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This article focuses on what it's like for web developers and for the web ecosystem, which are both important issues. But AMP is also really annoying for end us
by adrianmonk 7y ago
This article focuses on what it's like for web developers and for the web ecosystem, which are both important issues. But AMP is also really annoying for end users.
As an end user, AMP gets in my way and complicates my experience. There's extra work to figure out what's going on. This page is from whatever site but "delivered by Google". As an end user, my reaction is basically: what the hell does that mean, why is it here wasting my time and cluttering up my screen, and when can Google cut it out?
Then sometimes I go to share a link with a friend over Slack or whatever, I hit the share button, and the URL comes out all fucked up. I know they're going to look at the URL to figure out what it's about (because in the real world, people do look at URLs), so I feel compelled to fix it, so I have to back up out of there, then dig around in the UI to figure out how to get a real URL. Maybe "open in chrome" will do it, or maybe I need to flip through the page itself to find where it gives a link to itself. I can never remember what works, and I don't want to have to.
I know AMP pages are supposed to load faster, and they probably do a little, but I would gladly trade that for simplicity.
Also, I would turn it off if they would give me the option, which wouldn't be hard but they don't, which tells me they don't want people turning it off.
- IshKebab 7y agoYeah but on the plus side, it loads in a second, isn't sluggish to use, and isn't full of annoying fixed elements. Most non-AMP news websites which take many seconds to load and are really slow and annoying when loaded. I get all the arguments against AMP, but "annoying for users" surely isn't one of them.
- saagarjha 7y ago> isn't full of annoying fixed elements But it is: there's the AMP chrome around the website.
- chungus_khan 7y agoMost websites I've personally encountered that use AMP don't actually deliver a usable amount of content/features on the AMP version of the page, and so it usually ends up in an awful user experience where I then have to get the real version of the page before I can do anything.
- adrianmonk 7y agoIf I understand AMP correctly, there are 3 alternatives to compare: (1) Google doesn't intervene at all, web sites are full of bloat (2) Google requires mobile sites to not suck if they want decent rankings (3) Google requires mobile sites to not suck and also delivers the bits instead of the site's servers. I agree that #1 is not a good state of affairs. I'm fine with Google pressuring mobile developers to create sites that perform well. I just prefer #2 over #3.
- BlueTemplar 7y ago(4) your remove bloat from websites yourself by disabling JavaScript.
- JohnFen 7y ago> I get all the arguments against AMP, but "annoying for users" surely isn't one of them. Sure it is. It's certainly not annoying for all users, but it is annoying for some, including myself.
- mcv 7y agoIf as a user you don't want AMP, just don't use Chrome and Google Search. But for a website to miss out on the traffic from Google Search is a really steep price. We need everybody to switch to a different search engine.