From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Mon Jun 02 2003 - 14:11:10 MDT
On Mon, 2 Jun 2003, Harvey Newstrom wrote:
> Excellent paper, Robert! I have my browser set to prompt me on everything,
> so I can see what is happening, and reject/accept each item individually.
> Some sites have no idea that they are sending literally dozens of cookies
> and loading dozens of scriptlets just to load their welcome screen. No
> wonder they are so slow.
Absolutely. I sent a letter to KOMO TV here in Seattle a couple
of days ago because whatever editor they are using to create their
web site is specifying alignments and fonts in *each* table cell
(rather than a table row or even the entire table). Very sloppy.
Perhaps someone (or preferably a several someones) should cruise
on over to the Mozilla web site and request "enhancements"
to the browser pages that make it clear in some bright red font
the actual page size and the actual download time. If one got
Mozilla to add these it would create pressure on Microsoft, Opera,
etc. to add the same features as well as put pressure on developers
to make their pages "cool" by making them "fast".
For example, I've noticed over the last several days that the
Nature web site (http://www.nature.com) has very long page display
times in the old browser that I am using (Netscape 4.79). But if its
slow in the old browsers, its probably slow in the new browsers
(from a comparitive standpoint). Slower is *bad* -- it retards
the progress of scientific learning, interaction, resolution of
different opinions, etc.
In response to Harvey's meta-question regarding "what are we doing?" --
can we complain to Nature in sufficient numbers that they actually
*fix* the damn website so it is fast rather than pretty?
One can get the customer service contact info here:
http://nature.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/nature.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_sid=9bPUKLKg&p_lva=&p_faqid=226&p_created=1043771300&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPSZwX2dyaWRzb3J0PSZwX3Jvd19jbnQ9MTExJnBfcGFnZT0y&p_li
If one is a non-customer, then one can complain that the "customers"
(or former customers in my case) complain that the pages are poorly
designed and take too long to display -- after all not everyone
has a Pentium 4 or uses IE 6.x.
It is very easy for me to judge this on windows. I simply have
the "Windows Task Manager" running (but minimized) most of the
time and watch the degree of CPU usage when I am doing something.
When I open a Nature page in a browser the CPU pegs at 50%
activity (its a dual CPU machine and most browsers are single
threaded) and it stays there for many seconds until the page
actually displays. Has to be poor page design.
Of course the same applies to loading many cookies or scripts as
Harvey points out. Such is a sign of either (a) careless page design
or (b) seeking to control of the downstream computer in some way.
What is needed is better feedback tools so one can place pressure
on website designers to clean up their acts.
Robert
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