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"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 bro

by gwu78 9y 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 9y ago
Try opening the "116K webpage" with your internet connection turned off.
alexbecker 9y 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 9y 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 9y 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.
Delameko 9y ago
A "stock" web browser is just a newly installed browser before any add-ons are installed.
gwu78 9y ago
FYI the browser I use does not download resources automatically. This way I just get the page with the content: the text of the article. That is all I want. To read articles, which are just text, I access the web in VGA textmode with a text-only browser. I never see any ads. There is no such thing as "load time" with this "UX". All pages load fast. I do DNS lookups in bulk and store IPs before doing any HTTP requests, so I take time consumed by DNS out of the equation. I do not store IPs of ad servers, Facebook domains serving hidden beacon images and other nonsense. I never access these resources. If I want to look at images or watch videos, I download them and use other programs running on other computers with graphics to view them. Those computers have no gateway to the internet. For someone who likes to read, it all works very well. But if I was forced to use a "stock" browser of some organization's choosing (Google, MS, Apple, Mozilla, etc.), then perhaps I would have a very different "user experience" - heaps of ads. I suspect this is because those organizations place advertisers before users. If the ad sales business were to dry up it would be a disaster for some of those organizations. Fortunately, I do not need those browsers to read the news.
- alexbecker 9y ago
  Thanks for clarifying--I assumed that you were using a standard browser, and were confused why the size of the file the browser downloads when you use "Save As" was less than Maciej reported. Is your browser publicly available? Did you create it yourself--and if so, what did you use?
- isaaclyman 9y ago
  You, sir, are the Ron Swanson of internet consumers and I salute you.
- jff 9y ago
  Mr Stallman, I had no idea you were a Hacker News user!

by gwu78 9y ago

tonmoy 9y ago

Try opening the "116K webpage" with your internet connection turned off.

alexbecker 9y 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 9y 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 9y 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.

Delameko 9y ago

A "stock" web browser is just a newly installed browser before any add-ons are installed.

gwu78 9y ago

FYI the browser I use does not download resources automatically. This way I just get the page with the content: the text of the article. That is all I want. To read articles, which are just text, I access the web in VGA textmode with a text-only browser. I never see any ads. There is no such thing as "load time" with this "UX". All pages load fast. I do DNS lookups in bulk and store IPs before doing any HTTP requests, so I take time consumed by DNS out of the equation. I do not store IPs of ad servers, Facebook domains serving hidden beacon images and other nonsense. I never access these resources. If I want to look at images or watch videos, I download them and use other programs running on other computers with graphics to view them. Those computers have no gateway to the internet. For someone who likes to read, it all works very well. But if I was forced to use a "stock" browser of some organization's choosing (Google, MS, Apple, Mozilla, etc.), then perhaps I would have a very different "user experience" - heaps of ads. I suspect this is because those organizations place advertisers before users. If the ad sales business were to dry up it would be a disaster for some of those organizations. Fortunately, I do not need those browsers to read the news.

alexbecker 9y ago
Thanks for clarifying--I assumed that you were using a standard browser, and were confused why the size of the file the browser downloads when you use "Save As" was less than Maciej reported. Is your browser publicly available? Did you create it yourself--and if so, what did you use?
isaaclyman 9y ago
You, sir, are the Ron Swanson of internet consumers and I salute you.
jff 9y ago
Mr Stallman, I had no idea you were a Hacker News user!