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SoylentNews is people

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: 3, Interesting) by KritonK on Wednesday September 05 2018, @05:35PM (8 children)

    by KritonK (465) on Wednesday September 05 2018, @05:35PM (#730830)

    Speaking of vertical pixel space, what's with this fad of designing web pages so that they contain tons of useless vertically stacked images, interspersed with short phrases, that convey little to no information, written with a huge font on colorful backgrounds, where you have to scroll waaay down at the bottom, hoping to find a few links, pointing to the actual information? The web doesn't have to look like the start page of Windows 8!

    Starting Score:    1  point
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       Interesting=1, Total=1
    Extra 'Interesting' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   3  
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 05 2018, @05:38PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 05 2018, @05:38PM (#730833)

    See subject.

    • (Score: 2) by KritonK on Thursday September 06 2018, @08:54AM (1 child)

      by KritonK (465) on Thursday September 06 2018, @08:54AM (#731218)

      Such pages are equally useless on smartphones. You have to scroll down at the bottom of the page, where the links to the actual information are. Worse, still, if you are on a smartphone, those links are in a normal size font, so you'll have a hard time clicking on them.

      I'm talking about pages that look something like:

      [Image of pretty girl smiiling]
      Solve all your problems!
      [Image of suited young man, apparently happy with his unspecified job]
      New! Improved!
      [Image of happy, multiracial group of people]
      Increase your productivity!
      ...
      etc. etc.
      ...
      About us Downloads
      Products Support

      You want to learn about the company? You have to click on the link at the bottom.
      You want information about their products? The same.
      You want to download their software? Ditto.
      You want support? You get the picture.

      You want to see pretty pictures? My guess is that you are not going to visit this site for that!

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 06 2018, @01:56PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 06 2018, @01:56PM (#731308)

        I guess the point was that people who carry these "smart"phones are mental midgets who ... wait for it ... LIKE TO SCROLL!

        The get to fondle their slabs, their new favorite passtime. And oh boy, it's so quite tactile that even a toddler would love it!

        Kinda like what happened at the other place that was abandoned because of their abuses for the greener pastures of SN.

  • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday September 05 2018, @06:37PM (4 children)

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday September 05 2018, @06:37PM (#730887) Journal

    I remember a time when a news article was formatted like this.

    One page. Only one paragraph of the article. Surrounded with loud blinking animated dancing seizure-inducing ads. And followed by:

    < 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 >

    Then you could click each number, which was a link, to a similar ad-loaded page with one paragraph of text.

    Many sites started doing this.

    That didn't last long.

    --
    People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
    • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 05 2018, @06:47PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 05 2018, @06:47PM (#730895)

      i wish I could click a "for mobile" or "printer friendly" and get the basic page.

      because google, for mobile is the default, and that's what we're trying to avoid.

      there is no printer friendly page anymore. maybe something google can scan when saved to google drive or what microsoft can scan when saved to one drive, but i think if the printer is local they only want to let you print if it can waste the 2nd page with a banner ad that ignores your do not print color preferences.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 06 2018, @12:53PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 06 2018, @12:53PM (#731272)

        Get a user agent switcher plugin and set it to a mobile agent code.

    • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday September 05 2018, @10:16PM

      by Phoenix666 (552) on Wednesday September 05 2018, @10:16PM (#730986) Journal

      I always switched to Lynx for those. It was my FU to the UI a-holes who built them.

      --
      Washington DC delenda est.
    • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 05 2018, @11:35PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 05 2018, @11:35PM (#731017)

      One page. Only one paragraph of the article. Surrounded with loud blinking animated dancing seizure-inducing ads. And followed by:

      Then you could click each number, which was a link, to a similar ad-loaded page with one paragraph of text.

      Many sites started doing this.

      "Outbrain" still does this. Except its "next page", not a number.

      Clicking on it will give me another tiny snippet hidden amongst many ads, many of which have buttons that look like the way out.

      I have learned to not click on ANYTHING if I see their logo anywhere around. Only thing safe to click is the "close" button.

      "You are in a maze of twisty little passages... all alike."