![ob.043[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/D1lmqng.jpg "ob.043[1].jpg")
http://idlewords.com/talks/website_obesity.htm
>This is a screenshot from an NPR article discussing the rising use of ad blockers. The page is 12 megabytes in size in a stock web browser.
>The same article with basic ad blocking turned on is one megabyte. It’s no model of parsimony, but still, what a difference a plugin makes.
>If you look at what the unblocked version pulls in, it’s not just videos and banner ads, but file after file of javascript. Every beacon, tracker and sharing button has its own collection of scripts that it needs to fetch from a third-party server. Each request comes packed with cookies.
>More cookies are the last thing your overweight website needs.
>These scripts get served from God knows where and are the perfect vector for malware.
>Advertisers will tell you it has to be this way, but in dealing with advertisers you must remember they are professional liars.
>I don’t mean this to offend. I mean it as a job description. An advertiser's job is to convince you to do stuff you would not otherwise do. Their task in talking to web designers is to persuade them that the only way to show ads is by including mountains of third-party cruft and tracking.
>The bloat, performance, and security awfulness, they argue, is the price readers pay for free content.
![ob.061[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/5Nm4Z7L.jpg "ob.061[1].jpg")
>In fact, let's be even bolder in our thinking. I'm not convinced that online publishing needs to be ad-supported at all.
>People dismiss micropayments, ignoring the fact that we already have a de facto system of micropayments that is working well.
>This chart from the New York Times shows how much money you spend per page load on an American cell phone network, based on the bandwidth used. For example, it costs thirty cents to load a page from Boston.com on a typical data plan.
>This is nothing more than a micropayment to the telecommunications company. And I'm sure it's more revenue than Boston.com sees from the ad impressions on the page.
>We're in a stupid situation where ads make huge profits for data carriers and ad networks, at the expense of everyone else.
>>53460087
100% agreed. That's why I use adblockers and edit my hosts file. Fuck ads.
Is that bit about the 12mb going 1mb after adblock is turned on true?
I have a shitty data cap is why I'm asking.
>complains about bloat and compares pages to novels
>his own web page about website obesity is larger than a text download of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
The better solution is to not allow JavaScript to run rampant across the Web.
Web sites are supposed to be just that. If you want to build an application, don't do it in a fucking browser.
>12 mb web pages
I remember when 80KB was considered bloated.
muh geocities.
>>53460195
You can confirm at your own will using Firebug and a hard refresh extension in firefox. Go into the "net" tab when you open up firebug, hard refresh, and check total data with ublock origin on and off.
While that's an extreme scenario, objectively you're always saving at least ~200kb minimum, possibly more depending on how bullshit the ads are, and that's going to add up over months and years.
Checking it right now, the verge's front page is 6.7 mb without ublock, 6.1 mb with it
>>53460205
He makes that exact point, except about his homepage. He kind of glides over it with sarcasm, but I think it connects to another point he made about how clients want a webpage that looks good, and usually that necessitates bloat. Guess it goes to show that even he is not immune to overdesign creep.
>>53461485
So in other words DO AS I SAY, NOT AS I DO
>>53461485
Blame pooinloo wordpress "developers." Pelican and a decent theme can give you a site that looks good in a fraction of the size. My blog's homepage is less than 33KB and still has responsive fucking design with a proper mobile version that gets loaded automatically by mobile browsers.
Good, maybe the big "online publishers" will die and we'll be left with the internet of the late 90's.
>>53461669
Literally all you need for a so-easy-a-monkey-could-do-it blog setup is
>a .txt file in markdown
>something to convert that markdown to standard HTML
>that's it
Which is sort of his overall point, that the answer's always been painfully easy, but developers can't justify painfully easy.
...Which kinda makes it weird that he fucking uses wordpress, but w/e
>>53460087
I don't use ad blockers, but generally speaking a page full of ads it's not worth reading.
>opened website today to download a software
>the "hey I see your adblocking, I do it sometimes too" shit pops up
>open abp object list, search for the js, open it
>claims that if I intervene with it's operation I'm breaking DMCA
>fucking DMCA
>for not running memescript
>code below is a textbook example of http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html
I don't even care what kinds of ads they had, these kinds of faggots belong in the trash.
>>53460477
>a hard refresh extension
Is Ctrl+F5 that unknown now?
>>53460195
It's more like 1.5MB to 670kB now.
I don't know how or why it was 12MB when he wrote the article, perhaps there was a particular video advert that was served to him that bloated it out, perhaps he left the page open for months so that all the pings from the advert scripts added up.
