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by ne0phyte 3936 days ago
Considering that the average page size (first load) is getting bigger and bigger there is certainly some truth to it. Pages are getting slower and more complex and I see more and more browser tabs take 80mb+ for (seemingly) simple sites.

I also agree that web site/web app is slightly different, but: there are blogs and sites that load, show a blank page, then fade in some animation/spinner while loading fonts, styles and more scripts and then slowly fade in the content. However, if something goes wrong (font doesn't load, JS blocked, etc) you see a blank page with a spinner forever. HOW is that progress? That's just awful.

I recently decided to start a little blog[1] using the static site generator hugo[2] and I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything. Well, you won't be able to load the disqus comments and have no code highlighting without JS, but that's it.

[1] http://code-and.coffee [2] http://www.gohugo.io

1 comments

Consider that when most people get sites that don't meet their needs their gut reaction is to open 20 tabs and mentally slice data from all over the website. That doesn't seem very progressive either.
I am not saying there is no need for more complex web sites. Personally I just think it is sad that in 2015 there are lots of sites that won't load anything at all if you disable JS or have a bad connection.

With a 50k connection at home I simply can't accept waiting 3+ seconds until your site loaded its 500kb of JS and 4 different web fonts to finally show something.

Sure! Parts of that are indeed ridiculous.

Although I'm pretty sure the download size from a CDN is far less important from a performance standpoint (within reason). More important things include: - Time to first byte from a slow'ish server (.5s to create the HTML and .5s to deliver). - How many separate requests you are making (somewhat going away with http2)

Can we start ranting about the excessive amounts of tracking pixels everywhere now :)?

Sorry, but how does this respond to the parent post above? Opening more tabs as a response to site bloat?

If anything I'll abandon the site.

Still not a positive outcome.