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I've done the same and it's amazing (and depressing) to notice how different my experience is between 'no js/ads by default' on my laptop (uMatrix + uBlock), an
by mercer 10y ago
I've done the same and it's amazing (and depressing) to notice how different my experience is between 'no js/ads by default' on my laptop (uMatrix + uBlock), and 'regular' on my iPad/iPhone.
Even worse, the difference seems to be getting worse and worse. It's a pretty regular experience for me these days to end up on a website that barely works on iOS: ridiculously slow, stuttering scroll behavior, inability to scroll because there's an ad in the way, inability to close popups, fixed position elements taking at least a third of the screen, and so on. You know the drill.
There's one website that, if I don't use the 'add to instapaper' button within the first few seconds of loading, completely blocks safari.
Now I can understand how a website becomes bloated and shitty while still being somewhat usable; users either might put up with it, or it might be difficult to measure the negative impact of these 'thousand cuts'.
But it baffles me how websites can exist that don't work at all on mobile/iOS when it's relatively easy to fix (enough to make it shitty usable). Does nobody look at bounce rates?
- jbreckmckye 10y ago> But it baffles me how websites can exist like this They do so because of the economics of the web. No-one pays for content, but basic advertising is low revenue. So user experience is squeezed instead, with video ads and popups. There are other factors too, of course. Businesses have strange priorities and can be quite myopic when they compare the value of a new feature with the value of leaving the site uncluttered. But the main reason scripting is slow is advertising.
- mercer 10y agoYes, I do get that (and said as much). What I don't get is websites that are literally unusable on mobile/iOS. There's no upside to that.
- jbreckmckye 10y agoFrom my experience, i) the people who push features don't actually use them; ii) people overestimate the pain users will go through to reach their services; iii) in a lot of businesses it's actually really _hard_ to advocate doing nothing - no new features, no further investment, no changes. So something is done because something seems better than nothing, and thuse the product slowly accumulates cruft.
- mercer 10y agoYeah, I've had similar experience. But never to the point of making a website entirely unusable on mobile (which is pretty easy to test for...).
- scarface74 10y agoWhy not use an ad blocker for iOS? They've been supported natively for awhile.