I Hate Web Bloat – Please Remove Junk from Your HTML

True words. I'm currently in a part of the world where internet is really slow (I can chat with individual bytes while they are queued up for sending..). Without disabling javascript, aborting page loads when the content is there and plainly ignoring links to notorious sites (like the mentioned NYT) I could not get anything done.

HN is btw a notable exception.

A lot of this stuff actually does make the web better. If someone is having trouble loading a site, they can disable features such as custom fonts, images, and scripts. Alternatively, they can just use a text-based browser. I see no need for websites to disable features that most people in developed countries can access just fine from their local café and that anyone else can just disable themselves.

Bloat is something entirely different; I agree that most sites need to cut down on the injected scripts that load more injected scripts ad infinitum. However, it actually takes longer to find a given resource on a different site than to wait for the current site to load. No one’s leaving sites due to loading times unless they’re either really slow or really unimportant.

I wish it were up developers of sites to control all the beacons, ad calls, and 3rd party nonsense … sadly for any large commercial site there are probably dozens of stakeholders vying to have some bits shoved in every page. To imply that there’s a single person making these sort of decisions isn’t accurate.

Good reminder