6 ms·

This is what the world needs. Seriously, I hate this trend to bloat up websites with the rage of a thousand suns. There is absolutely no value, but it increase

This is what the world needs. Seriously, I hate this trend to bloat up websites with the rage of a thousand suns. There is absolutely no value, but it increases bandwith usage, load times and CPU/RAM usage. News websites having "fancy, modern" websites actually make me think less of them. Fuck this web-bloat shit. The web is broken.

tosser350 9y ago
No value to the user, but all that bloat allows for analytics and tracking for more ad $ and the images make emotional manipulation easier to get more clicks. Not to mention that 99.9% of people don't care or don't even know what bandwidth, CPU, or RAM are.
- MicroBerto 9y ago
  > 99.9% of people don't care or don't even know what bandwidth ...but they sure know what data rates are. Not that a website is the root of their data problems of course
bradleyankrom 9y ago
death to auto-playing video always and forever... CNN's site is especially bad about that, as I've experienced cases where I stop the "big" video at the top of the page and scroll down, only to have it start back up again when it moves to the sidebar.
- alansammarone 9y ago
  That is SO annoying. When it happens I don't even read the article anymore, I just rage close the tab.
  - mungoid 9y ago
    Hah I do the exact same thing. Actually, out of spite I go to foxnews ;-)
  - gooseus 9y ago
    Agreed, it is one of those irrational triggers for me where I go from fine to furious in maximum reaction time. Just imagining it happening gets my blood pressure up. How about a chrome extension where you can put domains on a time-based blacklist for offenses against your sensibilities. So if you go to CNN and they autoplay an ad, you can blacklist them for 1 week - Should you forget or carelessly click one of their links, this pops an interstitial page that reminds you of their offenses and gives you the opportunity to rescind your request for a page view. Additionally there is an opt-in for you to report the offenses to a central service for public scrutiny/shaming... thoughts?
- EwanG 9y ago
  You probably want the "HTML5 Autoplay" Chrome extension which stops the overwhelming majority of these. It was a problem on Bloomberg as well as CNN, but now you'll see the window spin for a second and then stop.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
andrewfromx 9y ago
"This is what the world needs." maybe the world needed back in 1983 ted turner never to start up 24/7 news? Didn't and doesn't human DNA jive better with less news, less often?
- oh_sigh 9y ago
  Good point. CNN should put hours on their website and only serve news between 9am and 5pm. Nobody needs to watch 24/7 news
  - andrewfromx 9y ago
    it's more than that. We used to have a morning edition newspaper and then the late edition. That's it. Two times a day to get fresh news. Even 9-5 too much.
    - imcrs 9y ago
      Best thing I've read about the news: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews I read monthlys now. Only sometimes I can't resist checking the daily (or instant) news.
SippinLean 9y ago
Yeah, but H1 tags count as bloat now? Minimalism is subtract until it breaks, but this is broken.
- dkarl 9y ago
  Yeah, without the h1 tags the headlines don't stand out from all the other content on the page.
mattwoodnyc 9y ago
This format is ideal in this context, but the web is far larger than a digital ticker tape dispenser. Some publishers are seeking to create a modern version of Life magazine. What do imagine that would look like? How about National Geographic? I love, for example, what the teams at The New York Times are doing to enhance stories with creative uses of the modern web. The web is not broken, it’s simply revealing that this is a better way to consume breaking news.
- bradleyankrom 9y ago
  Agree that some sites are producing some really high-quality work leveraging the modern web. The problem, for me, is that many sites think of everything as _content_ that must be flashy (but hopefully not Flash-y). If I click to read an article about the devastation in Barbuda, I don't necessarily need the full production of related content to be thrown in my face along with the text that I really want to read.
- kevmo 9y ago
  This is the highest-impact format with which one can consume news, though. Magazines are great, but lots of people are just looking for a quick shot of the current news. This sort of UI is ideal for that need. This is exactly why the Drudge Report has stayed relevant for 20 years.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - SQL2219 9y ago
    But behind the curtain, Drudge is a freaking advertising hog.
    - kevmo 9y ago
      Doesn't detract from the fact that his information design is A+.
sotojuan 9y ago
I wonder how many HN readers would be unemployed if the world went this way. It's pretty interesting to think that a good chunk of the people you comment with are the ones coding bloated websites (most likely not because they want to!).
- CaptSpify 9y ago
  I actually think that this would be one of the best outcomes of something like UBI. Devs and designers would no longer have to keep redoing websites just to justify their paycheck. They could spend times improving their sites only if they felt it was needed.
jccalhoun 9y ago
I think there is a happy medium. For my tastes, I think the text-only cnn is too bare. I don't need pictures but I could use a one or two sentence summary of the stories to give me more of an idea whether I want to read the whole thing or not.
amsheehan 9y ago
My upvote was only for the first sentence. Web infrastructure is not broken, it's just being abused. That abuse leads to some pretty incredible technology though.
apaprocki 9y ago
It's interesting to me to see shifting viewpoints around this. I've been building the Bloomberg Terminal for a long time, and to both users and programmers coming from the web ecosystem, there is often an immediate (somewhat) negative reaction as to why anyone (really any business, not person) would pay so much money for what the software provides. But once in a while, when you see something like this come along, you see viewpoints specifically pertaining to news and what everyone wishes they had was clean text-and-basic-photos delivery of relevant news without any ad-, web-, tracking-, social- bloat of the modern <insert any news corporation> website. That is specifically what businesses are paying for, and it is just one feature; what they get for their money is much larger than just one or a dozen news sites. They get something on the order of 100k feeds (e.g. WSJ is 1 feed) in dozens of languages from around the globe in all their text-only glory. So yeah, it could look like a throwback from another era. Or, alternatively, it could be exactly what everyone wants :)

tosser350 9y ago

No value to the user, but all that bloat allows for analytics and tracking for more ad $ and the images make emotional manipulation easier to get more clicks. Not to mention that 99.9% of people don't care or don't even know what bandwidth, CPU, or RAM are.

MicroBerto 9y ago
> 99.9% of people don't care or don't even know what bandwidth ...but they sure know what data rates are. Not that a website is the root of their data problems of course

bradleyankrom 9y ago

death to auto-playing video always and forever... CNN's site is especially bad about that, as I've experienced cases where I stop the "big" video at the top of the page and scroll down, only to have it start back up again when it moves to the sidebar.

alansammarone 9y ago
That is SO annoying. When it happens I don't even read the article anymore, I just rage close the tab.
- mungoid 9y ago
  Hah I do the exact same thing. Actually, out of spite I go to foxnews ;-)
- gooseus 9y ago
  Agreed, it is one of those irrational triggers for me where I go from fine to furious in maximum reaction time. Just imagining it happening gets my blood pressure up. How about a chrome extension where you can put domains on a time-based blacklist for offenses against your sensibilities. So if you go to CNN and they autoplay an ad, you can blacklist them for 1 week - Should you forget or carelessly click one of their links, this pops an interstitial page that reminds you of their offenses and gives you the opportunity to rescind your request for a page view. Additionally there is an opt-in for you to report the offenses to a central service for public scrutiny/shaming... thoughts?
EwanG 9y ago
You probably want the "HTML5 Autoplay" Chrome extension which stops the overwhelming majority of these. It was a problem on Bloomberg as well as CNN, but now you'll see the window spin for a second and then stop.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

andrewfromx 9y ago

"This is what the world needs." maybe the world needed back in 1983 ted turner never to start up 24/7 news? Didn't and doesn't human DNA jive better with less news, less often?

oh_sigh 9y ago
Good point. CNN should put hours on their website and only serve news between 9am and 5pm. Nobody needs to watch 24/7 news
- andrewfromx 9y ago
  it's more than that. We used to have a morning edition newspaper and then the late edition. That's it. Two times a day to get fresh news. Even 9-5 too much.
  - imcrs 9y ago
    Best thing I've read about the news: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews I read monthlys now. Only sometimes I can't resist checking the daily (or instant) news.

SippinLean 9y ago

Yeah, but H1 tags count as bloat now? Minimalism is subtract until it breaks, but this is broken.

dkarl 9y ago
Yeah, without the h1 tags the headlines don't stand out from all the other content on the page.

mattwoodnyc 9y ago

This format is ideal in this context, but the web is far larger than a digital ticker tape dispenser. Some publishers are seeking to create a modern version of Life magazine. What do imagine that would look like? How about National Geographic? I love, for example, what the teams at The New York Times are doing to enhance stories with creative uses of the modern web. The web is not broken, it’s simply revealing that this is a better way to consume breaking news.

bradleyankrom 9y ago
Agree that some sites are producing some really high-quality work leveraging the modern web. The problem, for me, is that many sites think of everything as _content_ that must be flashy (but hopefully not Flash-y). If I click to read an article about the devastation in Barbuda, I don't necessarily need the full production of related content to be thrown in my face along with the text that I really want to read.
kevmo 9y ago
This is the highest-impact format with which one can consume news, though. Magazines are great, but lots of people are just looking for a quick shot of the current news. This sort of UI is ideal for that need. This is exactly why the Drudge Report has stayed relevant for 20 years.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- SQL2219 9y ago
  But behind the curtain, Drudge is a freaking advertising hog.
  - kevmo 9y ago
    Doesn't detract from the fact that his information design is A+.

sotojuan 9y ago

I wonder how many HN readers would be unemployed if the world went this way. It's pretty interesting to think that a good chunk of the people you comment with are the ones coding bloated websites (most likely not because they want to!).

CaptSpify 9y ago
I actually think that this would be one of the best outcomes of something like UBI. Devs and designers would no longer have to keep redoing websites just to justify their paycheck. They could spend times improving their sites only if they felt it was needed.

jccalhoun 9y ago

I think there is a happy medium. For my tastes, I think the text-only cnn is too bare. I don't need pictures but I could use a one or two sentence summary of the stories to give me more of an idea whether I want to read the whole thing or not.

amsheehan 9y ago

My upvote was only for the first sentence. Web infrastructure is not broken, it's just being abused. That abuse leads to some pretty incredible technology though.

apaprocki 9y ago

It's interesting to me to see shifting viewpoints around this. I've been building the Bloomberg Terminal for a long time, and to both users and programmers coming from the web ecosystem, there is often an immediate (somewhat) negative reaction as to why anyone (really any business, not person) would pay so much money for what the software provides. But once in a while, when you see something like this come along, you see viewpoints specifically pertaining to news and what everyone wishes they had was clean text-and-basic-photos delivery of relevant news without any ad-, web-, tracking-, social- bloat of the modern <insert any news corporation> website. That is specifically what businesses are paying for, and it is just one feature; what they get for their money is much larger than just one or a dozen news sites. They get something on the order of 100k feeds (e.g. WSJ is 1 feed) in dozens of languages from around the globe in all their text-only glory. So yeah, it could look like a throwback from another era. Or, alternatively, it could be exactly what everyone wants :)