4 ms·

The Guardian website, whilst not perfect according to the standards of the article and some other posts, is very performant. They have ads and other dynamic con

The Guardian website, whilst not perfect according to the standards of the article and some other posts, is very performant. They have ads and other dynamic content, but load is deferred on this stuff and wrapped properly to avoid reflow, so the entirety of the article text is immediately readable. Just for interest, see also their tech blog [0] and their entire frontend on GitHub [1]. I can ignore ads, but what I find incredible on major (insert news/tech/whatever here) sites is the reflow from not properly reserving space for both ads and lazyloaded images. The following seems particularly to be a problem on mobile and in apps like Apple News: load a page, scroll to the meat of the article, then experience 1, 2, 3 page jumps as stuff loads in above your scroll position. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/info/series/digital-blog https://www.theguardian.com/info/series/digital-blog [1] https://github.com/guardian/frontend https://github.com/guardian/frontend

aembleton 7y ago
I often find switching off Javascript helps with the reflow issues.
- awinter-py 7y ago
  can't agree more with both of these comments -- JS has zero user value for news sites, only contributes to annoying. and reflow on most news sites is intolerable -- it's like FOUC in the old days (flash of unstyled content), but way worse because of all the different ways assets get loaded and laid out.
jspash 7y ago
I've been to talks by Guardian devs (on more than one occasion) where they talk about the techniques they use to make the site as performant as it is. From critical path css to font fallbacks etc. Variants of this talk over the years: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfweWyVScaI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfweWyVScaI I applaud their efforts, but am continually underwhelmed by the final result. Without an adblocker the website is simply too slow, jumpy and exhibits strange behaviours that I'm not sure the problem can be solved - as long as advertising pays (most of) the bills.

aembleton 7y ago

I often find switching off Javascript helps with the reflow issues.

awinter-py 7y ago
can't agree more with both of these comments -- JS has zero user value for news sites, only contributes to annoying. and reflow on most news sites is intolerable -- it's like FOUC in the old days (flash of unstyled content), but way worse because of all the different ways assets get loaded and laid out.

jspash 7y ago

I've been to talks by Guardian devs (on more than one occasion) where they talk about the techniques they use to make the site as performant as it is. From critical path css to font fallbacks etc. Variants of this talk over the years: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfweWyVScaI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfweWyVScaI I applaud their efforts, but am continually underwhelmed by the final result. Without an adblocker the website is simply too slow, jumpy and exhibits strange behaviours that I'm not sure the problem can be solved - as long as advertising pays (most of) the bills.