News Modern web bloat means some entry-level phones can't run simple web pages, and load times are high for PCs — some sites run worse than PUBG

[USAFRet]

uBlock, and ditch anything Chromium based. Seriously people it's high time to get off the Google train if you value anything resembling privacy. I'd also implore websites to screen their ads more closely, ie. actually use the consumer facing side. Most sites don't even realize (or don't care) about the drivel they are feeding their readers. That's not even mentioning the malicious stuff they are often inadvertently hosting...

"I asked ChatGPT to make me a website, and..."

 

[alithegreat]

The new era of the internet threatens becoming unusable for low-spec hardware that is still in use today, particularly in lower-income countries where modern PCs have costs comparable to multiple month's rent.

Modern web bloat means some entry-level phones can't run simple web pages, and load times are high for PCs — some sites run worse than PUBG : Read more

As part of my job i often integrate applications to bigger enterprise security systems and I can easily tell most software development is just blind copy / paste. No one really understand what their code does and why it does that, as long as they provide the result in set time, they do not care. I've met many "web architecs, directors, CsomebullshitO's that does not know SSL /TLS. No testing and especially negative testing is ever done and yet their development time is too long. No one cares about optimization, writing better code that does the same job faster, lighter, more secure etc.

I guess everyone can see this trend in especially game development, office applications etc, Continuous Delivery methods mostly results in poor quality. On websites it is much harder to regulate ads, background calls, token/data exchange etc because most of the time the "client" that requested the website does not really care or understand the backend. (and it's not their fault)

I guess this is because computer engineering and all sub branches of it, are still relatively new and evolving fast, we couldn't set a baseline to measure what is "good design". Currently it's quantity more than quality.

 

[CelicaGT]

"I asked ChatGPT to make me a website, and..."

I can only shudder to think about the AI fueled Ad war that is incoming. I don't mean AI created ads, but AI used to bypass adblockers and vice versa...

 

[palladin9479]

Unfortunately web "developers" are anything but that. All they do is link resources from tons of other websites because trying to make everything "local" requires them to write their own code and they would rather just not do that and copy pasta the examples from other places instead.

On top of that ads are horrible, these massive js and resource files that get loaded multiple times on each page as essentially iFrames. Need an adblocker to stop them from loading in the first place. Chrome is terrible but I found Vivaldi to be the exception, they take Chromium and strip out everything "google" from it and rebuild it with their own very different UI.

 

[JamesJones44]

I'm sure a lot of the bloat is from ads on the webpage. Doesn't matter how efficiently you make the page if most of the size is from ads.

It's exactly this plus the 100s of libraries used today for a modern website and the millions of lines of code just copy and pasted from StackOverflow with 0 thought about what it actually does.

It doesn't help that soooo many of these sites are created by lowest bid contract houses and they just do what the quickest thing possible to get the product shipped. Quality is an after thought.

 

[JamesJones44]

I can only shudder to think about the AI fueled Ad war that is incoming. I don't mean AI created ads, but AI used to bypass adblockers and vice versa...

Maybe that is really how Skynet was really created! AI battling AI over internet Ads!

 

[bigdragon]

Best solution for web bloat is an ad blocker. Writing clean web code is best done with a text editor using pure html, css, javascript and whatever server backend language that is kept up-to-date. I don't see many doing it this way any more.

Agreed, but I don't think many people know how to create web content that way anymore. Today's tech graduates are taught frameworks and CMS instead of learning how to write a foundational thing themselves. Worse yet, people in charge of websites have no concern about bloated pages or poor performance -- all they care about is the look and tracking data. Usability is not a top concern.

Blocking is absolutely necessary to have a good experience on the web these days. Ads aren't the only thing to block. There's a few websites I use that have resisted the urge to modernize, and it's honestly refreshing how fast and simple their interfaces are.

 

[35below0]

I find Tom’s hardware crashed and reloads on mobile, constantly. I’m sure the trackers and ad load are the reason. At times it is unreadable.

Try DuckDuckGo browser for the phone. It's no silver bullet but it does block out a lot of the bloat.

 

[Task Force 141]

For annoyances that Ublock Origin doesn't block by default, such as non-ad auto-play video:
right-click it, pick the Ublock 'Block Element' to get the URL top-level domain of the server.
Copy and paste that into the 'My filters' tab of Ublock's settings dashboard.

Use the 'My filters' tab to block whatever you want. I kill GIF's (||*.gif , giphy dot com, gfycat dot com), news and promo videos, and anything Facebook/Instagram-related. 70 filters of my own.
Ublock's sub-Reddit has pre-made filters in its Wiki, to block Youtube Shorts; copy and paste them into 'My filters'.