4 ms·

> With the new web versions you can get instant access to your chats on any device – desktop or mobile. These apps are incredibly efficient, requiring only a 40

by est 6y ago

> With the new web versions you can get instant access to your chats on any device – desktop or mobile. These apps are incredibly efficient, requiring only a 400 KB download (that's like two photos of a medium-sized cat) and no installation. webz.telegram.org and webk.telegram.org look amazing. That's web apps done right. Small .js files intead of 20MB main.min.js crap.

WA9ACE 6y ago
webk transferred 627 Kb, and is fully functional. Slack, Discord, Teams, and friends could all stand to trim their web application's bloat a bit and take a lesson from this.
- holler 6y ago
  I'm working on a new realtime discussion site https://sqwok.im https://sqwok.im and one of my goals is to keep it as lean/fast as possible, both as a competitive angle & because I find it interesting. So far I get ~445kb transferred, but I have plans to lower it even further with a combination of caching and other strategies.
  - aquadrop 6y ago
    What would be competitive angle? What percentage of users do you think would care if your app transfers not 445kb but 345kb (sincere question)? I just always was skeptical about "reducing sizes" just for its own sake, and not in the frame of improving performance or noticeably reducing latency for the user (which could be related to the size or not). Can't argue with the interesting part :)
    - holler 6y ago
      Good question, and of course the difference between 445kb & 345kb may not be noticeable, but it would be if you compared it against 1/2/10mb etc. The competitive angle is really delivering a fast/snappy/responsive experience on mobile or desktop. That in itself isn't going to save you, but it is an advantage if part of the sell is a high quality experience. Re:interesting, for instance I just started experimenting with inlining all css/js into index.html (so far the js part is problematic), minifying classnames, and I'm curious if it'd be possible to even minify js module names etc.
perryizgr8 6y ago
I don't understand why there are 2 slightly different websites. Both are good, just with minor changes to the fonts and spacing.
- WA9ACE 6y ago
  From what I can tell so far webz appears to be using significant amount of wasm.
- fullstop 6y ago
  Telegram devs compete internally.
- tenacious_tuna 6y ago
  They did this a while back with their Android (and iOS?) apps--they had the core Telegram app, and Telegram X. Both had 90% overlapping features, but some subtle differences. It's long enough ago that it's a bit fuzzy in my head, but I think X had slightly better reply gestures, and maybe chat pinning. Later I think they absorbed the X features into the core app. I can't decide if I think it's an awesome strategy to launch a self-competing project, or if it just leads to terrible internal issues. I'm leaning more towards the former--I'm a huge believer in the instructive power of contrast, and it's a lot "safer" to contrast against another one of your own products than a competitor. You control much more of the "experiment", and you don't run the risk of cannibalizing your own users. Plus, from an engineering standpoint, it forces you to have portable technologies and configs, and probably gives your team opportunities to learn from greenfield stuff that can then encourage refactors or other paying-down-tech-debt activities. It's also just dang impressive that they're able to spin up multiple versions of the same app, and deploy them, and maintain them. That speaks volumes to me about their internal systems, build systems, resource allocation, etc.
  - solarkraft 6y ago
    OTOH as far as I remember much of Nokia's issues came from internal competition involving sabotage of other teams. Not that that has to happen, but the incentives are a tiny bit dangerous.
deleted 6y ago
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by est 6y ago

WA9ACE 6y ago

webk transferred 627 Kb, and is fully functional. Slack, Discord, Teams, and friends could all stand to trim their web application's bloat a bit and take a lesson from this.

holler 6y ago
I'm working on a new realtime discussion site https://sqwok.im https://sqwok.im and one of my goals is to keep it as lean/fast as possible, both as a competitive angle & because I find it interesting. So far I get ~445kb transferred, but I have plans to lower it even further with a combination of caching and other strategies.
- aquadrop 6y ago
  What would be competitive angle? What percentage of users do you think would care if your app transfers not 445kb but 345kb (sincere question)? I just always was skeptical about "reducing sizes" just for its own sake, and not in the frame of improving performance or noticeably reducing latency for the user (which could be related to the size or not). Can't argue with the interesting part :)
  - holler 6y ago
    Good question, and of course the difference between 445kb & 345kb may not be noticeable, but it would be if you compared it against 1/2/10mb etc. The competitive angle is really delivering a fast/snappy/responsive experience on mobile or desktop. That in itself isn't going to save you, but it is an advantage if part of the sell is a high quality experience. Re:interesting, for instance I just started experimenting with inlining all css/js into index.html (so far the js part is problematic), minifying classnames, and I'm curious if it'd be possible to even minify js module names etc.

perryizgr8 6y ago

I don't understand why there are 2 slightly different websites. Both are good, just with minor changes to the fonts and spacing.

WA9ACE 6y ago
From what I can tell so far webz appears to be using significant amount of wasm.
fullstop 6y ago
Telegram devs compete internally.
tenacious_tuna 6y ago
They did this a while back with their Android (and iOS?) apps--they had the core Telegram app, and Telegram X. Both had 90% overlapping features, but some subtle differences. It's long enough ago that it's a bit fuzzy in my head, but I think X had slightly better reply gestures, and maybe chat pinning. Later I think they absorbed the X features into the core app. I can't decide if I think it's an awesome strategy to launch a self-competing project, or if it just leads to terrible internal issues. I'm leaning more towards the former--I'm a huge believer in the instructive power of contrast, and it's a lot "safer" to contrast against another one of your own products than a competitor. You control much more of the "experiment", and you don't run the risk of cannibalizing your own users. Plus, from an engineering standpoint, it forces you to have portable technologies and configs, and probably gives your team opportunities to learn from greenfield stuff that can then encourage refactors or other paying-down-tech-debt activities. It's also just dang impressive that they're able to spin up multiple versions of the same app, and deploy them, and maintain them. That speaks volumes to me about their internal systems, build systems, resource allocation, etc.
- solarkraft 6y ago
  OTOH as far as I remember much of Nokia's issues came from internal competition involving sabotage of other teams. Not that that has to happen, but the incentives are a tiny bit dangerous.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]