4 ms·

I agree with the premise here, but we literally added ~100px to the width of our really small thumbnail images that were hard to see with most modern screen res

by vlucas 5y ago

I agree with the premise here, but we literally added ~100px to the width of our really small thumbnail images that were hard to see with most modern screen resolutions. People come to the website to view property photos. They were literally smaller than a 256x256 map tile. The size of them should have been increased long ago.

vanderZwan 5y ago
Well, I'm glad that worked out in your case, but that's just getting lucky, no? Sounds like in most other scenarios it would backfire.
- dylan604 5y ago
  That's not the take I got from reading the write up. There was logic in the decision to increase the size that was not difficult to understand. I'm not familiar with what Lighthouse is/does/why/etc, but they described the situation enough for this to make total sense on why it worked. Maybe they are lucky to have people working for them that can work the problem?? That's me stretching to accept lucky in the least as the reasoning.
  - mediumdeviation 5y ago
    It only worked because Google Maps loads images in 250px tiles. If Google Maps decided to update tile size tomorrow, the fix regresses. Arguably the entire map as a whole is one content, and that should be measured as the LCP, but more importantly it shows the measure is just very brittle and easily gamed, as other comments in this thread already attest to.
    - dylan604 5y ago
      Does setting the size inline with width="250" in the embed affect the LCP even if G decides to default to 512px? I'm actually surprised there's not a ?width=250 value in the G embed url
  - Aeolun 5y ago
    > There was logic in the decision to increase the size that was not difficult to understand. I agree, but the logic doesn’t make sense if your goal is ‘optimizing the user experience’ as opposed to ‘optimizing our lighthouse score’.
  - vanderZwan 5y ago
    Apologies, I wasn't specific enough in expressing what I meant. You understood it to mean "they didn't know what they were doing and got lucky", which is a valid interpretation but not what I was going for. They definitely do know what they're doing. What I meant was more along the lines of "the metric to optimize for was no longer strongly correlated to the original goal of improving the user experience. They were lucky that in this scenario optimizing for the metric aligned with an improved user experience."
    - dylan604 5y ago
      Now here's me doing some back bending playing devil's advocate. If the image being optimized for UX resulted in the wacky scoring situation that lowered their ranking in search, would that also not be considered a bad UX if it's harder for users to find you? The team noticed the lower rankings, then investigated. They then realized why the ranking was lower due to the bad LCP. The investigation found that their image optimization was causing the bad LCP, so a quick change on that fixed the bad LCP. So it's not like they were chasing a metric for metric's sake. They did the correct optimization first. So again, I think calling it lucky is a bit harsh in this case. However, I totaly get where you are coming from and know that a lot of places will luck there way into things without ever knowing the why.
      - vanderZwan 5y ago
        > If the image being optimized for UX resulted in the wacky scoring situation that lowered their ranking in search, would that also not be considered a bad UX if it's harder for users to find you? If you insist, but even then that is fixing the symptom instead of the cause.
        dylan604 5y ago
        Don't hate the player, hate the game? These people obviously tried to keep their UI/UX in mind by originally using the optimized image. That wound up screwing them in a way not normally thought about in UX optimizations. They published their findings so that others that don't normally think in this manner can be aware of their findings. They are the player. The game is the bullshit G does, and all of the other vendors that latch onto the bullshit G does that provide hoops for devs to jump through. That's the game. Who's really needing the ire of internet readers?

by vlucas 5y ago

vanderZwan 5y ago

Well, I'm glad that worked out in your case, but that's just getting lucky, no? Sounds like in most other scenarios it would backfire.

dylan604 5y ago
That's not the take I got from reading the write up. There was logic in the decision to increase the size that was not difficult to understand. I'm not familiar with what Lighthouse is/does/why/etc, but they described the situation enough for this to make total sense on why it worked. Maybe they are lucky to have people working for them that can work the problem?? That's me stretching to accept lucky in the least as the reasoning.
- mediumdeviation 5y ago
  It only worked because Google Maps loads images in 250px tiles. If Google Maps decided to update tile size tomorrow, the fix regresses. Arguably the entire map as a whole is one content, and that should be measured as the LCP, but more importantly it shows the measure is just very brittle and easily gamed, as other comments in this thread already attest to.
  - dylan604 5y ago
    Does setting the size inline with width="250" in the embed affect the LCP even if G decides to default to 512px? I'm actually surprised there's not a ?width=250 value in the G embed url
- Aeolun 5y ago
  > There was logic in the decision to increase the size that was not difficult to understand. I agree, but the logic doesn’t make sense if your goal is ‘optimizing the user experience’ as opposed to ‘optimizing our lighthouse score’.
- vanderZwan 5y ago
  Apologies, I wasn't specific enough in expressing what I meant. You understood it to mean "they didn't know what they were doing and got lucky", which is a valid interpretation but not what I was going for. They definitely do know what they're doing. What I meant was more along the lines of "the metric to optimize for was no longer strongly correlated to the original goal of improving the user experience. They were lucky that in this scenario optimizing for the metric aligned with an improved user experience."
  - dylan604 5y ago
    Now here's me doing some back bending playing devil's advocate. If the image being optimized for UX resulted in the wacky scoring situation that lowered their ranking in search, would that also not be considered a bad UX if it's harder for users to find you? The team noticed the lower rankings, then investigated. They then realized why the ranking was lower due to the bad LCP. The investigation found that their image optimization was causing the bad LCP, so a quick change on that fixed the bad LCP. So it's not like they were chasing a metric for metric's sake. They did the correct optimization first. So again, I think calling it lucky is a bit harsh in this case. However, I totaly get where you are coming from and know that a lot of places will luck there way into things without ever knowing the why.
    - vanderZwan 5y ago
      > If the image being optimized for UX resulted in the wacky scoring situation that lowered their ranking in search, would that also not be considered a bad UX if it's harder for users to find you? If you insist, but even then that is fixing the symptom instead of the cause.
      - dylan604 5y ago
        Don't hate the player, hate the game? These people obviously tried to keep their UI/UX in mind by originally using the optimized image. That wound up screwing them in a way not normally thought about in UX optimizations. They published their findings so that others that don't normally think in this manner can be aware of their findings. They are the player. The game is the bullshit G does, and all of the other vendors that latch onto the bullshit G does that provide hoops for devs to jump through. That's the game. Who's really needing the ire of internet readers?