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The modern version of Gmail has a loading bar that takes about 3 seconds to complete on every single page refresh. This is subjective, and it's a bit unfair of
by danShumway 7y ago
The modern version of Gmail has a loading bar that takes about 3 seconds to complete on every single page refresh.
This is subjective, and it's a bit unfair of me to bring up, but my experience is that whatever Google is optimizing for, it doesn't seem to be latency. At least not on Firefox for any of the products I use.
- EpicEng 7y ago"Google" encompasses many different projects and teams. What does Gmail loading time have to do with what the GP said?
- jrochkind1 7y agoBecause the GP said "I work at Google but not on YouTube", and was speaking of Google and the sorts of technical challenges Google has in general, not any specific product. So danShumway pointed out that in one flagship product, they didn't seem worried about latency, so it could be argued that avoiding user-agent detection is more important than latency on youtube too. But yeah, there are lots of competing things going on, I found both comments helpful.
- kinkrtyavimoodh 7y ago> Because the GP said "I work at Google but not on YouTube" That was a disclosure, not a credential. My reading of it was that GP was speaking of the tradeoffs in their capacity as an engineer, and said they are a Googler for fair disclosure and nothing more.
- jrochkind1 7y agoThey weren't explicit that they weren't talking about YouTube specifically but generally about the kinds of challenges and tradeoffs Google faces, so that's why the reply was also talking about products other than YouTube in the context of the kinds of tradeoffs Google has been known to make. That's what it has to do with what original GP said, to answer your question directly. Anyway, I found both original GP and the reply useful, and do not find this exchange to be, so I'll stop!
- apetresc 7y agoThat's a very different product. Gmail basically never needs to refresh the page - you go through that loading bar once in the morning and there's no real reason to see it again the rest of the day. Every action in Gmail other than certain preference changes happen in the same page. YouTube is reloading the page on almost every action you take. Latency is a completely different priority there.
- danShumway 7y ago> YouTube is reloading the page on almost every action you take. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I was pretty sure that Youtube was a Single Page Application. A while back I wrote some user scripts for it that were heavily reliant on MutationObserver because it was the only way I could detect page navigation.
- lowdose 7y agoYoutube build spfjs for loading a page in "Structured Page Fragments" https://youtube.github.io/spfjs/ https://youtube.github.io/spfjs/
- whatshisface 7y agoWhat is it that Gmail is doing now that it wasn't doing when there was no perceptible loading time?
- rasz 7y agoAttracting hipster framework devs to its internal team, wouldnt you say 3 seconds of wait x global Gmail user population x every day is totally worth it?
- manigandham 7y ago> "YouTube is reloading the page on almost every action you take" The current Polymer version of Youtube.com does not reload the page. It's a very heavy JS single-page-application. It's faster than Gmail but still slow.
- kinkrtyavimoodh 7y agoApart from the excellent reasons other people have given, it's important to realize that there is no entity that is optimizing all of these disparate pieces of software with some common utility function. Chrome and GMail are completely different products with very very different priorities. Just because they are owned by Google means nothing for this particular comparison.
- asdff 7y agoironically the 'slow browser' html version is faster, cleaner, easier on the eyes, and does all the same tricks as the in vogue ui version.