Network Effect | Hacker News Reader

Network Effect

networkeffect.io

46 pointsingve22 comments

Ok, if you're going to have browser snobbery, at least explain why I should bother opening your preferred browser. Visited site in Firefox, and left not knowing anything about the site. If you can't upgrade your software engineers, at least upgrade your splash screen.

Why doesn't this site work with Firefox? What about it is not "high performance"?

Notably it's quite fast: http://arewefastyet.com/

Not only that - but this website's message is patronizing. If you don't support Firefox due to some incompatibility or merely dev time, just say so. Don't make up an uneducated excuse.

I've found the gap in rendering performance between chrome and firefox to be enormous (in a number of areas) - didn't realize this until I started doing some pretty intensive visualization stuff lately. are those numbers you cite just javascript benchmarks?

Yes - it's focused on their javascript engine.

As far as visualization stuff, are you on linux? I found out that firefox by default turns off the off main thread compositing support. Enabling this was a huge performance boost for me, it's really bizarre they don't enable it.

If you're not on linux.. I'd be curious what performance issues you're having on Firefox.

on a mac.

SVG for sure, eg: http://mbostock.github.io/d3/talk/20111116/bundle.html

I'm pretty sure other things as well including text and updating text in a text input element, though I haven't debugged the performance issues fully yet.

Hm. Well, that renders instantly for me on intel hd 5000 + firefox 41.. compared to chrome on linux and it was identical to my eyes, but I haven't measured yet.

On that page I was basing my opinion on woeful animation speed, but now I think that's probably some issue with events. Ok, here's what I'm working on: http://www.datavstime.com/horizons - i think the following are all much slower in firefox: [1] axis rendering (svg) [2] updating the date/time text in the text input elements (currently causing worse horizontal scrolling performance) [3] the value overlays (text in divs), which don't update as quickly when there are lots (say > 100) of them. The bulk of the page is WebGL which is fast in firefox (that said, I currently have a flickering problem). Note: I have plans to work around all this, but just haven't implemented it yet...

Just closed web-site not supporting Firefox. Even if Firefox is not optimized by any means, how they know I'm not using double CPU workstation with 3-way SLI video?

The site works perfectly fine in Firefox for me after overriding the UA. Chrome definitely uses less CPU but I really don't care.

This is the first time I've ever seen a site that shows a "We don't support your browser, please get Google Chrome" message that actually links to the webkit bug[1] that explains why they don't support my browser. Kudos for providing a concrete reason!

[1] https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=135379

Are we seeing the same page? The only reason they mention is speed.

For Safari? They say

> Due to a technical issue in Safari affecting video playback, please view Network Effect using Google Chrome.

with the words "technical issue" being a link to the webkit bug I mentioned.

Works great in Firefox so long as you lie about what browser you're using. Cool project, wish it wasn't a jerk about user agent sniffing.

> Like the Internet itself, the project is effectively endless, containing 10,000 video clips, 10,000 spoken sentences, news, tweets, charts, graphs, lists, and millions of individual data points, all presented in a classically-designed data visualization environment. To see and hear it all would take hours, but the viewing window is limited to around seven minutes... which induces a state of anxiety, triggers a fear of missing out, and totally frustrates any attempt at completeness.

Awesome execution and design, but a poor premise. This isn't inducing anxiety in anyone since we have no value for or attachment to your site, except maybe as an abstract statement... That is, unless the point is that humans are so fragile and confused that we will get nervous if you set a timer for something that we don't understand or have a reason to care about, which I suppose is a popular view of human nature in postmodern art, even though I think that's ridiculous and probably generates more anxiety than being helpful to others.

Interesting concept, although until I clicked the ? at the bottom left I didn't understand what this is about or what was going on.

The hell did I just go to.

Unsurprisingly the site used more CPU time in chrome than in firefox.

I don't get it.

website is down. it says: "TCP connection closed unexpectedly."

images + heartbeat sound distracts from the text ime.

incredible polish, wow

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