The mobile web sucks | Hacker News Reader

The mobile web sucks

theverge.com

30 pointsprostoalex37 comments

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That's rich, coming from The Verge.

245 objects requested, 48 JavaScript files loaded, 9.8MB.

My first impulse as well. As the article states, though, they're aware of and working on it[0].

[0] http://product.voxmedia.com/2015/5/6/8561867/declaring-perfo...

Why is their target 8 seconds to load the page? That's a ridiculously long time.

Maybe it has something to do with all the garbage that the verge loads every time you load the page?

Like the 4 identical ads from Qualcomm bogging down my 6-core desktop machine?

Why are people here attacking The Verge instead of talking about the issue in question?

Let's be honest: mobile web is a far crappier experience than the desktop web

Because the mobile web is putting the magnifying glass to the issues that have been lurking in sites. Most people here have computers and the bandwidth to download a large site in seconds, and needed RAM and drive space to have a large cache. When you get rid of that cache, and you slow down the connection, the Verge is a shitty site on the desktop too.

Because of the data their website serves, only about 3% of it is actual content. The rest is beacons, and trackers, and ads. It's precious coming from them.

> Let's be honest: mobile web is a far crappier experience than the desktop web

Some websites actually have a better 'mobile' site (either through a dedicated site or through responsive stylesheets) than their desktop site, explicitly because they minimise the amount of noise on the page.

Let's be honest: web is crap period. Ever since people came up with the crazy idea that documents can somehow be scripted into applications.

Is it too conspiracy theory-ist to notice that these articles trashing mobile browsing and Safari in particular come from an ad-supported site on the eve of Apple adding adblock to Mobile Safari? This isn't my observation, though I can't recall where I read it.

No, Apple is funding them behind the scenes anyways (based on their reviews).

I stopped reading half way. The mobile Web is amazing. The verge is the kind of website that is broken both on desktop and mobile. And unfortunately there are too many websites like those.

There is a lot of terrible mobile websites out there, but some how I manage to get by. I simply refuse to have a mobile/native app for every website that is out there that I use. My mobile screen would be full to the brim with icons.

As it stands, I'm able to have a single "Contrib" folder, which contains mobile apps I can't do without (Skype, Feedly, BeerSmith 2, Untapped) on my iPhone with the apps I use mostly on the first screen. I now no longer have to scroll through multiple pages and multiple folders to find what app I want.

Why do I need a Medium.com mobile app when the mobile website works fine? It could be better, of course, but it works. Same with Facebook. I don't see the necessity to have a dedicated Facebook app on my phone when the mobile site gives me all I particularly want from Facebook.

All the sites I visit regularly work fine on mobile - I do wish they'd dedicate more time/resources/money on their mobile sites rather than their apps but I suppose the marketing department calls the shots. Got to take up room on my mobile phone screen!

I remember distinctly that the Verge was the first website I hated using on my phone. (As in, yes there are awful websites, but whatever, move on. As I was actually trying to read the Verge article.. i grew to hate it much more)

They have that awful floating box that is a constant overlay menu on their articles.. not to mention its completely black! in stark contrast to the rest of the page.

If iOS marketshare keeps going up, Apple will get sued for anti-trust.

Imaging if Microsoft won't let other developers write web browsers for windows.

I read some answers on this article in the past weeks. Some interesting links:

http://blog.lmorchard.com/2015/07/22/the-verge-web-sucks/

https://twitter.com/satefan/status/623226230301523968

there was a post, a link to TED show that referred to binary applets and how we suppose to think of browser being OS and having a safe environment in it to run small binary networked applets. Javascript was a great expriment and V8 kicks ass and probably best there has been for the browsers - yet model that browser is an app and not OS/Kernel with safe place to run privilged code - I think little will change. Because phones still have too little battery to waste and approach to mobile web that it is a browser and not Kernel or a part of the Kernel, little will change.

Apple has something - their stuff is binary. Android is all Java so there is that barrier beyond getting closer to hardware. Yes I know JVM is pretty fast and there is JIT. But it is not binary.

IMHO

Android 5 has gotten rid of JIT, and does AOT compilation of bytecode via libart, and thus runs native code.

Let me declut that for you

http://andreapaiola.name/magpie/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.thever...

I just recently made a comment about how many big sites are maintaining several frontends (when they can barely maintain one) with the mobile site being last behind mobile platforms in terms of priority.

You know, people call me crazy, but I build my website for mobile first, and stop there. I kind of like a narrow 480px columns even on desktop.

AdBlock for Firefox on Android.

As it happens, yesterday I had to stop a well-performing ad campaign on our site, because the banners were simply too bloated. For a good 10 seconds after the page loaded, their ads would be churning away, loading domain after domain, all to ultimately load a single 160x600px image.

In an attempt to demonstrate the problem to them, I made a list of all the domains that were being loaded by their ad code. Here they are:

  a.rfihub.com
  aa.chango.com
  ad.360yield.com
  adadvisor.net
  ads.ebay.com
  ads.nexage.com
  ads.googleapis.com
  analytics.spongecell.com
  ap.lijit.com
  as.chango.com
  b3.mookie1.com
  bc.ixiaa.com
  bh.contextweb.com
  c1.rfihub.net
  cc.chango.com
  cdn-akamai.mookie1.com
  cdn.spotxchange.com
  cdn.viglink.com
  ce.lijit.com
  choices.truste.com
  ckm-m.xp1.ru4.com
  click.sovrn.com
  clickcdn.sovrn.com
  clients1.google.com
  cm.yieldoptimizer.com
  d.agkn.com
  d.turn.com
  dis.criteo.com
  dm.de.mookie1.com
  dpm.demdex.net
  dsum-sec.casalemedia.com
  dsum.casalemedia.com
  e.nexac.com
  edge.quantserve.com
  ev.ib-ibi.com
  ewr-128.ewr-rtb1.rfihub.com
  fbstatic-a.akamaihd.net
  fei.pro-market.net
  global.ib-ibi.com
  gmtdmp.mookie1.com
  gpush.cogocast.net
  gslbeacon.lijit.com
  i.w55c.net
  ib.mookie1.com
  idsync.rlcdn.com
  image2.pubmatic.com
  js.revsci.net
  load.s3.amazonaws.com
  loadm.exelator.com
  match.adsrvr.org
  msec.xp1.ru4.com
  openx2-match.dotomi.com
  p.rfihub.com
  pix04.revsci.net
  pixel.quantserve.com
  pixel.rubiconproject.com
  pixel.sitescout.com
  r.openx.net
  royale.cdn.spongecell.com
  rs.gwallet.com
  rtb.gumgum.com
  rtd.tubemogul.com
  secure-us.imrworldwide.com
  secure.adnxs.com
  securepubads.g.doubleclick.net
  simage2.pubmatic.com
  soma.smaato.net
  stags.bluekai.com
  su.addthis.com
  sync.adap.tv
  sync.adaptv.advertising.com
  sync.graph.bluecava.com
  sync.search.spotxchange.com
  sync.tidaltv.com
  t.mookie1.com
  t4.liverail.com
  tag.apxlv.com
  tag.cogocast.net
  tag.yieldoptimizer.com
  tags.bluekai.com
  tapestry.tapad.com
  tpc.googlesyndication.com
  uav.tidaltv.com
  ums.adtechus.com
  us-ads.openx.net
  usefb.adsrvr.org
  vap1iad3.lijit.com
  vox-static.liverail.com
  x.bidswitch.net

That's ALL to ultimately load one ad.

And of course, those are only domains; many of those load multiple resources. Basically what they appear to be doing is "waterfalling" through a massive number of third party networks, looking for the most profitable ads. And it works well, if all you care about is revenue. The user experience is pretty terrible though. Even though the ads are asynchronous, so don't block the rest of the page, that amount of crap obviously slows things down in general, especially on mobile browsers. Plus, it just feels bloated when after the page is done loading, it sits there for 10 seconds with the spinner whirling and random ad domains spamming across the status bar.

It's really painful, because this kind of thing works; it outperforms adsense (which is extremely lightweight in comparison) by a significant margin. There's got to be a cost in user retention though, even if your only concern is the bottom line. (Let alone caring about user experience.)

How do you generated that list?

I just loaded the page with the ad and made a list of all the domains I didn't recognize (or that I knew were ad domains) using the Chrome network tab. Then I removed the ad and checked that none of them were still present.

Nope: theverge sucks.

Yeah, I don't know why everybody is pointing at browsers and saying the mobile web sux. I'm constantly amazed at what my phones browser can do.

Its the content that sux.

| The page isn't redirecting properly

... yup

Let me FTFY: The web sucks.

>"Modern" web sucks

FTFFY

Yes, documents should not pretend they are apps.

See, this is why I hate that word; it's used for absolutely everything, so I actually don't consider it to be incorrect when someone says "BBC's web app" and is referring to their website. I mean, I cringe a lot, but that's because of the word itself, not because of the meaning, which today seems to be "any kind of software".

Not a single mention of Flash! I've got a hunch Windows 10 may popularize it again... Still a more consistent runtime than all the stuff that "killed" it.

Flash wasn't the problem entirely. If they fixed the security issues we would be better off. The reason we hated flash is because of how advertisers used it.

Flash did solve the problem that the article complains about: consistency of experience and not having to develop your site / app to a pile of different runtimes.

But that's not a bug, but a feature for those in the business of selling admission to walled gardens. Same as it ever was.

My problem with flash is the same as with all plugins: scroll doesnt work, mouse-gesture dont work, shortcuts dont work, no control of content. Its like opening an enterly other program in browser without any integration.

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