> The gov.uk site is wonderful to use! It is incredibly fast, just a tenth of a second latency, it feels.
That's because unlike "modern" sites, it contains the site's contents in the HTML, so when the HTML is loaded, you have everything you came for.
% curl https://gdstechnology.blog.gov.uk/2016/09/19/why-we-use-progressive-enhancement-to-build-gov-uk/ >test.html
% du -h test.html
36K
That amount of data can still be downloaded over the slowest mobile link imaginable in a fraction of a second. And whatever scripts are needed to do whatever extra can be downloaded and happen after the fact. That's how the web used to work.
Compare to "modern" SPA-monstrocities (like blogger.com until recently), where you had actual code written to defer showing the (1KB) content (which you came for), until several MBs of fonts, scripts and whatever had loaded, parsed and executed.
It was enough to make page-loading on a high-speed connection of a modern PC take many many seconds. On a mobile phone with a weak CPU this can lock your phone up for quite a time.
If that's not an anti-pattern I don't know what is.
We need to get back to the basics. The basics worked, and the direction we're heading is doing all the wrong things.
> Compare to "modern" SPA-monstrocities (like blogger.com until recently), where you had actual code written to defer showing the (1KB) content (which you came for), until several MBs of fonts, scripts and whatever had loaded, parsed and executed.
Whoever came up with that idea should be loaded, parsed and executed.
> We need to get back to the basics. The basics worked, and the direction we're heading is doing all the wrong things.
Frankly, it's gotten to the point that I don't even like using my smartphone anymore. Even with uBlock, sites take too long to load, they do annoying things with animations, colors and behaviour, and it's just generally a burden to use.
I just want to be able to read documents and follow links to other documents. The Web was awesome when it was a web of documents, linked together.
> That amount of data can still be downloaded over the slowest mobile link imaginable in a fraction of a second.
That's a bit of an excessive enthusiasm. EDGE is effectively ~200kbps (30kB/s) with ~200ms ping, so you're at a good 1.5s assuming no dropped packets.
And that's not "the slowest mobile link imaginable" by a long shot, GPRS is under 100kbps and before that was CSD (around 14kbps, with high speed CSD around 56k)
And CSD was already 2G, 1G was NMT, at 1200 bits per second.
None of these even require imagination, they're existing historical mobile links, most of which (GPRS up) are still in active use (I believe NMT has no deployment left, and while I'm reasonably certain most telecoms have dropped CSD I wouldn't bet that all deployments are gone)
There's a lot of people who really don't like gov.uk, and I don't understand why. I've always been able to find the information I'm looking for quickly - faster than any other Government website I'm forced to use.
I would assume Politics. From a technical side they're great.
However what is happening there basically taking work away from big outsourcing contracts(Lots of easy money involved) with companies like Capgmini. Upsetting the people in those companies, and civil servants who want to eventually work with those companies. These companies generally hires ex-civil servants they used to work with.
They're also taking away responsibility from the individual departments also upsetting empire building civil servants, even if GDS is doing a better job. At the moment there's talk of breaking up gds and giving services back to the departments who did a terrible job in the first place.
So you get a lot of drama and arguments involved, and "House of Cards" style schemes against them to try to get rid of them. Frankly with all the money and self interest against them, i've surprised they've lasted this long.
It's rare for me to say David Cameron and his friends did anything right, but this was one initiative that did make the world a better place. GDS wouldn't have been around this long without significant support from the very top. It is telling that a change of political fortunes will likely coincide with GDS losing primacy.
It was very hyped when often all it's done is provided a better-looking menu page - the page you land on looks great, but once you click through to the actual functionality you're back at the same page that used to be there. And that results in an even less consistent experience than before - before at least all the HMRC pages were on the HMRC site and looked the same, all the FCO pages were on the FCO site and looked the same... now you click a menu link on gov.uk and you might get an old-HMRC-style page, an old-FCO-style page, or something else.
I mean don't get me wrong, it's fine as far as it goes. It does look nice. But it doesn't make the actual functionality noticeably more usable, so it's hard to see what all the fuss is about.
To be clear, we’re not doing that work. We’re helping the departments build their own services with both patterns and standards, and assess each service before it goes live for quality. You can see what you need to do to meet the service assessment standard at https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/service-standard
Lots of information that used to be on government sites was removed.
They added Google Analytics everywhere. Even on the pages where you fill in your taxes or apply for a passport. Google does not need to know my tax details. Google shouldn't know my tax details. Since Google isn't even a UK company the UK government doesn't even have legal authority over what Google does with the information they now hold about UK citizens taxes.
All user data is anonymised before sending to Google. I believe we strip the last two blocks off the IP address before sending it over. We use the analytics to inform choices we make - our 3rd design principle is to ‘design with data’ https://www.gov.uk/design-principles#third . Finally, on projects where it’s critical that any data doesn’t go out of the UK like Verify we run our own instances of analytics software.
>I believe we strip the last two blocks off the IP address before sending it over.
No you don't. You don't "send" anything over to Google. The users browser does because loading a gov.uk page also loads a Google Analytic script straight from google-analytics.com. You don't have the power to prevent the users IP being sent to Google in that situation and it's worrying that you think you do.
Additionally, focusing on the IP address seems rather silly when a much more accurate tracking cookie is being used.
I've been deciding where to immigrate, and the quality engineering behind gov.uk has factored into that decision. Furthermore, it's easy to navigate and logically laid out.
If it is at all a representation of how smoothly the overall government runs, then "shut up and take my taxes."
Unfortunately, it's really not. The GDS are sort of a silo, and take many more risks than most of the rest of the Government. The rest of it is plagued with bureaucracy and requirements to outsource large chunks of their operation.
That's because unlike "modern" sites, it contains the site's contents in the HTML, so when the HTML is loaded, you have everything you came for.
That amount of data can still be downloaded over the slowest mobile link imaginable in a fraction of a second. And whatever scripts are needed to do whatever extra can be downloaded and happen after the fact. That's how the web used to work.Compare to "modern" SPA-monstrocities (like blogger.com until recently), where you had actual code written to defer showing the (1KB) content (which you came for), until several MBs of fonts, scripts and whatever had loaded, parsed and executed.
It was enough to make page-loading on a high-speed connection of a modern PC take many many seconds. On a mobile phone with a weak CPU this can lock your phone up for quite a time.
If that's not an anti-pattern I don't know what is.
We need to get back to the basics. The basics worked, and the direction we're heading is doing all the wrong things.