5 ms·

I too will give Spartan a chance, and in likelihood will use it predominantly on my tablets and laptop (since I use IE 11 in those contexts today). On the desk

by bhauer 12y ago

I too will give Spartan a chance, and in likelihood will use it predominantly on my tablets and laptop (since I use IE 11 in those contexts today). On the desktop, I presently remain a Mozilla partisan, sticking with Firefox through thick and thin. But I have acknowledged that in terms of pure page user interface and interaction speed on a Windows PC, nothing can compete with IE. Its use of GPU acceleration for 2D page rendering makes things like CSS transitions shockingly smooth and fast. The CSS transitions for gradients are particularly delicious; I still have an optional subtle animation in the background of my blog using the gradient transitions. I used to have more animation in my blog (before readers convinced me it was annoying), and IE made Firefox and Chrome look as if they were running on clunky hardware from 5 years ago. IE is the only browser that—even when rendering typical web sites—reminds me that my workstation is a 3770K with a high-spec nVidia GPU. In Firefox and Chrome, I can easily forget how powerful my PC is until I fire up something that kicks off some 3D. I am hopeful that Spartan will continue to lead in that area of so much importance to me: perceived performance. If it improves its actual JavaScript performance and CSS capability versus IE 11, which I expect it will, I'll likely be quite impressed.

badloginagain 12y ago
That's actually a really good insight. I've always owned mid-high range computers, but browsing has always been much slower than my computers relative processing power. It's odd how I've come to accept that slow browsing is acceptable just because no one has "figured it out" yet.
- ploxiln 12y ago
  Everything gets faster: computers have 4x the memory and processing power of 10 years ago, browsers are easily 10x faster than they were 10 years ago. However it appears that the average web page has gotten more than 40x slower. (They're also not really pages, they're "apps".) People my age or a bit younger (early 20s) say craigslist and hackernews look "hideous" but dammit this is how web pages are supposed to be.
  - efng 12y ago
    I'm 40 and grew up online with an acoustic modem. There is no fucking way craigslist is the way the web should look. Many sites go to far the other direction but even CL is begging to update their look.
    - cypret 12y ago
      I really hope they don't change, I love the simplistic design and never having to worry about major layout changes is great. The downside, their massive legal team has a larger budget. Even the small layout changes Reddit has done the past few years has started to drive me away.
  - dmfdmf 12y ago
    The big problem that I see, and it applies to any browser, is that every page is loading tons of crap from ad or tracking sites including twitter or facebook. When one of these sites stalls the whole page stalls and it is a chronic problem. As an interim fix I block these domains using my host file pointing to localhost 127.0.0.1 but sometimes that stalls the loading because it doesn't get a reply so it waits for the timeout. I am thinking of setting up a web server on my LAN that replies 404 or 204 to all queries and pointing the worst ad/tracking/social domains there so I can load the content not the dross.
    - MichaelGG 12y ago
      Eh, not totally. For instance, the backoffice UI of Umbraco CMS was rewritten using Angular or something, and now it's just...slow. Unreasonably sluggish. I've seen other work from agencies with no 3rd party dependencies that use all this crazy JS and animations that unless you're on a top line MacBook, it's just sluggish. I've been using the web for a long time, and while loading was slow, I don't remember UIs feeling so sluggish and unresponsive.
  - eloy 12y ago
    > People my age or a bit younger (early 20s) say craigslist and hackernews look "hideous" but dammit this is how web pages are supposed to be. Not for me. I'm 18, and I think HN is doing great with this webdesign. As well with other sites. I prefer an application for e.g. Twitter, because the website is way too slow in Firefox. Especially when you follow over 1000 people. I also really liked http://motherfuckingwebsite.com http://motherfuckingwebsite.com as an example explaining what is wrong with websites these days.
wantab 12y ago
You haven't seen Spartan yet so I wouldn't make any promises on what you will do with it.

by bhauer 12y ago

badloginagain 12y ago

That's actually a really good insight. I've always owned mid-high range computers, but browsing has always been much slower than my computers relative processing power. It's odd how I've come to accept that slow browsing is acceptable just because no one has "figured it out" yet.

ploxiln 12y ago
Everything gets faster: computers have 4x the memory and processing power of 10 years ago, browsers are easily 10x faster than they were 10 years ago. However it appears that the average web page has gotten more than 40x slower. (They're also not really pages, they're "apps".) People my age or a bit younger (early 20s) say craigslist and hackernews look "hideous" but dammit this is how web pages are supposed to be.
- efng 12y ago
  I'm 40 and grew up online with an acoustic modem. There is no fucking way craigslist is the way the web should look. Many sites go to far the other direction but even CL is begging to update their look.
  - cypret 12y ago
    I really hope they don't change, I love the simplistic design and never having to worry about major layout changes is great. The downside, their massive legal team has a larger budget. Even the small layout changes Reddit has done the past few years has started to drive me away.
- dmfdmf 12y ago
  The big problem that I see, and it applies to any browser, is that every page is loading tons of crap from ad or tracking sites including twitter or facebook. When one of these sites stalls the whole page stalls and it is a chronic problem. As an interim fix I block these domains using my host file pointing to localhost 127.0.0.1 but sometimes that stalls the loading because it doesn't get a reply so it waits for the timeout. I am thinking of setting up a web server on my LAN that replies 404 or 204 to all queries and pointing the worst ad/tracking/social domains there so I can load the content not the dross.
  - MichaelGG 12y ago
    Eh, not totally. For instance, the backoffice UI of Umbraco CMS was rewritten using Angular or something, and now it's just...slow. Unreasonably sluggish. I've seen other work from agencies with no 3rd party dependencies that use all this crazy JS and animations that unless you're on a top line MacBook, it's just sluggish. I've been using the web for a long time, and while loading was slow, I don't remember UIs feeling so sluggish and unresponsive.
- eloy 12y ago
  > People my age or a bit younger (early 20s) say craigslist and hackernews look "hideous" but dammit this is how web pages are supposed to be. Not for me. I'm 18, and I think HN is doing great with this webdesign. As well with other sites. I prefer an application for e.g. Twitter, because the website is way too slow in Firefox. Especially when you follow over 1000 people. I also really liked http://motherfuckingwebsite.com http://motherfuckingwebsite.com as an example explaining what is wrong with websites these days.

wantab 12y ago

You haven't seen Spartan yet so I wouldn't make any promises on what you will do with it.