumers and operate a ride sharing platform) is more valuable than Ford.
    - lmm 10y ago
      > It is in relation to ad budgets. Ad budgets are not fixed universal constants. If advertising becomes more effective then companies can and should spend more on it (and vice versa if it becomes less effective). > Consumers only have so much attention span. It's been over-saturated for years The fact that the OP remembered their electric razor example suggests otherwise.
charles-salvia 10y ago
Ads are definitely a huge problem, but it seems they are at least equally, perhaps even less of a contributor to bloat than the tons of off-the-shelf Javascript frameworks/libraries major websites throw in to perform analytics, or to implement stock features like user-comments, login, social-media stuff, etc. I mean, just looking at the network resources for a fresh download of www.cnn.com, I see: livefyre_base.js, 167KB - apparently some kind of user-comment library cdn.optimizely.com/js/131788053.js, 93.2K - some library for user tracking/analytics or something, controltag.js, 72K - something from a company called "Krux DMP" that seems to be yet more user analytics and tracking, sdk.js, 61.9K - something from gigya.com, apparently some kind of login and user-preferences framework jsmd.js, 87.5K - another analytics framework ... and various others. I see a "pubads_impl_113.js" from doubleclick.net, which is obviously for ads, but if cnn.com is typical, then it seems that off-the-shelf Javascript frameworks for user analytics and other stock features like logins/social-media crap, etc., are just as big a factor in contributing to bloat as display ads.
- lmkg 10y ago
  Optimizely is A/B testing. It's not strictly analytics (in that it's not a Google Analytics replacement), but it re-implements some of that functionality for audience targeting. Krux is an ad tracking service. jsmd.js appears to be the homebrew analytics system of one of the media partners. The actual web analytics being run on CNN is Adobe Analytics, which is actually fairly compact. The real problem is that every ad also includes its own analytics framework. Each of them often includes multiple frameworks, each of which tracks something different. E.g. one for demographic targeting, one for tracking across multiple ad networks, one to see if the user scrolled far enough to see the ad, and one to see if the ad loaded before the user closed the page or navigated away. It's a goddamn mess.
- lazyjones 10y ago
  > Ads are definitely a huge problem, but it seems they are at least equally, perhaps even less of a contributor to bloat than the tons of off-the-shelf Javascript frameworks/libraries major websites throw in to perform analytics If you look at how this works out when you reload such a page just once, you'll see that you're wrong. The frameworks are heavy, but they are cached and typically only contribute to parsing delays etc., but ads load every time you visit the page and often the JS involved isn't cached, nor minified/gzipped. Try a "repeat view" with webpagetest.org, for example.
gavinpc 10y ago
They will slim down after net neutrality is over. But they'll still be user-hostile. Ads are about tracking. The fact that you might see the ad is what we call "langiappe" where I come from. If everyone disabled third-party cookies right now, networks would not be able to easily aggregate browsing profiles. And everything else --- the things you actually care about --- would still work. Of course, then attention would just turn to the ISP's, who can now sell that information directly.
- adventured 10y ago
  > They will slim down after net neutrality is over. Net neutrality - in regards to any actual implementation - existed for about five minutes. The supposed benefits were to be long term. The short term impact was next to nothing.
- pdimitar 10y ago
  They still use all sorts of dirty tricks like browser fingerprinting (which has a lot of ways to go about), IP, geolocation, timing / usual usage patterns... Honestly, unless you're using VPN + Tor + no 3rd party cookies + no JS, I don't think you can hide. :(
trumbitta2 10y ago
It's all smiles and sunshine, until you choose 13px as the font-size for this post. It's right then, that it happens. You made a good point about lightweight, text-driven web, but didn't care to use a saner 16px for the font-size. And so you instantly become a stereotype in my eyes. The old guy shaking his fists at modern hipster web. See this for an example of a lightweight site with a good design and readability: http://www.zeldman.com/ http://www.zeldman.com/
- moron4hire 10y ago
  The meaning of "13px" on a website is completely up to you. All CSS units are relative.
- dom0 10y ago
  > lightweight site with a good design and readability: http://www.zeldman.com/ http://www.zeldman.com/ >1 MB is not "lightweight".
michael_bluth 10y ago
This article is a great summary explanation for why I love the Hacker News interface.
- norea-armozel 10y ago
  Same. It's rare to find a site that I can use when I read my data limit on T-Mobile that doesn't turn into a mess. If only I could just tell Safari to turn off all JS and image loading at will.
discreditable 10y ago
Reminds me of another article in which the author shows the average web page is larger than a Doom install image: https://mobiforge.com/research-analysis/the-web-is-doom https://mobiforge.com/research-analysis/the-web-is-doom HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11548816 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11548816
lucideer 10y ago
Worth noting this webpage is ~1MB itself. However it does have a lot of images - I'm not entirely sure why it has all of those images, but the size is not a surprise given that.
- jff 10y ago
  And that's sort of the point, in my mind: the page is about a megabyte, while something comparable on the modern sites he's talking about would be many times larger. As you say, it's a megabyte because there's a megabyte of content, not a megabyte of Javascript and trackers and "From Around The Web" Back when I was on 28.8K dialup, I'd typically figure I could fetch a megabyte a minute. Because the site is just plain old HTML, even over a terrible connection you'll be able to start reading pretty much immediately, and the images will pop in as you go. It's a good user experience.
  - theandrewbailey 10y ago
    28.8kbps = 3.6KB/s = 216KB/minute I know what you mean, but I remember waiting about 10 minutes for a megabyte on a 14.4k connection, and about 5 minutes on 56k. Because the phone wires were crap, the modem never synced faster than about 35k.
- klez 10y ago
  It has all those image because it's the text version of a presentation. Those are the slides the text is referring to.
  - lucideer 10y ago
    Ah, thanks for clarifying. I missed that. Yeah, I wasn't criticising the size, rather just making a meta-comment of the same form the author made himself in the article.
tinus_hn 10y ago
This is part of a larger phenomenon in IT where resources are plentiful so they are wasted. A small part of it is due to high resolution displays which cause an increase in the size of required bitmaps and some of it comes with 64 bit computing, but a lot of it is due to a general lack of care. Perhaps the browser needs to implement a limit so a page just can't use an infinite amount of memory, CPU time and bandwidth. Or perhaps we should decide that 10 pieces of javascript is enough and any attempts to load more will just fail. The web designers will complain but they'll manage.

It's funny to think that Moore's has meant that applications just get less efficient but there is no such concept for internet speeds. In reality, it seems that people have just settled on a response time that's acceptable and devs try to stay within that window in most cases.

Analemma_ 10y ago
> In reality, it seems that people have just settled on a response time that's acceptable and devs try to stay within that window in most cases. More specifically, every time CPUs or browsers get better, publishers look at their metrics and go "Oh! PLT at 95th percentile is down! Great, now we can add more trackers while still hitting our perf target!" and so the gain is immediately gobbled up -- we're in a Red Queen Race and websites will never get faster. I cannot wait for the adtech ecosystem to collapse, what a godawful waste of resources this is.
- Terr_ 10y ago
  I agree with your sentiment, and I think it's just one facet of a broader issue with how advertising/marketing is rampant. For example, you can pay to see a movie in a theater, and still get shown ads.
  - rybosome 10y ago
    Some airlines do it, too. It makes me absolutely furious, but there have been many occasions when, just sitting in my seat TRYING TO SLEEP, the screens will all flip on an ad with audio simultaneously. It's insane that these aren't even the airline fluff pieces about themselves, but actual, literal advertisements. I've heard that airplane fuel is becoming prohibitively expensive and consumer demand for flights is relatively elastic, so this (and all the other ways they behave miserly) are attempts to remain solvent without drastically raising prices. I feel somewhat sympathetic to that argument (if it's actually true), but it seems like that should be a signal for technology to step in and innovate around the problem rather than attempting to blunder through with more advertisements.
    - arkx 10y ago
      > I've heard that airplane fuel is becoming prohibitively expensive Why not verify what you've heard? Kerosene prices have actually fallen dramatically from just a few years ago. https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=EER_EPJK_PF4_RGC_DPG&f=D https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=E...
      - pdelbarba 10y ago
        Yea, current JetA prices are pretty low in the grand scheme of things. They're also not likely to go up significantly in the next 5-10 years
- DonaldFisk 10y ago
  This is Jevons Paradox (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox) applied to the World Wide Web.

thatwebdude 10y ago

Yeah, but that page is ugly.

kome 10y ago
It looks great to me.
- thatwebdude 10y ago
  Yeah, well, that's just like your opinion, man.
  - kome 10y ago
    Indeed.

Terr_ 10y ago

My strategy has been to disable all javascript by default, and whitelist specific sites. So far I'm pleased with the result, especially how fast most of the random HN/Reddit links load.

gerdesj 10y ago
Every now (when I break X through a badly chosen compiler flag or whatever) and then I use Lynx. It takes me right back to WAIS n Gopher before this newfangled www thing appeared 8) I used to telnet a VAX, then a X25 PAD, then to the outer reaches of JANET then to NIST (I think). Then I got to fire up Gopher. sigh (not) the good old days. I can't even remember why - probably to download fractal porn or something equally bloody pointless. I spent three months staffing a helpdesk with no users in a rather well funded organisation in '91 ...
- Neliquat 10y ago
  That sounds like my old msu connection...
jplayer01 10y ago
I've started using uMatrix, it makes such a huge difference in performance and usability.

gerdesj 10y ago

There are few websites these days that don't get the cores a fizzing and your laptop gradually doing your thighs to a medium rare, without an ad blocker. The article had me giggling to the point of having to explain myself to wifey.

dmitrygr 10y ago

Wonderfully put, especially this sad tidbit: I tried to capture a movie of myself scrolling through the Verge Apple watch review, but failed. The graphics card on my late-model Apple laptop could literally not cope with the load.

gerdesj 10y ago
I have just run down that page in Chrome on a i7 with four cores/eight threads and gobs of RAM. All of the threads jumped to 65-90% constantly, according to the Plasma widget on my desktop which is currently showing low single digits. If I had unplugged the charger I'd be draining the battery at the same rate as the watch timeline graphic but in real-time.
kakarot 10y ago
What the hell did you just send me to? If I hadn't already known this was real I would have thought I was on a parody website. A movie that advances frame-by-frame as you scroll? Seriously? What's funny is it looked good and performed very well before I allowed the page to run scripts.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

gwu78 10y ago

"This is a screenshot from an article on NPR discussing the rising use of ad blockers. It is 12 megabytes in size..." Hmmm. When I save this page from my browser it's 116k. "... in a stock web browser." Ah-ha. Perhaps the web browser I am using is not "stock". If so, I can still read the article without a "stock" browser, so not sure what is behind this "stock" idea. I am assuming reading the article is the goal? Could it be the "stock" browser, whatever that is, is the root cause/enabler of the "web page obesity crisis"? "Unfortunately complexity has become a bit of a bragging point." Does that include "stock" web browsers?

tonmoy 10y ago
Try opening the "116K webpage" with your internet connection turned off.
alexbecker 10y ago
When you save this page it doesn't save every resource downloaded. The correct way to measure is to use the devtools and load the page with cache disabled (to mimic a first load), then check the total content transferred. I get 1.8MB with uBlock origin on, and 2.3MB without. I imagine that the author either got a particularly bad set of ads, or NPR wasn't compressing some large asset at the time.
- gerdesj 10y ago
  I suspect you might have missed the central thesis of the OP's article. He appears to be a Polish bloke with a command of English that is frankly rather good and runs a successful web business based around bookmark saving. His thesis is that many sites are a bit fat and slow. The OP knows about irony. It is a bit like steely but with less carbon. If you are a web dev or dev ops then why not comment on the article rather than playing with toys. Cheers Jon
  - alexbecker 10y ago
    Not sure I understand your comment--I was replying to gwu78's comment, interpreting their comment as a criticism of Maciej's (aka idlewords, the author of the linked talk) measurement of the size of the NPR page as not reflective of a realistic page load. Their subsequent comment makes it clear that they have a very non-standard browser and are criticizing the standard browsers, so I guess my comment is irrelevant. > If you are a web dev or dev ops then why not comment on the article rather than playing with toys. Not sure what you mean here, or whether I'm supposed to be offended. I don't think I play with toys--I host my own site, carefully keep each page under 100kB total, and am working on a framework to make it easier for others to do so.

mwfj 10y ago

I first realized Javascript/Frontend/client developers were a danger to society about 10 years ago. We were trying to figure out why some particular, quite globally popular web site did not work when transcoded in our Opera Mini transcoder. The page itself looked perfectly static, no fancy effects or anything. Turns out the site had decided to re-implement the "click a link" feature entirely in javascript, down to the "create a click listener for entire document, then create a click router based on X, Y, width, height coordinates" level. We patched it somehow, had a laugh about the stupidity, but the sour feeling of insanity got stuck with me. It did not provide any feature beyond what a simple 'a' tag would have done. It was just so absurd. We spent some time to try to figure out if there was a legitimate reason for it but we couldn't find any.

gerdesj 10y ago
Sounds like a rehash of this: https://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_map.asp https://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_map.asp in JS, perhaps designed by someone unable to construct an adequate search engine query to solve the problem they thought they had but having access to a manual for JS. Compound that with the religious zeal that invariably (well - quite often) follows initiation into the sect around a newly discovered programming language. The manual may not actually exist but consist of a few links to Stackoverflow. "Never attribute to malice that ..." as Mr Halon might say. I've found out later that I've re-invented the wheel with a system more than once (mine obviously sported Fandango tyres) and laughed at several other single axis rotation optimised load bearing solution implementations with minimised frictional components and thrust load resistance. Experience is a wonderful thing - your's and theirs (and mine) Cheers Jon
draw_down 10y ago
Well, my problem is you think that's JavaScript's fault.
- talmand 10y ago
  I believe the blame was aimed at javascript developers, not the language.
10y ago

frogfuzion 10y ago

This is a repost. I'm guessing due to the blowup of the electron post. There is no right answer. A huge fat bloated website can be successful (see BuzzFeed for the general population), or a lightweight text based informational website can be successful (see hacker news for you guys). Same thing for the electron debate. A bloated web app ported to desktop could just be as successful as a native app and vice versa. The problem is that it just sucks. The choices we have to make suck and everything sucks right now. Development is now "pop." This is why websites are fat and web development is going to the desktop.

exelius 10y ago
It was never about the code. It was always about the products.
- frogfuzion 10y ago
  Agreed and up-voted. I think that is what I was trying to say in my rant. I guess as a developer though it's hard to come to terms with the fact that you are creating crap. I went through the same thing when I was a musician so it stings doubly.
  - exelius 10y ago
    The media fetishized a "techno-genius" that never really existed. Design and development are two very different skills, and it's rare to find a person who is good at both. But all things equal, a good product person can make do with shitty developers. Good developers can never overcome shitty product design. If you want to design apps, go to school for design.
    - michaelmrose 10y ago
      I see what you think are shitty developers and raise you actually shitty developers.
    - knieveltech 10y ago

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

cousin_it 10y ago

This seems like another example of bad stuff happening for game-theoretic reasons, so individual action won't help, the only solution is regulation. Ban tracking for a start. It's similar to banning outdoor billboard ads, which many places have done with good results.

toomanybeersies 10y ago
How does the USA ban tracking on a website hosted in Germany?
- cousin_it 10y ago
  There will always be edge cases, but law enforcement on the internet is surprisingly possible. Look up the EU cookie law and GDPR.

exelius 10y ago

Agree 100%. Advertising is a zero sum game. If an advertiser's budget is $5, they will spend $5. They will spend $5 on as many dumb ads as they can get, and they will spend that $5 using very targeted means if available. There's a tremendous amount of effort expended in the ad industry with very little real effect than to direct ad dollars through that platform and maybe provide a temporary lift to response rates. But honestly, it's all garbage. The more prevalent advertising is, the more people ignore it. Especially targeted ads. Hell, the targeting algorithms aren't even all that good - even in 2017. I bought an electric razor the other day, and I have been getting ads for electric razors ever since. Why? I already bought one. I won't need another for at least a year. These algorithms are stupid and likely don't boost anything. Anyway, once a new generation of ad buyers comes on board, expect the bubble to pop. The fundamentals are garbage.

lmm 10y ago
Advertising is not remotely zero-sum, as your own electric razor example demonstrates. Better targeting is win-win-win - the advertiser doesn't want to advertise something you have no interest in buying, you don't want to see an ad for something you have no interest in buying, and the site doesn't want to be associated with irrelevant ads either.
- exelius 10y ago
  It is in relation to ad budgets. Consumers only have so much attention span. It's been over-saturated for years; more adtech doesn't lead to better conversion -- it's just smoke and mirrors so as networks can justify rates without the return ("but wait, this new feature will boost your campaigns by 5%!") Also consider that the #1 advertising category (automobiles) are about to head off a cliff in the next decade... there's a reason Wall Street thinks Tesla (whose 10 year plans are almost certainly to stop selling cars to consumers and operate a ride sharing platform) is more valuable than Ford.
  - lmm 10y ago
    > It is in relation to ad budgets. Ad budgets are not fixed universal constants. If advertising becomes more effective then companies can and should spend more on it (and vice versa if it becomes less effective). > Consumers only have so much attention span. It's been over-saturated for years The fact that the OP remembered their electric razor example suggests otherwise.

charles-salvia 10y ago

Ads are definitely a huge problem, but it seems they are at least equally, perhaps even less of a contributor to bloat than the tons of off-the-shelf Javascript frameworks/libraries major websites throw in to perform analytics, or to implement stock features like user-comments, login, social-media stuff, etc. I mean, just looking at the network resources for a fresh download of www.cnn.com, I see: livefyre_base.js, 167KB - apparently some kind of user-comment library cdn.optimizely.com/js/131788053.js, 93.2K - some library for user tracking/analytics or something, controltag.js, 72K - something from a company called "Krux DMP" that seems to be yet more user analytics and tracking, sdk.js, 61.9K - something from gigya.com, apparently some kind of login and user-preferences framework jsmd.js, 87.5K - another analytics framework ... and various others. I see a "pubads_impl_113.js" from doubleclick.net, which is obviously for ads, but if cnn.com is typical, then it seems that off-the-shelf Javascript frameworks for user analytics and other stock features like logins/social-media crap, etc., are just as big a factor in contributing to bloat as display ads.

lmkg 10y ago
Optimizely is A/B testing. It's not strictly analytics (in that it's not a Google Analytics replacement), but it re-implements some of that functionality for audience targeting. Krux is an ad tracking service. jsmd.js appears to be the homebrew analytics system of one of the media partners. The actual web analytics being run on CNN is Adobe Analytics, which is actually fairly compact. The real problem is that every ad also includes its own analytics framework. Each of them often includes multiple frameworks, each of which tracks something different. E.g. one for demographic targeting, one for tracking across multiple ad networks, one to see if the user scrolled far enough to see the ad, and one to see if the ad loaded before the user closed the page or navigated away. It's a goddamn mess.
lazyjones 10y ago
> Ads are definitely a huge problem, but it seems they are at least equally, perhaps even less of a contributor to bloat than the tons of off-the-shelf Javascript frameworks/libraries major websites throw in to perform analytics If you look at how this works out when you reload such a page just once, you'll see that you're wrong. The frameworks are heavy, but they are cached and typically only contribute to parsing delays etc., but ads load every time you visit the page and often the JS involved isn't cached, nor minified/gzipped. Try a "repeat view" with webpagetest.org, for example.

gavinpc 10y ago

They will slim down after net neutrality is over. But they'll still be user-hostile. Ads are about tracking. The fact that you might see the ad is what we call "langiappe" where I come from. If everyone disabled third-party cookies right now, networks would not be able to easily aggregate browsing profiles. And everything else --- the things you actually care about --- would still work. Of course, then attention would just turn to the ISP's, who can now sell that information directly.

adventured 10y ago
> They will slim down after net neutrality is over. Net neutrality - in regards to any actual implementation - existed for about five minutes. The supposed benefits were to be long term. The short term impact was next to nothing.
pdimitar 10y ago
They still use all sorts of dirty tricks like browser fingerprinting (which has a lot of ways to go about), IP, geolocation, timing / usual usage patterns... Honestly, unless you're using VPN + Tor + no 3rd party cookies + no JS, I don't think you can hide. :(

trumbitta2 10y ago

It's all smiles and sunshine, until you choose 13px as the font-size for this post. It's right then, that it happens. You made a good point about lightweight, text-driven web, but didn't care to use a saner 16px for the font-size. And so you instantly become a stereotype in my eyes. The old guy shaking his fists at modern hipster web. See this for an example of a lightweight site with a good design and readability: http://www.zeldman.com/ http://www.zeldman.com/

moron4hire 10y ago
The meaning of "13px" on a website is completely up to you. All CSS units are relative.
dom0 10y ago
> lightweight site with a good design and readability: http://www.zeldman.com/ http://www.zeldman.com/ >1 MB is not "lightweight".

michael_bluth 10y ago

This article is a great summary explanation for why I love the Hacker News interface.

norea-armozel 10y ago
Same. It's rare to find a site that I can use when I read my data limit on T-Mobile that doesn't turn into a mess. If only I could just tell Safari to turn off all JS and image loading at will.

discreditable 10y ago

Reminds me of another article in which the author shows the average web page is larger than a Doom install image: https://mobiforge.com/research-analysis/the-web-is-doom https://mobiforge.com/research-analysis/the-web-is-doom HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11548816 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11548816

lucideer 10y ago

Worth noting this webpage is ~1MB itself. However it does have a lot of images - I'm not entirely sure why it has all of those images, but the size is not a surprise given that.

jff 10y ago
And that's sort of the point, in my mind: the page is about a megabyte, while something comparable on the modern sites he's talking about would be many times larger. As you say, it's a megabyte because there's a megabyte of content, not a megabyte of Javascript and trackers and "From Around The Web" Back when I was on 28.8K dialup, I'd typically figure I could fetch a megabyte a minute. Because the site is just plain old HTML, even over a terrible connection you'll be able to start reading pretty much immediately, and the images will pop in as you go. It's a good user experience.
- theandrewbailey 10y ago
  28.8kbps = 3.6KB/s = 216KB/minute I know what you mean, but I remember waiting about 10 minutes for a megabyte on a 14.4k connection, and about 5 minutes on 56k. Because the phone wires were crap, the modem never synced faster than about 35k.
klez 10y ago
It has all those image because it's the text version of a presentation. Those are the slides the text is referring to.
- lucideer 10y ago
  Ah, thanks for clarifying. I missed that. Yeah, I wasn't criticising the size, rather just making a meta-comment of the same form the author made himself in the article.

tinus_hn 10y ago

This is part of a larger phenomenon in IT where resources are plentiful so they are wasted. A small part of it is due to high resolution displays which cause an increase in the size of required bitmaps and some of it comes with 64 bit computing, but a lot of it is due to a general lack of care. Perhaps the browser needs to implement a limit so a page just can't use an infinite amount of memory, CPU time and bandwidth. Or perhaps we should decide that 10 pieces of javascript is enough and any attempts to load more will just fail. The web designers will complain but they'll manage.