4 ms·

Seriously, is html performance a real issue? Mobile traffic keeps growiong and growing and growing, according to google, who now crawls most sites mobile-first!

Seriously, is html performance a real issue? Mobile traffic keeps growiong and growing and growing, according to google, who now crawls most sites mobile-first! Phones have 4 cores and download 300-MB games daily. There is absolutely no need for this abomination. If it cared, google could threaten to derank slow sites for slow phones and the average website size would be slashed to half in a week! > AMP gives little guys, the ones starting blogs and trying to grow, a shot at freedom of speech. woosh, i now realize u re joking

timw4mail 7y ago
HTML no, Javascript yes. Javascript for front-end frameworks, and especially for tracking.
izacus 7y ago
Yes, it was a huge issue and many websites were unusable on anything but an expensive iPhone for a long time. Especially a few years back. While this might not be a problem with most Apple-toting frontend engineers, most people of the world can't afford to constantly pay for very expensive phones just to browse the web. And until AMP there just wasn't a way to make anyone care it seems. Even here on HN. Just to be clear: I dislike AMP. But I dislike the crap attitude towards users the web developers have shown time and time again more.
- buboard 7y ago
  > just to browse the web. I must be crazy because i never had a catastrophic issue with an iphone 8 - with an adblocker. If ads are the problem, well guess who is serving those ads. AMP doesn't even scale anyway - it will bloat like HTML pages bloat over time, because web ppl have a bad habit of only adding things to sites, not removing. What happens then? We invent Amp-html2 to fix amp? AMP is a very-ill-thought bandaid to a culture problem that can be solved with simple nudges (have people forgotten what seismic changes happen to the web every time google rolls out a new SEO algorithm?). Amp s probably the silliest tech idea of the decade.
  - johnward 7y ago
    It's funny. Google is thinking of marking slow loading sites. I analyze my sites with their own page speed tool the biggest blocker is Google/DoubleClick ads. I'm probably going to completely remove AdSense (auto ads are terrible) but can't they optimize their own code?
  - izacus 7y ago
    Yes, of course you didn't have an issue with a new Apple device, that's exactly my point. Did you try browsing the non-AMP web on something like Nexus 4? Motorola Moto E? Oppo and Xiaomi lowend units from 2015?
    - johnward 7y ago
      I don't recall ever noting any issues with my Nexus 4. In my opinion, this is a better options: https://techcrunch.com/2019/11/11/google-chrome-to-identify-and-label-slow-websites/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/11/11/google-chrome-to-identify-...
    - buboard 7y ago
      there are so many better ways that google could solve this issue other than amp (derank sites for slow devices / mark them as slow / pass a parameter for slow-phone visitors / create a chrome version for slow devices). AMP is a dictatorial attempt to keep websites forever bound and limited to what google is offering.
      - izacus 7y ago
        Yes, Google did whatever maximally benefits Google. They're a corporation and behave as such. Just like Apple won't de-DRM their cable protocols just because it's "right". The question is - what can the web community do to make AMP redundant outside of complaint posts.
        buboard 7y ago
        > to make AMP redundant outside First, AMP is already redundant. it doesnt offer anything that stripped-down html can't do. The primary reason sites choose it is because google ranks the pages higher! it's purely coercive. Second , it's not as if AMP has taken over the web. But this coercion has to stop. Third, it's real easy to make a faster website with 10 minutes of work. I 'm not sure we need some kind of activism to stop amp i do believe it will crash on its own as soon as most sites look exactly alike and start losing revenues. But until then ... maybe ban AMP links?

timw4mail 7y ago

HTML no, Javascript yes. Javascript for front-end frameworks, and especially for tracking.

izacus 7y ago

Yes, it was a huge issue and many websites were unusable on anything but an expensive iPhone for a long time. Especially a few years back. While this might not be a problem with most Apple-toting frontend engineers, most people of the world can't afford to constantly pay for very expensive phones just to browse the web. And until AMP there just wasn't a way to make anyone care it seems. Even here on HN. Just to be clear: I dislike AMP. But I dislike the crap attitude towards users the web developers have shown time and time again more.

buboard 7y ago
> just to browse the web. I must be crazy because i never had a catastrophic issue with an iphone 8 - with an adblocker. If ads are the problem, well guess who is serving those ads. AMP doesn't even scale anyway - it will bloat like HTML pages bloat over time, because web ppl have a bad habit of only adding things to sites, not removing. What happens then? We invent Amp-html2 to fix amp? AMP is a very-ill-thought bandaid to a culture problem that can be solved with simple nudges (have people forgotten what seismic changes happen to the web every time google rolls out a new SEO algorithm?). Amp s probably the silliest tech idea of the decade.
- johnward 7y ago
  It's funny. Google is thinking of marking slow loading sites. I analyze my sites with their own page speed tool the biggest blocker is Google/DoubleClick ads. I'm probably going to completely remove AdSense (auto ads are terrible) but can't they optimize their own code?
- izacus 7y ago
  Yes, of course you didn't have an issue with a new Apple device, that's exactly my point. Did you try browsing the non-AMP web on something like Nexus 4? Motorola Moto E? Oppo and Xiaomi lowend units from 2015?
  - johnward 7y ago
    I don't recall ever noting any issues with my Nexus 4. In my opinion, this is a better options: https://techcrunch.com/2019/11/11/google-chrome-to-identify-and-label-slow-websites/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/11/11/google-chrome-to-identify-...
  - buboard 7y ago
    there are so many better ways that google could solve this issue other than amp (derank sites for slow devices / mark them as slow / pass a parameter for slow-phone visitors / create a chrome version for slow devices). AMP is a dictatorial attempt to keep websites forever bound and limited to what google is offering.
    - izacus 7y ago
      Yes, Google did whatever maximally benefits Google. They're a corporation and behave as such. Just like Apple won't de-DRM their cable protocols just because it's "right". The question is - what can the web community do to make AMP redundant outside of complaint posts.
      - buboard 7y ago
        > to make AMP redundant outside First, AMP is already redundant. it doesnt offer anything that stripped-down html can't do. The primary reason sites choose it is because google ranks the pages higher! it's purely coercive. Second , it's not as if AMP has taken over the web. But this coercion has to stop. Third, it's real easy to make a faster website with 10 minutes of work. I 'm not sure we need some kind of activism to stop amp i do believe it will crash on its own as soon as most sites look exactly alike and start losing revenues. But until then ... maybe ban AMP links?