8 ms·

Downloading a website sans scripts takes strictly less time than downloading and executing scripts. A website that hides its content for 8 seconds because scrip

Downloading a website sans scripts takes strictly less time than downloading and executing scripts. A website that hides its content for 8 seconds because scripts are disabled is a defective website which deliberately stops users from looking static content (amp uses css animation).

SquareWheel 8y ago
Ha. That's like removing a bunch of methods from a program and claiming it's broken when it crashes. What did you expect to happen when blocking half of a site's libraries?
- tedunangst 8y ago
  At the very least, I expect it to crash faster after removing methods. It should not pause for a long time and then work.
- jimbo1qaz 8y ago
  News sites are hypertext, also known as formatted text, and not web-apps or programs which download and render websites. I expect news sites to load properly in the absence of the AMP CDN (not "half the methods"), not deliberately hide content from users. (I feel the same way about blocking page rendering when web-fonts don't download when their http connections hang instead.) EDIT: I just moved to desktop. If I block all scripts in uMatrix, OP's URL loads immediately (albeit with a full page of garbage above page content). If I block external scripts in uMatrix, I have to wait 8 seconds before anything appears.
  - SquareWheel 8y ago
    >News sites are hypertext, also known as formatted text, and not web-apps or programs which download and render websites. No, there are many thousands of websites that render their content dynamically on the client - news or otherwise. Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit all make use of client-side rendering (and all provide news services). >not deliberately hide content from users Your browser also "deliberately hides content". It waits a few hundred milliseconds before triggering a paint, just to avoid content from jumping around. AMP pages do the same -- unless you break the mechanism of course.
    - monadgonad 8y ago
      > Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit all make use of client-side rendering (and all provide news services) Oh, come on. You and I both know that those are social media apps which act as news aggregators, and are not themselves sources of textual news articles. jimbo1qaz was clearly talking about the latter.
      - SquareWheel 8y ago
        What is the meaningful distinction between news websites and non-news websites? Client-side rendering is just a technique which isn't specific to any industry.
  - askdlflkjklk 8y ago
    > News sites are hypertext, also known as formatted text, and not web-apps nope.
- manicdee 8y ago
  Completely different. This is like a car that tries to phone home every time you start it, so either you keep the phone service active and get a salesperson talking to you while driving, or you disable the phone and the car leave the immobiliser active for a minute each time you try to start the car.
  - SquareWheel 8y ago
    Are you upset that the website is using a CDN? That is the standard distribution method for common libraries. As for the other half of your analogy - stop poking holes in the gas tank and it won't need active service.
    - pdkl95 8y ago
      Using a CDN isn't the problem on it's own; the problem is the (unfortunately common) shoddy programming practice of assuming error never happen. Good programming almost always involves checking for and properly handling errors. Using the returned value from fopen(3) without checking if it was NULL probably results in the program crashing when displaying a simple "file not found" error message would have been more appropriate. This principle is also true when writing web pages; if you load an external resource, you need to check for and handle the case where that resource might not be available. Failing to load a resource can happen for many different reasons, not just someone blocking it with their client. Proper handling the error depends on what the resource is: display the content that is already available (perhaps in a less than ideal state), or if that isn't possible displaying an appropriate error message. This includes cases where the Javascript itself isn't available (for any reason). Networks are not reliable or universally available. Quality programming understand that and does the best it can when failures happen.
      - SquareWheel 8y ago
        I agree with you. However understand that AMP actually does have a failsafe here, and it's exactly what the OP is complaining about. After a timeout (to allow for shoddy network conditions as you described) it will load the content as best it can. All three cases are actually covered (full-script support, partial-script support, and noscript support). That's more resilient than most apps.
HALtheWise 8y ago
The intent of the feature seems to be to hide content until it has been laid out properly, which is generally a positive change to the experience because you can't read stuff while it is jumping around. In that sense, the website is "deliberately" stopping you from seeing static content in the same sense that browsers deliberately don't flash the raw HTML code onscreen before they have finished performing layout operations, but it seems unreasonable to imply it is malicious or defective behavior. The CSS animation is a fallback to that intended behavior.
- dathinab 8y ago
  I is actually both. If it would be just a fallback then the time it uses would be at most 5s, more realistic 3s. The think is, if you are on a internet connection where you have frequent loading time of 3s for the _basic_ content, then you are used to seeing partial loaded pages and you likely love it if the connection happen to load the content you care about first, potentially leaving the page before it's completely loaded when noticing that it's not what you are looking for. The choice of 8s looks _a lot_ like they where looking for the highest time they can chooses without making it look obvious deliberately but which is long enough to make many "causal" users stop using the script blocker. I.e. 10+s would look way to obvious as a intentionally long choice. 9s still looks big as we are used to see 9 as nearly 10 from product prices to some degree (e.g. 9.99€). So the highest number which doesn't look obviously high is the 8. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
  - SquareWheel 8y ago
    Eight seconds may seem exceptional on broadband internet, but it is not elsewhere in the world. I recently worked with a website in Brazil that could take over a minute to load over 3G. It only looks malicious because you're looking for it to be malicious.
    - grenadier21 8y ago
      Like parent said, if a page takes 8s to load, I sure as heck don't mind seeing some partial results so I can start reading in those 8s.
mr_toad 8y ago
I’m surprised anyone hangs around a web page for 8 seconds waiting for it to load. By that time I’d assume the server/connection was down and either refreshed or moved on.
jefftk 8y ago
If scripts are disabled AMP uses <noscript> to skip the 8s timeout, and renders quickly. The OP is getting slow loads because they're (a) silently blocking the AMP JS and (b) not running the <noscript> section. (Disclosure: I work on AMP ads on non-AMP pages, which I like because it means the ads are declarative)

SquareWheel 8y ago

Ha. That's like removing a bunch of methods from a program and claiming it's broken when it crashes. What did you expect to happen when blocking half of a site's libraries?

tedunangst 8y ago
At the very least, I expect it to crash faster after removing methods. It should not pause for a long time and then work.
jimbo1qaz 8y ago
News sites are hypertext, also known as formatted text, and not web-apps or programs which download and render websites. I expect news sites to load properly in the absence of the AMP CDN (not "half the methods"), not deliberately hide content from users. (I feel the same way about blocking page rendering when web-fonts don't download when their http connections hang instead.) EDIT: I just moved to desktop. If I block all scripts in uMatrix, OP's URL loads immediately (albeit with a full page of garbage above page content). If I block external scripts in uMatrix, I have to wait 8 seconds before anything appears.
- SquareWheel 8y ago
  >News sites are hypertext, also known as formatted text, and not web-apps or programs which download and render websites. No, there are many thousands of websites that render their content dynamically on the client - news or otherwise. Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit all make use of client-side rendering (and all provide news services). >not deliberately hide content from users Your browser also "deliberately hides content". It waits a few hundred milliseconds before triggering a paint, just to avoid content from jumping around. AMP pages do the same -- unless you break the mechanism of course.
  - monadgonad 8y ago
    > Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit all make use of client-side rendering (and all provide news services) Oh, come on. You and I both know that those are social media apps which act as news aggregators, and are not themselves sources of textual news articles. jimbo1qaz was clearly talking about the latter.
    - SquareWheel 8y ago
      What is the meaningful distinction between news websites and non-news websites? Client-side rendering is just a technique which isn't specific to any industry.
- askdlflkjklk 8y ago
  > News sites are hypertext, also known as formatted text, and not web-apps nope.
manicdee 8y ago
Completely different. This is like a car that tries to phone home every time you start it, so either you keep the phone service active and get a salesperson talking to you while driving, or you disable the phone and the car leave the immobiliser active for a minute each time you try to start the car.
- SquareWheel 8y ago
  Are you upset that the website is using a CDN? That is the standard distribution method for common libraries. As for the other half of your analogy - stop poking holes in the gas tank and it won't need active service.
  - pdkl95 8y ago
    Using a CDN isn't the problem on it's own; the problem is the (unfortunately common) shoddy programming practice of assuming error never happen. Good programming almost always involves checking for and properly handling errors. Using the returned value from fopen(3) without checking if it was NULL probably results in the program crashing when displaying a simple "file not found" error message would have been more appropriate. This principle is also true when writing web pages; if you load an external resource, you need to check for and handle the case where that resource might not be available. Failing to load a resource can happen for many different reasons, not just someone blocking it with their client. Proper handling the error depends on what the resource is: display the content that is already available (perhaps in a less than ideal state), or if that isn't possible displaying an appropriate error message. This includes cases where the Javascript itself isn't available (for any reason). Networks are not reliable or universally available. Quality programming understand that and does the best it can when failures happen.
    - SquareWheel 8y ago
      I agree with you. However understand that AMP actually does have a failsafe here, and it's exactly what the OP is complaining about. After a timeout (to allow for shoddy network conditions as you described) it will load the content as best it can. All three cases are actually covered (full-script support, partial-script support, and noscript support). That's more resilient than most apps.

HALtheWise 8y ago

The intent of the feature seems to be to hide content until it has been laid out properly, which is generally a positive change to the experience because you can't read stuff while it is jumping around. In that sense, the website is "deliberately" stopping you from seeing static content in the same sense that browsers deliberately don't flash the raw HTML code onscreen before they have finished performing layout operations, but it seems unreasonable to imply it is malicious or defective behavior. The CSS animation is a fallback to that intended behavior.

dathinab 8y ago
I is actually both. If it would be just a fallback then the time it uses would be at most 5s, more realistic 3s. The think is, if you are on a internet connection where you have frequent loading time of 3s for the _basic_ content, then you are used to seeing partial loaded pages and you likely love it if the connection happen to load the content you care about first, potentially leaving the page before it's completely loaded when noticing that it's not what you are looking for. The choice of 8s looks _a lot_ like they where looking for the highest time they can chooses without making it look obvious deliberately but which is long enough to make many "causal" users stop using the script blocker. I.e. 10+s would look way to obvious as a intentionally long choice. 9s still looks big as we are used to see 9 as nearly 10 from product prices to some degree (e.g. 9.99€). So the highest number which doesn't look obviously high is the 8. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- SquareWheel 8y ago
  Eight seconds may seem exceptional on broadband internet, but it is not elsewhere in the world. I recently worked with a website in Brazil that could take over a minute to load over 3G. It only looks malicious because you're looking for it to be malicious.
  - grenadier21 8y ago
    Like parent said, if a page takes 8s to load, I sure as heck don't mind seeing some partial results so I can start reading in those 8s.

mr_toad 8y ago

I’m surprised anyone hangs around a web page for 8 seconds waiting for it to load. By that time I’d assume the server/connection was down and either refreshed or moved on.

jefftk 8y ago

If scripts are disabled AMP uses <noscript> to skip the 8s timeout, and renders quickly. The OP is getting slow loads because they're (a) silently blocking the AMP JS and (b) not running the <noscript> section. (Disclosure: I work on AMP ads on non-AMP pages, which I like because it means the ads are declarative)