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Why are all web pages so darn slow now?

5 points by wmnwmn ↗ HN
I'll answer my own question: it's because they are (almost) all bloated beyond all reason by excessive "content", fancy javascript and reams of links to CDNs and other services. Regarding the latter, each one of these now executes needlessly over https, requiring endless "TLS handshakes". The web doesn't quite completely suck now but it's trending in that direction fast.

9 comments

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nkkollaw
I feel like it's always been like that.

Websites in the 90s were slow, too. They did a lot less, but the tech was worse.

Now everything is faster but we push things to the limit and make everything slow again.

I must say that every once in a while I visit this website I made in 2007 and it's super-fast, though.

wmnwmn
I've noticed a, er, noticeable worsening in the past year. I used to enjoy doing things on the web, but now no matter what I try to do, whether book travel or watch a news video, it turns into a slog of waiting for pages that won't load, or won't stop loading junk, endless "TLS handshakes" and loading things from Cloudflare, etc etc.
nkkollaw
Are you sure it's not your browser (ad blocker, spyware, etc.)?
mars4rp
how ad blocker can hurt the speed? I was under impression that by blocking some loads it makes it way faster.
nkkollaw
No idea. By blocking legit scripts. Disabling all extensions would be the second step I'd take, though, after having made sure that there is no malware or app using up all bandwidth.
muzani
Connection speed in the 90s ran on about 3kbps. Connection speed now is about 3MBps. It's still more than 10x better, but browsers now eat all your RAM and still don't get there.
muzani
I have actually been experimenting against responsive web lately, partly influenced by bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com (don't worry it's a CSS site)

Responsive web was jaw dropping when it first started but now it's become extremely common. Do people really need to do several different designs for phone, tablet, desktop?

A lot of major sites like Reddit do very well without responsive. And it wouldn't work for something like Stack Overflow because their user base are desktop people who prioritize low friction access.

It takes a long time to load and a long time to build. So most people should really rethink whether they need all this.

wmnwmn
Love it! Yeah, how about prioritizing the communication of information. And face it, your site is NOT going to be a profit center through ads - and if you try to make it into one, you'll just drive away your users.
taprun
My guess: people hiring web developers evaluate their work by how pretty a website is, not by how fast it is.