Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by JodieBenitez 19 days ago
> Multi-page applications are slow to load and navigate.

A bit tired to see this...

No it's not. We do this all the time. It's as simple as using proper HTTP headers for your css/js/pictures/whatever. You can even have smooth page transitions now.
3 comments
simondotau 19 days ago
A browser can load a singular page within tens of milliseconds of receiving the packets. It literally cannot get faster. Single page applications only feel faster because there's no risk of white flashes.

Multi-page applications are slow if you load in 20 libraries from 10 different CDNs, a page tracking system, a click tracking system, a "performance metrics" system, a chat bot overlay, an advertising platform, all the crap loaded by the ad intermediate, all the crap loaded by the ad itself, an ad "traffic quality" montor, a Stripe.com thing (even though this isn't a payment page), something from Facebook, something else from fbcdn...

link
interf4ce 19 days ago
100%

The author is reinforcing the false dichotomy between using front end frameworks and hand-rolled JS, as if rendering data from JSON APIs is the only way to display information from the server.

Almost as an aside, he says

> Server Side Rendering is also no better, because while they can do certain things in more straightforward way, they break browser behaviour [...]

but he provides no examples or supporting evidence, so it's difficult to know what browser behaviour he's referencing. "SSR" is just how the web has worked since the beginning and it works very well. Maybe he's specifically talking about SSR as provided by Next? I've never used it, so I'm not sure what browser behaviour it might be breaking.

link
dominicrose 19 days ago
HTTP was designed for multi-page applications/websites but I think it makes sense that Facebook migrated from basic PHP/MySQL to something more complex including React and making less full-page navigation events, for performance reasons (server costs and mobile loading time). There's also UX because a PHP website can feel a bit static, with less animations.

But yes the web has evolved since then and the HTTP protocol has newer versions and most apps don't serve as many users as Facebook.

link