3 ms·

There's some interesting lessons in the article, one being that following metrics blindly will lead you down the wrong path. You have to know why the numbers ar

by ehnto 4y ago

There's some interesting lessons in the article, one being that following metrics blindly will lead you down the wrong path. You have to know why the numbers are the way they are, not just what they are. The second lesson I guess, is that inside an evolving product, this is a constant battle against entropy. The YouTube homepage is once again 15mb/90 requests, and that's with an ad-blocker.

chrismorgan 4y ago
> The YouTube homepage is once again 15mb/90 requests You look to be measuring the wrong thing there: 15MB is the uncompressed size; the actual amount transferred is only 3MB. (The two biggest JavaScript files are about 10.5MB, but 2MB on the wire.) And it’s the transfer size that the article is talking about. (Now the uncompressed size does matter too, especially for JavaScript where that code has to all be parsed and executed, and 10MB will block for multiple seconds on particularly slow mobile devices, but that’s about CPUs, whereas the article is focusing on networks.)
- cout 4y ago
  I wonder how much of that 3MB came from the Google+ integration (the post was 2012 and three years prior would be 2009; G+ was 2011). I also wonder how much of that 3MB affects time-to-video-play vs being loaded after the video starts.
  - dspillett 4y ago
    > vs being loaded after the video starts. On a slow or bitty connection that could still impact the video playback, perhaps even causing a stutter or few, due to competing with it for a share of the throughput possible, if only for a short time, so I think it is still valid to consider as potentially blocking content.
cout 4y ago
The one thing that makes me scratch my head is that the page generally loads quickly, but videos load and play slowly. Rewinding a video to a point that I've already played causes the spinner to show up for what feels like a eternity -- at that point I often just decide the video is not worth watching and try to find what I'm looking for elsewhere. So a website that is supposed to be for playing videos has optimized the page loading pretty well, gotten the video player showing as quickly as possible, then after all that the experience of playing the video is depressing. Without knowing details, it feels like a case where the devs have optimized for the wrong things.
- mattmcknight 4y ago
  Video playback is very fast for me. However, there used to be an issue where my ISP was giving lower priority for YouTube videos and I had to route around it. https://www.google.com/get/videoqualityreport/ https://www.google.com/get/videoqualityreport/
- zelphirkalt 4y ago
  Standard YouTube behavior: Whatever you do, except for one linear playback ... "I need to buffer that again!". One of the worst video player experiences. The default HTML5 player is better than that, and by a landslide. That's one of the reasons to use invidious instances.
- lukevp 4y ago
  Seeking anywhere in a video on YouTube is instantaneous for me. 1 gig symmetrical fiber in Portland, OR. You should look into network tools and see what’s causing the slowdown, because I doubt it’s on YouTube’s side.
monkpit 4y ago
> The YouTube homepage is once again 15mb/90 requests, and that's with an ad-blocker. The article is about the Feather frontend, which was never the same as the normal YouTube frontend. So, it’s not really a fair comparison. Also, Feather was introduced in 2009 and they axed it after some years.
andrepd 4y ago
https://invidio.us https://invidio.us

by ehnto 4y ago

chrismorgan 4y ago

> The YouTube homepage is once again 15mb/90 requests You look to be measuring the wrong thing there: 15MB is the uncompressed size; the actual amount transferred is only 3MB. (The two biggest JavaScript files are about 10.5MB, but 2MB on the wire.) And it’s the transfer size that the article is talking about. (Now the uncompressed size does matter too, especially for JavaScript where that code has to all be parsed and executed, and 10MB will block for multiple seconds on particularly slow mobile devices, but that’s about CPUs, whereas the article is focusing on networks.)

cout 4y ago
I wonder how much of that 3MB came from the Google+ integration (the post was 2012 and three years prior would be 2009; G+ was 2011). I also wonder how much of that 3MB affects time-to-video-play vs being loaded after the video starts.
- dspillett 4y ago
  > vs being loaded after the video starts. On a slow or bitty connection that could still impact the video playback, perhaps even causing a stutter or few, due to competing with it for a share of the throughput possible, if only for a short time, so I think it is still valid to consider as potentially blocking content.

cout 4y ago

The one thing that makes me scratch my head is that the page generally loads quickly, but videos load and play slowly. Rewinding a video to a point that I've already played causes the spinner to show up for what feels like a eternity -- at that point I often just decide the video is not worth watching and try to find what I'm looking for elsewhere. So a website that is supposed to be for playing videos has optimized the page loading pretty well, gotten the video player showing as quickly as possible, then after all that the experience of playing the video is depressing. Without knowing details, it feels like a case where the devs have optimized for the wrong things.

mattmcknight 4y ago
Video playback is very fast for me. However, there used to be an issue where my ISP was giving lower priority for YouTube videos and I had to route around it. https://www.google.com/get/videoqualityreport/ https://www.google.com/get/videoqualityreport/
zelphirkalt 4y ago
Standard YouTube behavior: Whatever you do, except for one linear playback ... "I need to buffer that again!". One of the worst video player experiences. The default HTML5 player is better than that, and by a landslide. That's one of the reasons to use invidious instances.
lukevp 4y ago
Seeking anywhere in a video on YouTube is instantaneous for me. 1 gig symmetrical fiber in Portland, OR. You should look into network tools and see what’s causing the slowdown, because I doubt it’s on YouTube’s side.

monkpit 4y ago

> The YouTube homepage is once again 15mb/90 requests, and that's with an ad-blocker. The article is about the Feather frontend, which was never the same as the normal YouTube frontend. So, it’s not really a fair comparison. Also, Feather was introduced in 2009 and they axed it after some years.

andrepd 4y ago

https://invidio.us https://invidio.us