4 ms·

I like how the site is an example of very fast software, such a simple design and it renders immediately; a single file load with the tiniest of javascript to m

by gleenn 8y ago

I like how the site is an example of very fast software, such a simple design and it renders immediately; a single file load with the tiniest of javascript to make the videos work. A full page load in 27ms with only 14kb transferred!

merb 8y ago
to be fair the site is a html site only and gets served via cloudflare. not a fair metric against a "dynamic" site. also most webservers/frameworks/whatever will favor throughput over latency.
- coder543 8y ago
  Ok, what about Hacker News? But the article discusses news website like WaPo that really don't need to be very dynamic.
- Skunkleton 8y ago
  This site is fast, why should I care how it got fast?
- pdpi 8y ago
  dynamic sites are a choice, and achieving that richer level of interaction comes with its own costs. For every legitimately dynamic page out there (going all the way up to full-on applications), there’s many more that have no good reason to be anything other than static content that could be served from a cdn. Going pure html for a page that doesn’t need more is precisely the sort of design choice that goes with the mentality they’re advocating. Optimising for throughout rather than latency is, again, a design choice, and the article serves as an indictment of taking that too far.
microcolonel 8y ago
Though, if I were to critique it, I would say that the JS was not really necessary for such a simple case for video. There's only one <source> (I guess H.264 is considered ubiquitous now) and the big central play button just gets in the way of the video (and on most platforms, the default styling of the <video> element puts a big play button over top of it anyway).
greenyouse 8y ago
The only nitpick I have is that the sidebar comments are built in a weird way. They're nested in the middle of the paragraphs inside small tags. It would be a little nicer if they split the sidebar text into aside tags that come after the paragraph. It's refreshing to see a site that loads quickly though. That would've been a bit hypocritical otherwise :p
vanderZwan 8y ago
> A full page load in 27ms with only 14kb transferred! Nitpick: not really a full page load. The text part is 14 KiB, but once the website finished downloading the images and videos it's 14 MiB. However, because it does so via lazy loading (same for the PNGs), the text-parts are instantly rendered, and because it downloads all of the videos you have no buffering latency when clicking. So yeah, near-perfect example of how to design a website for low-latency while still maintaining rich media (the thumbnail PNGs could have been JPGs to save more data, and more importantly: lazy-load even faster).

by gleenn 8y ago

merb 8y ago

to be fair the site is a html site only and gets served via cloudflare. not a fair metric against a "dynamic" site. also most webservers/frameworks/whatever will favor throughput over latency.

coder543 8y ago
Ok, what about Hacker News? But the article discusses news website like WaPo that really don't need to be very dynamic.
Skunkleton 8y ago
This site is fast, why should I care how it got fast?
pdpi 8y ago
dynamic sites are a choice, and achieving that richer level of interaction comes with its own costs. For every legitimately dynamic page out there (going all the way up to full-on applications), there’s many more that have no good reason to be anything other than static content that could be served from a cdn. Going pure html for a page that doesn’t need more is precisely the sort of design choice that goes with the mentality they’re advocating. Optimising for throughout rather than latency is, again, a design choice, and the article serves as an indictment of taking that too far.

microcolonel 8y ago

Though, if I were to critique it, I would say that the JS was not really necessary for such a simple case for video. There's only one <source> (I guess H.264 is considered ubiquitous now) and the big central play button just gets in the way of the video (and on most platforms, the default styling of the <video> element puts a big play button over top of it anyway).

greenyouse 8y ago

The only nitpick I have is that the sidebar comments are built in a weird way. They're nested in the middle of the paragraphs inside small tags. It would be a little nicer if they split the sidebar text into aside tags that come after the paragraph. It's refreshing to see a site that loads quickly though. That would've been a bit hypocritical otherwise :p

vanderZwan 8y ago

> A full page load in 27ms with only 14kb transferred! Nitpick: not really a full page load. The text part is 14 KiB, but once the website finished downloading the images and videos it's 14 MiB. However, because it does so via lazy loading (same for the PNGs), the text-parts are instantly rendered, and because it downloads all of the videos you have no buffering latency when clicking. So yeah, near-perfect example of how to design a website for low-latency while still maintaining rich media (the thumbnail PNGs could have been JPGs to save more data, and more importantly: lazy-load even faster).