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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: 2) by ikanreed on Wednesday September 05 2018, @08:43PM (1 child)

    by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday September 05 2018, @08:43PM (#730945) Journal

    That's dumb, because font choice is situational and contextual. If you're representing some kind of very raw text-file data, monospace is great. If you want a pull quote for an article, switching from sans-serif(easy to read when small) to serif(nice looking when blown up) is a sensible choice.

    These are things that people who know the pages they're making should decide, not me. There's no one true font.

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  • (Score: 2) by Arik on Thursday September 06 2018, @07:17AM

    by Arik (4543) on Thursday September 06 2018, @07:17AM (#731198) Journal
    "That's dumb,"

    Coming from you, that's a compliment. If the designers of the web noticed, I'm sure they appreciated it.

    "because font choice is situational and contextual"

    Which is exactly why semantic tags are available, so that the browser can be informed of the situation and context.

    "sans-serif(easy to read when small) to serif(nice looking when blown up) is a sensible choice."

    On your screen, with your eyes, and your wetware.

    Situation and context. One moment you cite the importance of those things, the very next breath you're missing them.

    "These are things that people who know the pages they're making should decide, not me."

    Clearly you shouldn't be deciding anything. Nonetheless, someone familiar with your screen, eyes, and wetware should be making these decisions. As you lack the ability to make decisions, I would recommend finding a local tech. Someone who knows what things like 'SMTP' and 'HTTP' mean. He could help you configure your computer properly.

    The last person you should let make decisions about your computer is the 14 year old in Bangalore that just earned $.25 rewriting the website you accidentally visited.
    --
    If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?