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posted by martyb on Wednesday September 05 2018, @04:57PM   Printer-friendly
from the less-is-more dept.

Programmer Drew DeVault writes a blog post about conservative web development after poking at a few popular sites and finding that only 8% of the data downloaded among the megabytes of advertisements, scripts, and third-party scripts is actually related to content. This represents several usability problems. After walking through some of the more problematic symptoms he proposes several steps which can remediate the state of the web.

Today I turned off my ad blocker, enabled JavaScript, opened my network monitor, and clicked the first link on Hacker News - a New York Times article. It started by downloading a megabyte of data as it rendered the page over the course of eight full seconds. The page opens with an advertisement 281 pixels tall, placed before even the title of the article. As I scrolled down, more and more requests were made, downloading a total of 2.8 MB of data with 748 HTTP requests. An article was weaved between a grand total of 1419 vertical pixels of ad space, greater than the vertical resolution of my display. Another 153-pixel ad is shown at the bottom, after the article. Four of the ads were identical.

Aside: Opponents to javascript are often wrongfully framed as Luddites. However, I invite readers to connect the dots; see:
Exploiting Speculative Execution (Meltdown/Spectre) via JavaScript
Web cache poisoning just got real: How to fling evil code at victims
Rowhammer.js Is the Most Ingenious Hack I've Ever Seen and
Oh, great, now there's a SECOND remote Rowhammer exploit

[Ed note: SoylentNews is designed to use no Javascript for normal user interactions. (There are a few staff-accessible pages requiring it, such as the Story Editing page.) I don't know of anyone on staff who would seriously consider changing that. When this site was initially rolling out, we actually tested to make sure it would work on a text-only browser (Lynx) and even Mosaic! So, please enjoy your light-weight, performant web pages here!]

[TMB note: Except the "collapse/expand this whole damned thread" button.]


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 05 2018, @05:23PM (6 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 05 2018, @05:23PM (#730819)

    Unfortunately, there is no monetary incentive to streamline websites. So we are stuck.

  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by ikanreed on Wednesday September 05 2018, @05:26PM

    by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday September 05 2018, @05:26PM (#730823) Journal

    Meanwhile making your life miserable by constantly intruding to tell you to buy shit you don't need is a 12 figure industry.

  • (Score: 3, Funny) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday September 05 2018, @06:09PM (2 children)

    by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Wednesday September 05 2018, @06:09PM (#730864) Homepage Journal

    You're absolutely right. Y'all should send me lots of money.

    --
    My rights don't end where your fear begins.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 06 2018, @12:48PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 06 2018, @12:48PM (#731269)

      Dude, if people login they can set their defaults to 'show all' which bypasses the javascript expand problem.
      That said, JS used to work fine in Sleipnir mobile until the last change. So, now I either logon or use something else on mobile.

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Wednesday September 05 2018, @06:32PM (1 child)

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday September 05 2018, @06:32PM (#730884) Journal

    There is a monetary incentive. But they cannot see it.

    Instead they complain, and ask: how can we draw people to our web site?

    --
    People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 05 2018, @11:25PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 05 2018, @11:25PM (#731012)

      God knows how many websites I visit that flat don't work with ad-blockers.

      I found that out when I tried to price some tires online so I could see which brick-and-mortar local businesses that had my particular size and price. Ended up getting them at WalMart because I got so fed up with nonfunctional websites. And I did not want to have to call on dozens of businesses only to be told they did not have them, or that I was going to have to haggle. I hate to haggle. But many businesses have haggling built into their price. That kind of stuff really discourages me, as I want a good price, pay, and go.

      However, the websites I use the most for buying stuff online ( Amazon, AliExpress, DigiKey, Mouser ) work great. But then, they are big enough to tell the script men "NO!" when they show up, cash in hand, wanting to place their ad on the site.... knowing full good and well once they have found a site owner that will place that ad which sends the customer away, they can now do anything with that unwitting customer that trusted the original site he visited. Any site owner arbitrarily letting ad-men take their customer is playing a really risky game with the trust of that customer, as once that customer is in the grips of the ad-men's code, the ad-men can rape the customer, and the original site owner takes the hit for it.