4 ms·

It seems the trend points to slower and slower websites with more JS bloat. I also notice a increase in JS-errors causing entire sites to malfunction, recently

It seems the trend points to slower and slower websites with more JS bloat. I also notice a increase in JS-errors causing entire sites to malfunction, recently this happened to large apps like Teams and Float

camccar 7y ago
New reddit is painfully slow to login. So much javascript for a simple dialog to load it's absurd.
- qznc 7y ago
  As long as old and compact reddit are still there, I'm fine with it. Twitter on other hand has no lightweight version, unfortunately.
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    I think I recall someone mentioning there is one that you get if you send an empty User-Agent.
    - csande17 7y ago
      If JavaScript is disabled in your browser and you visit mobile.twitter.com, you get a link to proceed to "legacy Twitter", which is their pre-React mobile site.
  - benbristow 7y ago
    Twitter's redesign is one of the most performant SPA's I've seen in a while. It's really smooth and nicely designed too. A lot better than their previous webapp.
    - readarticle 7y ago
      Do you know any others? Every time I’m redirected to twitter on mobile I’m in awe, it’s genuinely the only SPA I’ve ever experienced work “properly” on my phone comparable to a native app without any polish.
    - zuzun 7y ago
      When I open a Tweet I look at spinner animations for 10 seconds. Scrolling is also the opposite of smooth.
      - benbristow 7y ago
        Scrolling is silky smooth for me and spinners go away quickly. What hardware are you running?
        zuzun 7y ago
        For their infinite scrolling, they clean the DOM above and below the viewport and only keep a certain amount of tweets rendered. So once you start scrolling a little faster, the JavaScript can't keep pace and starts sputtering.
- eyegor 7y ago
  Are you aware of https://old.reddit.com https://old.reddit.com (old desktop ui), or https://i.reddit.com https://i.reddit.com (old mobile ui)? Also https://www.reddit.com/.compact https://www.reddit.com/.compact
onion2k 7y ago
The trend in my work is to add more and more JS to get the render time below 11ms per frame (11ms for my code, plus 5ms for the browser to paint and update, for a solid 60fps). To do that takes a lot of data structure design, memoization, cache management, plus a decent understanding of how browsers put things in the DOM and on the screen. Admittedly I work on something that's a bit unusual (a diagram tool for lawyers.. kind of like Visio-in-a-browser), but I can assure you that if you want robust, fast rendering it takes a lot of code to do it well. It is not bloat.
- RockIslandLine 7y ago
  Why would you ever build that kind of application using web technologies?
  - mschuster91 7y ago
    Simple: every machine has already installed the gateway to your program: a web browser. No need to deal with issues like antivirus going bonkers, weird MSVCRT versions installed leading to support requests, you save a ton of money when you need to support OS X or god forbid Linux, and last but not least, an SaaS business model has recurring revenues while it doesn't have to deal with rampant piracy at the same time.
    - markmark 7y ago
      There's a weird subset of HN that think people should still be building desktop apps. It's like they haven't paid any attention to the software market for the last 10 years.
      - mschuster91 7y ago
        I for one would love the return of the good old days, where I could pay once for $software, have it on a physical medium and could work with it as long as I managed to have a computer/VM that runs it. So much culture, especially in gaming, will be inevitably lost with the SaaS and streaming trend. For media like video, music and books at least many national library laws require the deposit of two or more copies at the national archives, but interactive media? Games that require online activation? That's all gonna be lost forever.
edflsafoiewq 7y ago
This is a minor inconvenience for things like reddit, but the trend has also arrived at the webportal for my bank ("upgraded" to some sort of React thing, meaning it now takes 10x longer to load) and my cell provider (site no longer works in Firefox as of last month; error message: "check that you're connected to the internet!").

camccar 7y ago

New reddit is painfully slow to login. So much javascript for a simple dialog to load it's absurd.

qznc 7y ago
As long as old and compact reddit are still there, I'm fine with it. Twitter on other hand has no lightweight version, unfortunately.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  I think I recall someone mentioning there is one that you get if you send an empty User-Agent.
  - csande17 7y ago
    If JavaScript is disabled in your browser and you visit mobile.twitter.com, you get a link to proceed to "legacy Twitter", which is their pre-React mobile site.
- benbristow 7y ago
  Twitter's redesign is one of the most performant SPA's I've seen in a while. It's really smooth and nicely designed too. A lot better than their previous webapp.
  - readarticle 7y ago
    Do you know any others? Every time I’m redirected to twitter on mobile I’m in awe, it’s genuinely the only SPA I’ve ever experienced work “properly” on my phone comparable to a native app without any polish.
  - zuzun 7y ago
    When I open a Tweet I look at spinner animations for 10 seconds. Scrolling is also the opposite of smooth.
    - benbristow 7y ago
      Scrolling is silky smooth for me and spinners go away quickly. What hardware are you running?
      - zuzun 7y ago
        For their infinite scrolling, they clean the DOM above and below the viewport and only keep a certain amount of tweets rendered. So once you start scrolling a little faster, the JavaScript can't keep pace and starts sputtering.
eyegor 7y ago
Are you aware of https://old.reddit.com https://old.reddit.com (old desktop ui), or https://i.reddit.com https://i.reddit.com (old mobile ui)? Also https://www.reddit.com/.compact https://www.reddit.com/.compact

onion2k 7y ago

The trend in my work is to add more and more JS to get the render time below 11ms per frame (11ms for my code, plus 5ms for the browser to paint and update, for a solid 60fps). To do that takes a lot of data structure design, memoization, cache management, plus a decent understanding of how browsers put things in the DOM and on the screen. Admittedly I work on something that's a bit unusual (a diagram tool for lawyers.. kind of like Visio-in-a-browser), but I can assure you that if you want robust, fast rendering it takes a lot of code to do it well. It is not bloat.

RockIslandLine 7y ago
Why would you ever build that kind of application using web technologies?
- mschuster91 7y ago
  Simple: every machine has already installed the gateway to your program: a web browser. No need to deal with issues like antivirus going bonkers, weird MSVCRT versions installed leading to support requests, you save a ton of money when you need to support OS X or god forbid Linux, and last but not least, an SaaS business model has recurring revenues while it doesn't have to deal with rampant piracy at the same time.
  - markmark 7y ago
    There's a weird subset of HN that think people should still be building desktop apps. It's like they haven't paid any attention to the software market for the last 10 years.
    - mschuster91 7y ago
      I for one would love the return of the good old days, where I could pay once for $software, have it on a physical medium and could work with it as long as I managed to have a computer/VM that runs it. So much culture, especially in gaming, will be inevitably lost with the SaaS and streaming trend. For media like video, music and books at least many national library laws require the deposit of two or more copies at the national archives, but interactive media? Games that require online activation? That's all gonna be lost forever.

edflsafoiewq 7y ago

This is a minor inconvenience for things like reddit, but the trend has also arrived at the webportal for my bank ("upgraded" to some sort of React thing, meaning it now takes 10x longer to load) and my cell provider (site no longer works in Firefox as of last month; error message: "check that you're connected to the internet!").