4 ms·

How is it acceptable for any webpage to take 10s+ to render on first load? How did we get here?

by berbec 8y ago

LeonM 8y ago
Well... Ferrari inlined a 1.7MB BASE64 encoded image of their prancing horse logo, only to render it at less than 1/10th of its size. That shows it's not always the massive JS libs that are the problem. It's also a lack of knowledge and interest from those who build and maintain the site.
- losteric 8y ago
  And quite possibly a lack of interest from the customers of their site.
  - LeonM 8y ago
    Agreed. It's not like Ferarri is going to lose a (potential) customer because their site loads a bit slow.
    - jim-jim-jim 8y ago
      It definitely doesn't matter with Ferrari because I doubt people buy cars directly through their site, but I've gotten into spats with art/fashion people who make terrible web stores that shit the bed the moment you're on a spotty connection. Their justification is unironically "we don't make products for poor people, so who cares what our site looks like on a bad signal," which I find really odd—do people with means never travel or something?
    - RaceWon 8y ago
      Right, nor will they need PR from G like the rest of us do. I mean are people typing in "Fast cars I can't afford" to find Ferarri online?
- strken 8y ago
  That sounds less like a lack of knowledge and interest, and more like a lack of time and care. When your boss is yelling at you to upgrade the Ferrari logo because you need to get to work on Dave's Dogfood, and you've got two hours to do it plus nobody remembers the AWS credentials for the account with permission to upload images to S3, you're going to hack some shit together and deploy it then sneak out for a coffee. Your personal levels of interest and knowledge don't come into play when faced with cost-cutting and ignorance at the purse-string level.
  - amelius 8y ago
    Also, the programmer is not the one ultimately responsible. It's the QA team.
    - flurdy 8y ago
      Yup, chuck that responsibility over the wall. Not. True, the QAs job is to test it delivers as requested, UX if it is usable by the end user, ops that is is not heavy on resources etc. But it is a joint responsibility between all and especially the developer and designer that they deliver quality and not cut corners. If there is an ultimate responsible it would perhaps be the project/product owner who would decide what is important and how much time and effort they should spend on which parts. But still it is not just pass-the-buck, they are all responsible.
      - amelius 8y ago
        The programmer's job is to come up with the best solution in the minimum amount of time. That's an ill-posed/unsolvable problem. Hence they will sometimes come up with a solution that's not perfect, and they will leave it to QA (or the product designer) to see if the solution is acceptable.
- t4ko 8y ago
  It reminds me of my previous company, also a car company. During the Dakar Rally they had an 8MB jpeg as the header of their sale website. It took one week and a message sent through a "Contact us" page (public) to get them to reduce it to 700 KB. I suppose it happens because the web devs never tested the website with a realistic internet connection. Everything loads fast when the server room is less than a km away with gigabit bandwidth. It's either bad project management if they forgot to test correctly/change placeholders or as you said lack of knowledge.
peterpost 8y ago
>I'm going to put each site through WebPageTest to gather the data on Chrome Canary on a Moto G4 with a 3g connection. I guess the results would be very different when using 4g? and that the real problem is that the author is using a unrealisticly slow connection.
- jaffathecake 8y ago
  4g wouldn't change the main thread issues. Also, it's a mistake for developers to assume that everyone is on 4g, and that those on 4g are experiencing good speeds. Even in London, if you're at a train station that's hit by delays, connectivity grinds to a halt as everyone starts looking for alternative transport. In the big cities in India, 4g is pretty much always like that.
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
  Where on earth do you live where 3G is "unrealistic?"
- kurtisc 8y ago
  There are a fairly significant number of users without LTE. Bear in mind too that some of the names at the bottom of the list, like Brazil, are countries hosting a Grand Prix this year. https://www.opensignal.com/reports/2018/02/state-of-lte https://www.opensignal.com/reports/2018/02/state-of-lte
sjburt 8y ago
He's using a cheap phone and turned off 4G.

How is it acceptable for any webpage to take 10s+ to render on first load? How did we get here?

by berbec 8y ago

How is it acceptable for any webpage to take 10s+ to render on first load? How did we get here?

Well... Ferrari inlined a 1.7MB BASE64 encoded image of their prancing horse logo, only to render it at less than 1/10th of its size. That shows it's not always the massive JS libs that are the problem. It's also a lack of knowledge and interest from those who build and maintain the site.

losteric 8y ago
And quite possibly a lack of interest from the customers of their site.
- LeonM 8y ago
  Agreed. It's not like Ferarri is going to lose a (potential) customer because their site loads a bit slow.
  - jim-jim-jim 8y ago
    It definitely doesn't matter with Ferrari because I doubt people buy cars directly through their site, but I've gotten into spats with art/fashion people who make terrible web stores that shit the bed the moment you're on a spotty connection. Their justification is unironically "we don't make products for poor people, so who cares what our site looks like on a bad signal," which I find really odd—do people with means never travel or something?
  - RaceWon 8y ago
    Right, nor will they need PR from G like the rest of us do. I mean are people typing in "Fast cars I can't afford" to find Ferarri online?
strken 8y ago
That sounds less like a lack of knowledge and interest, and more like a lack of time and care. When your boss is yelling at you to upgrade the Ferrari logo because you need to get to work on Dave's Dogfood, and you've got two hours to do it plus nobody remembers the AWS credentials for the account with permission to upload images to S3, you're going to hack some shit together and deploy it then sneak out for a coffee. Your personal levels of interest and knowledge don't come into play when faced with cost-cutting and ignorance at the purse-string level.
- amelius 8y ago
  Also, the programmer is not the one ultimately responsible. It's the QA team.
  - flurdy 8y ago
    Yup, chuck that responsibility over the wall. Not. True, the QAs job is to test it delivers as requested, UX if it is usable by the end user, ops that is is not heavy on resources etc. But it is a joint responsibility between all and especially the developer and designer that they deliver quality and not cut corners. If there is an ultimate responsible it would perhaps be the project/product owner who would decide what is important and how much time and effort they should spend on which parts. But still it is not just pass-the-buck, they are all responsible.
    - amelius 8y ago
      The programmer's job is to come up with the best solution in the minimum amount of time. That's an ill-posed/unsolvable problem. Hence they will sometimes come up with a solution that's not perfect, and they will leave it to QA (or the product designer) to see if the solution is acceptable.
t4ko 8y ago
It reminds me of my previous company, also a car company. During the Dakar Rally they had an 8MB jpeg as the header of their sale website. It took one week and a message sent through a "Contact us" page (public) to get them to reduce it to 700 KB. I suppose it happens because the web devs never tested the website with a realistic internet connection. Everything loads fast when the server room is less than a km away with gigabit bandwidth. It's either bad project management if they forgot to test correctly/change placeholders or as you said lack of knowledge.

peterpost 8y ago

>I'm going to put each site through WebPageTest to gather the data on Chrome Canary on a Moto G4 with a 3g connection. I guess the results would be very different when using 4g? and that the real problem is that the author is using a unrealisticly slow connection.

jaffathecake 8y ago
4g wouldn't change the main thread issues. Also, it's a mistake for developers to assume that everyone is on 4g, and that those on 4g are experiencing good speeds. Even in London, if you're at a train station that's hit by delays, connectivity grinds to a halt as everyone starts looking for alternative transport. In the big cities in India, 4g is pretty much always like that.
SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
Where on earth do you live where 3G is "unrealistic?"
kurtisc 8y ago
There are a fairly significant number of users without LTE. Bear in mind too that some of the names at the bottom of the list, like Brazil, are countries hosting a Grand Prix this year. https://www.opensignal.com/reports/2018/02/state-of-lte https://www.opensignal.com/reports/2018/02/state-of-lte

sjburt 8y ago

He's using a cheap phone and turned off 4G.