Surfing Speed - Are we all brain-dead?

[Nanobyte]

Well I'm not completely, and I'm not a surfing speed freak, but I don't like wasting my time. People discuss the merits of browsers ad infinitum, talking about minor differences in speed. Surfing speed could be quadrupled and bandwidth reduced to 1/4 overnight. The remedy - force sites to limit their pages sizes.

Many, if not most, commercial sites have web pages in the size range 500kB to 1MB. Yes, they really are that size. On top of that are numerous scripts going on in the background. Reduce that to 125kB and you are in business. Want to see a quick site? Try epguides.com, main page 28kB with all files. Almost zero crap.

What do you get for your Megabytes? Pretty effects; annoying effects; people collecting information about you to make money for themselves; layers of pages to reach what you want; a tedious experience.

People surf without thought as to what is going on in front of their faces. Popups are not such a big deal but get the lion's share of attention. Commercial sites have no interest in speeding up your experience. They want you there as long as possible. There may be limits that surfers will endure (15 seconds for a page to load used to be a yardstick) but that's it.

I complained to one major vendor about their weekly flyers. Page curl effects? Give me a break I want to see what's on sale. The vendor introduced dial-up pages later (nothing to do with my protests I'm sure). They are about 5% smaller than the broadband pages, whoopee.

Instead of being good mindless consumers, surfers should do something about it, like complain to the vendors (not the web site designers). Rather than force some legislation, have some sort of site seal of approval , "Surf-Fast" or whatever. If those appeared in Google or Yahoo searches it may influence site design and then we're surfing at real speed.

 

[linkin]

One word: AdBlock.

 

[Nanobyte]

One word: AdBlock.

That's not the problem, in four-and-a-bit words. I have one regular page that has 450 gifs as part of the page structure. I run Noscript which blocks the majority of ads. You can't always use Noscript or have to be selective because the page does not load. Pick any major box store, save a complete web page and see the size.

Many major vendors have no ads to block, it's their own content. If you block anything, you are blocking the page which rather defeats the object. Stop flash and javascript and there's nothing left.

There are many annoying web pages like those that collect links and pretend in Google to be the source. You can block their ads with Adblock but I avoid those sites anyway as they are useless. Computer Forum is about 400kB for the main index; most is javascript. Loads OK.

 

[lucasbytegenius]

There are some sites, such as mine-which-I-can't-post, that use compression on their pages to speed up loading time. It's all uncompressed once it gets to the browser.
And then there's the Opera Web Browser. It has this feature called Turbo, which loads the site you're visiting through a compression server, which is a godsend to me as I'm on dialup.

 

[SslagleZ28]

I personally like nice looking sites... 1 it means you take pride in whatever is on it, and 2 im def not buying from a site that looks like it was thrown 2gether in 2 seconds. I wait the extra couple of seconds

 

[Nanobyte]

I personally like nice looking sites... 1 it means you take pride in whatever is on it, and 2 im def not buying from a site that looks like it was thrown 2gether in 2 seconds. I wait the extra couple of seconds

There always will be people that like that type of design. I've no objection and some sites aim to entertain. Very little is done for pride, it's to keep you there and keep up with the Jones'. If a site is intended to provide information, they should incorporate a low bandwidth version. That shows pride and more importantly, consideration for their customers.

I was thinking back 10 years when I was on dial-up. I recollect that surfing was the same speed back then. On dial-up today, it's virtually impossible to surf major sites because of the sheer size of their pages. Whatever progress is made in browser speed today will be instantly swallowed up by site designers trying to keep surfers on-site.

If people had the choice of low bandwidth sites and an Internet service bill of $5 a month instead of $20 for the same functionality.....

 

[Aastii]

An 8Mb/s connection is all you need to have the page load in 1 second (theoretically), I could quite happily wait 5 seconds for a page to load, assuming it is the 1MB you claim, 1.5Mb/s, or just over, is all you need. You are talking a few $ per month. I think you are making it out to be more than it is, especially as broadband is becoming more and more prominent. The majority have it, and whilst some do still have dial-up, in a few fears when that number is close to none, you will see much larger websites still. To give another example of why this is, Microsoft don't develop for Win95 any more, should we complain because we aren't catering to those few? Of course not, times change, technology change, we shouldn't stay back in the past when things were lighter, we should move on and get bigger and better

 

[Nanobyte]

An 8Mb/s connection is all you need to have the page load in 1 second (theoretically), I could quite happily wait 5 seconds for a page to load, assuming it is the 1MB you claim, 1.5Mb/s, or just over, is all you need

You and everyone else is trying to download that 1MB...and all the other stuff running on the page, forget the theory.

You are talking a few $ per month.

I hate to err on the political but there are many people on this continent and elsewhere that live in abject poverty. You can probably pick up an old PC for next to nothing, but it's no good to you if you need $20 a month to join the rest of us. "Let them eat cake" didn't work out so well.

SslagleZ28 mentioned sites taking pride in their product. I have a number of websites and I take pride in the fact that surfers can get what they want in the shortest possible time and buzz off. None of my web pages, with perhaps 1 large logo and 30 thumbnails, is over 70kB. No ads, no scripts, no flash.

I mentioned one of the web pages I regularly download, the one with 450 gifs in its structure. The html page itself is 27,500 lines of code, 1.1 million characters.

 

[TrainTrackHack]

512K DOWN DAWGS!

But yea. I like web sites with really simple design. It honestly doesn't have to be amateurish or sacrifice functionality to be simple and small. But meh, with the quality of web sites being judged by the number of shiny things and cool mouseover effects and Jonas Brothers trying to "reinvent the internet to make it something great and beautiful"... well, I'm used to waiting.