7 ms·

What strikes me most is how websites are visually getting more and more minimalistic and at the same time they're loading and working slower. For example The Ne

What strikes me most is how websites are visually getting more and more minimalistic and at the same time they're loading and working slower. For example The New York Times [1] layout is as simple as possible (basically text only with some images), but it loads 20 JS files, 13 CSS files, makes ~200 requests and uses ~14 MB of memory on load. [1] http://www.nytimes.com/ http://www.nytimes.com/

STRML 14y ago
It's hard to believe that a site with that kind of traffic & resources hasn't even bothered to concatenate and minify its JS & CSS. Most of the JS files still have comments. Bizarre. They should know better.
- jedahan 14y ago
  I like to think they are trying to preserve the spirit of being able to right click->view source and learn a thing or two. Geocities + view source did spark early interest for myself in coding. Maybe sourcemaps will help with that in the future.
  - joonix 14y ago
    Geocities view-sourcing. Thanks for taking me back.
  - robmcm 14y ago
    Perhaps adding a commented link in a minified file to a full version? Wouldn't be hard to automate.
    - ChrisLTD 14y ago
      I've added that to a site I'm about to launch. Seems like a good compromise.
  - networked 14y ago
    Source maps in JavaScript are a cool idea. More people should know about them [1][2]. [1] See, e.g., http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/developertools/sourcemaps/ http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/developertools/source... [2] ...or http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/tools-and-tips/source-maps-101/ http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/tools-and-tips/source-maps....
- walshemj 14y ago
  its old school publishers who often have very little idea what they are doing and have sclerotic development processes 9 week sprints! in one case. One site I worked on did not manage to sort out a redirect of its .net version of its domain and its over 2 Years since a flagged this as a high priority problem.
  - lchang 14y ago
    Yes, but the New York Times employs top-notch webdevs. See http://open.blogs.nytimes.com/ http://open.blogs.nytimes.com/ and http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2012/snow-fall/ http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2012/snow-fall/ So they have the skills, but maybe it's for other reasons they don't follow those practices.
    - pinwale 14y ago
      The New York Times built the current site in 2006. The Times just announced that they have are working on a new site design (and presumably completely new architecture) for the last year and should release it soon. source: http://www.nytimes.com/marketing/prototype/ http://www.nytimes.com/marketing/prototype/
    - walshemj 14y ago
      There is a world of difference between doing a cute vanity project that works for say 99% of the time but doesn't mean that they buckle down and do the hard work involved delivering a major publishers site. Another example Google has a lot of smart people but they cant parse a robots.txt file with a BOM in it.
meerita 14y ago
The NYT website is not something usual. That's a website made up for a newspaper, a giant newspaper, with dozen of business, info and other resources playing a role of importance in the frontpage. But I'm with you: the web even with HTML5 can be fatty, pretty fat, but I prefer this, than Flash one, forever.
- ygra 14y ago
  Newspapers had Flash websites?
  - meepmorp 14y ago
    For video and other multimedia content, sure. The NYT, at least, has a fair amount of such content.
anon1385 14y ago
A year ago the average total transfer was something like 937kB and now it's 1311kB, at least according to these stats: http://httparchive.org/trends.php#bytesTotal&reqTotal http://httparchive.org/trends.php#bytesTotal&reqTotal
g8oz 14y ago
NYT is best accessed with JS turned off. Also Ghostery FTW in general.
habosa 14y ago
Two HUNDRED requests? How is this acceptable for a website that's so frequently accessed via mobile. With latency ~30ms you're wasting 6s before you even download anything!
NuZZ 14y ago
My god. How underpaid were the web devs of this site? They must have gotten to the point where they could proclaim "It works now!", then thats when the funding must have been got cut off. It's that or, they are just bad. Meanwhile, the site looks bad. It's really, really not hard to use image sprites (not necessary here); merged JS and merged CSS.

STRML 14y ago

It's hard to believe that a site with that kind of traffic & resources hasn't even bothered to concatenate and minify its JS & CSS. Most of the JS files still have comments. Bizarre. They should know better.

jedahan 14y ago
I like to think they are trying to preserve the spirit of being able to right click->view source and learn a thing or two. Geocities + view source did spark early interest for myself in coding. Maybe sourcemaps will help with that in the future.
- joonix 14y ago
  Geocities view-sourcing. Thanks for taking me back.
- robmcm 14y ago
  Perhaps adding a commented link in a minified file to a full version? Wouldn't be hard to automate.
  - ChrisLTD 14y ago
    I've added that to a site I'm about to launch. Seems like a good compromise.
- networked 14y ago
  Source maps in JavaScript are a cool idea. More people should know about them [1][2]. [1] See, e.g., http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/developertools/sourcemaps/ http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/developertools/source... [2] ...or http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/tools-and-tips/source-maps-101/ http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/tools-and-tips/source-maps....
walshemj 14y ago
its old school publishers who often have very little idea what they are doing and have sclerotic development processes 9 week sprints! in one case. One site I worked on did not manage to sort out a redirect of its .net version of its domain and its over 2 Years since a flagged this as a high priority problem.
- lchang 14y ago
  Yes, but the New York Times employs top-notch webdevs. See http://open.blogs.nytimes.com/ http://open.blogs.nytimes.com/ and http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2012/snow-fall/ http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2012/snow-fall/ So they have the skills, but maybe it's for other reasons they don't follow those practices.
  - pinwale 14y ago
    The New York Times built the current site in 2006. The Times just announced that they have are working on a new site design (and presumably completely new architecture) for the last year and should release it soon. source: http://www.nytimes.com/marketing/prototype/ http://www.nytimes.com/marketing/prototype/
  - walshemj 14y ago
    There is a world of difference between doing a cute vanity project that works for say 99% of the time but doesn't mean that they buckle down and do the hard work involved delivering a major publishers site. Another example Google has a lot of smart people but they cant parse a robots.txt file with a BOM in it.

meerita 14y ago

The NYT website is not something usual. That's a website made up for a newspaper, a giant newspaper, with dozen of business, info and other resources playing a role of importance in the frontpage. But I'm with you: the web even with HTML5 can be fatty, pretty fat, but I prefer this, than Flash one, forever.

ygra 14y ago
Newspapers had Flash websites?
- meepmorp 14y ago
  For video and other multimedia content, sure. The NYT, at least, has a fair amount of such content.

anon1385 14y ago

A year ago the average total transfer was something like 937kB and now it's 1311kB, at least according to these stats: http://httparchive.org/trends.php#bytesTotal&reqTotal http://httparchive.org/trends.php#bytesTotal&reqTotal

g8oz 14y ago

NYT is best accessed with JS turned off. Also Ghostery FTW in general.

habosa 14y ago

Two HUNDRED requests? How is this acceptable for a website that's so frequently accessed via mobile. With latency ~30ms you're wasting 6s before you even download anything!

NuZZ 14y ago

My god. How underpaid were the web devs of this site? They must have gotten to the point where they could proclaim "It works now!", then thats when the funding must have been got cut off. It's that or, they are just bad. Meanwhile, the site looks bad. It's really, really not hard to use image sprites (not necessary here); merged JS and merged CSS.