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As a US based user of an A53 based phone, where I use firefox. I'm here to tell you more than 50% of the sites I visit with it (HN being one that actually works

As a US based user of an A53 based phone, where I use firefox. I'm here to tell you more than 50% of the sites I visit with it (HN being one that actually works well) are completely unusable. There was a saying back in the 1990's that developers should be forced to use obsolete hardware to assure that their software was usable for the regular user, and its even more true today. Developers running around with the latest iphones does nothing to actually represent what the average user actually sees. Picking on amazon, I generally don't even bother going to their site unless i'm on my desktop, where I can physically watch them frequently spike my 4+ Ghz CPU for a few seconds when I type in the search bar, or click a page. Doing the same on my phone or cheap tablet frequently results in a 10+ second waits. The other day I was typing on my tablet and the amazon search completion was literally taking 20+ seconds to display each _character_ and a completion list for it.

hinkley 8y ago
My first job I had a machine so slow I could see the screen updates progress. For several months I did perf testing with a stop watch because changes would knock off so much time. Two places I worked, I intercepted someone trying to throw out old computers and set up a testing station at an empty cube or a table on an endcap. Usually with some older versions of browsers. They didn’t get used every day but they got used most weeks for sure.
paraditedc 8y ago
And this is the first time I heard someone complain Amazon UI being slow. And Amazon sales or stock are not dropping. Probably you are not part of the 99% of users that Amazon is targeting.
- StillBored 8y ago
  Well there are others https://www.reddit.com/r/amazon/comments/38tttx/why_is_amazons_website_so_godawfully_slow https://www.reddit.com/r/amazon/comments/38tttx/why_is_amazo... And its weird because the landing page tends to be fairly fast, but if you happen to be signed in, and start clicking around you can see it load the page and then spend another few seconds loading/running a bunch of crap in the background. Once its done that a couple times it just seems to get progressively slower. Although, I suspect a big part of the problem is firefox... As far as their target audience, you might be right WRT their target users tending to be more affluent and having high end phones/etc. But event then, at this point, what are the retail alternatives with such a wide range of products, particularly if one does enough online shopping to have a prime membership and also use it as a netflix substitute?
- franciscop 8y ago
  Amazon is succeeding despite of this. Imagine where it could be it if was also fast! As a workaround, now when I want to search something in amazon I just google for "amazon [what I want]"
jhayward 8y ago
> There was a saying back in the 1990's that developers should be forced to use obsolete hardware Back in the mid to late 1990's I used a 16 MHz, 24MB unix workstation to do all my encryption development for just this reason. An unexpected benefit - I can't count the number of times I was able to just shut down FUD arguments about how badly adding transport encryption or authentication would affect performance, by simply offering to demo it on my workstation.
cronix 8y ago
> There was a saying back in the 1990's that developers should be forced to use obsolete hardware to assure that their software was usable for the regular user, and its even more true today I noticed this "problem" when ssd's came out as well when it came to physically noticing slow queries while developing. Something that used to be perceivable because it took a second to return results suddenly wasn't perceivable because it was taking .2ms, but the problems and inefficiencies were still there being masked by the faster speeds of the drives.
- nicoburns 8y ago
  Windows 10 is a big offender here! Machines that fine on windows 7 suddenly seem to develop UI lag on Windows 10. All fixed with an SSD.
jazzyjackson 8y ago
You can disable javascript and still order stuff on Amazon - that's inspired me to take a step back and learn how to build applications around HTML forms and CGI. If it's good enough for amazon...
- StillBored 8y ago
  It used to be standard practice for web development to assure the page degraded well if JS was disabled. Of course you need to have really good CSS to avoid the result looking like crap.
devwastaken 8y ago
Using firefox on mobile is the first mistake. Chrome is by far faster on Android. Firefox's Spidermonkey is quite poor compared to V8. You don't need the latest iphone for sites to work. Sites poorly impliment mobile sites if there's an app equivalent. Amazon is one of those. Their site is littered with tracking and mountains of compatability code like any other site trying to make a profit.
- snovv_crash 8y ago
  Firefox lets you use full-fledged uBlock Origin. That means that although Spidermonkey might have a 30% disadvantage conpared to V8, you end up running 90% less scripts, never mind the network savings.
  - devwastaken 8y ago
    I know, that's what I typically use, and it's still slower and buggier.

hinkley 8y ago

My first job I had a machine so slow I could see the screen updates progress. For several months I did perf testing with a stop watch because changes would knock off so much time. Two places I worked, I intercepted someone trying to throw out old computers and set up a testing station at an empty cube or a table on an endcap. Usually with some older versions of browsers. They didn’t get used every day but they got used most weeks for sure.

paraditedc 8y ago

And this is the first time I heard someone complain Amazon UI being slow. And Amazon sales or stock are not dropping. Probably you are not part of the 99% of users that Amazon is targeting.

StillBored 8y ago
Well there are others https://www.reddit.com/r/amazon/comments/38tttx/why_is_amazons_website_so_godawfully_slow https://www.reddit.com/r/amazon/comments/38tttx/why_is_amazo... And its weird because the landing page tends to be fairly fast, but if you happen to be signed in, and start clicking around you can see it load the page and then spend another few seconds loading/running a bunch of crap in the background. Once its done that a couple times it just seems to get progressively slower. Although, I suspect a big part of the problem is firefox... As far as their target audience, you might be right WRT their target users tending to be more affluent and having high end phones/etc. But event then, at this point, what are the retail alternatives with such a wide range of products, particularly if one does enough online shopping to have a prime membership and also use it as a netflix substitute?
franciscop 8y ago
Amazon is succeeding despite of this. Imagine where it could be it if was also fast! As a workaround, now when I want to search something in amazon I just google for "amazon [what I want]"

jhayward 8y ago

> There was a saying back in the 1990's that developers should be forced to use obsolete hardware Back in the mid to late 1990's I used a 16 MHz, 24MB unix workstation to do all my encryption development for just this reason. An unexpected benefit - I can't count the number of times I was able to just shut down FUD arguments about how badly adding transport encryption or authentication would affect performance, by simply offering to demo it on my workstation.

cronix 8y ago

> There was a saying back in the 1990's that developers should be forced to use obsolete hardware to assure that their software was usable for the regular user, and its even more true today I noticed this "problem" when ssd's came out as well when it came to physically noticing slow queries while developing. Something that used to be perceivable because it took a second to return results suddenly wasn't perceivable because it was taking .2ms, but the problems and inefficiencies were still there being masked by the faster speeds of the drives.

nicoburns 8y ago
Windows 10 is a big offender here! Machines that fine on windows 7 suddenly seem to develop UI lag on Windows 10. All fixed with an SSD.

jazzyjackson 8y ago

You can disable javascript and still order stuff on Amazon - that's inspired me to take a step back and learn how to build applications around HTML forms and CGI. If it's good enough for amazon...

StillBored 8y ago
It used to be standard practice for web development to assure the page degraded well if JS was disabled. Of course you need to have really good CSS to avoid the result looking like crap.

devwastaken 8y ago

Using firefox on mobile is the first mistake. Chrome is by far faster on Android. Firefox's Spidermonkey is quite poor compared to V8. You don't need the latest iphone for sites to work. Sites poorly impliment mobile sites if there's an app equivalent. Amazon is one of those. Their site is littered with tracking and mountains of compatability code like any other site trying to make a profit.

snovv_crash 8y ago
Firefox lets you use full-fledged uBlock Origin. That means that although Spidermonkey might have a 30% disadvantage conpared to V8, you end up running 90% less scripts, never mind the network savings.
- devwastaken 8y ago
  I know, that's what I typically use, and it's still slower and buggier.