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I blame the modern web for this. Google a question you have, especially something with mass appeal, (health, fitness, media, culture, travel, etc.) and click a

I blame the modern web for this. Google a question you have, especially something with mass appeal, (health, fitness, media, culture, travel, etc.) and click any of the top links. It will load slowly, 1000s of tracking scripts, there will be popups, scrolling might break, you will be redirected, more popups, half the screen covered by an ad, the site breaks, etc... In fact I just recorded myself doing this. Watch as I struggle to read the page, I end up not even able to scroll down: https://imgur.com/gallery/5fdBdcL https://imgur.com/gallery/5fdBdcL

boogies 6y ago
I blame Google for the modern web. Tracking scripts, ads, etc.
- jtsiskin 6y ago
  Yes. Google has created this monster of SEO optimized spam desperate to show you ads. If they changed their algorithm to prioritize sites with minimal ads and tracking, load quickly and aren’t bloated, and actually work with a good user experience, incentives would change. I guess that is what they are trying to do with AMP. But you would think they could do it by just changing their ranking algorithm.
  - hnick 6y ago
    Maybe we'll get there one day. If SEO-bot were as smart as a decently intelligent human, it'd take all that into account. I'm not holding my breath.
dorgo 6y ago
I also blame browsers. Create an empty .html file and open it in firefox. Load time 370 ms (according to an addon). It's a local empty file. How can firefox spend 234 ms on DOM processing? Chrome seems to be better here. Edit: window.performance.timing.domContentLoadedEventEnd - window.performance.timing.navigationStart Firefox: 411 Chrome: 70 => better, but still 70ms for what?
- JoshuaDavid 6y ago
  I get 66ms on Firefox, with the following breakdown: navigationStart: 0 fetchStart: 0 domainLookupStart: 35 domainLookupEnd: 35 connectStart: 35 connectEnd: 35 requestStart: 36 responseStart: 36 responseEnd: 36 unloadEventStart: 49 unloadEventEnd: 49 domLoading: 49 domInteractive: 63 domContentLoadedEventStart: 64 domContentLoadedEventEnd: 65 domComplete: 66 loadEventStart: 66 loadEventEnd: 66 So it looks like the bulk of the time is actually whatever happens between fetchStart and domainLookupStart, and between responseEnd and unloadEventStart. The actual time from domLoading to domComplete is only 17ms, which is about 1 frame on a 60hz monitor. Note: refreshing the page with the javascript console open takes ~200ms on my machine, and certain extensions can make it even slower than that.
- stan_rogers 6y ago
  There is no "empty .html file" in the browser. It's not just a text file, it's a document tree; there are compulsory nodes that need to be created even if you didn't explicitly write them in your file. <html>, <head> (which must contain <title>) and <body> need to exist - and since you didn't create them, the browser must, after it's failed to parse what you were supposed to have included.

boogies 6y ago

I blame Google for the modern web. Tracking scripts, ads, etc.

jtsiskin 6y ago
Yes. Google has created this monster of SEO optimized spam desperate to show you ads. If they changed their algorithm to prioritize sites with minimal ads and tracking, load quickly and aren’t bloated, and actually work with a good user experience, incentives would change. I guess that is what they are trying to do with AMP. But you would think they could do it by just changing their ranking algorithm.
- hnick 6y ago
  Maybe we'll get there one day. If SEO-bot were as smart as a decently intelligent human, it'd take all that into account. I'm not holding my breath.

dorgo 6y ago

I also blame browsers. Create an empty .html file and open it in firefox. Load time 370 ms (according to an addon). It's a local empty file. How can firefox spend 234 ms on DOM processing? Chrome seems to be better here. Edit: window.performance.timing.domContentLoadedEventEnd - window.performance.timing.navigationStart Firefox: 411 Chrome: 70 => better, but still 70ms for what?

JoshuaDavid 6y ago
I get 66ms on Firefox, with the following breakdown: navigationStart: 0 fetchStart: 0 domainLookupStart: 35 domainLookupEnd: 35 connectStart: 35 connectEnd: 35 requestStart: 36 responseStart: 36 responseEnd: 36 unloadEventStart: 49 unloadEventEnd: 49 domLoading: 49 domInteractive: 63 domContentLoadedEventStart: 64 domContentLoadedEventEnd: 65 domComplete: 66 loadEventStart: 66 loadEventEnd: 66 So it looks like the bulk of the time is actually whatever happens between fetchStart and domainLookupStart, and between responseEnd and unloadEventStart. The actual time from domLoading to domComplete is only 17ms, which is about 1 frame on a 60hz monitor. Note: refreshing the page with the javascript console open takes ~200ms on my machine, and certain extensions can make it even slower than that.
stan_rogers 6y ago
There is no "empty .html file" in the browser. It's not just a text file, it's a document tree; there are compulsory nodes that need to be created even if you didn't explicitly write them in your file. <html>, <head> (which must contain <title>) and <body> need to exist - and since you didn't create them, the browser must, after it's failed to parse what you were supposed to have included.