MIT Creates Algorithm That Speeds Up Page Load Time By 34% (softpedia.com)

An anonymous reader writes: MIT researchers have created an algorithm that analyzes web pages and creates dependency graphs for all network resources that need to be loaded (CSS, JS, images, etc.). The algorithm, called Polaris, will be presented this week at the USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation conference, and is said to be able to cut down page load times by 34%, on average. The larger and more resources a web page contains, the better the algorithm's efficiency gets -- which should be useful on today's JavaScript-heavy sites.

Comments

So fast

[SeaFox]

I got first post!

Re:So fast

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Great, now we'll have even more first posts for every page on the Internet. As if seven plus minus three weren't enough.

Re:So fast

[davester666]

In other news, most websites announced they are upgrading to new larger graphics and javascript libraries, as a necessary first step in ensuring their pages don't load too fast.

Re:So fast

[Dominare]

You're absolutely right, even though I suspect you were half-joking. We all know by now that programs tend to expand to use the available resources and there's little reason to think this will be any different. If we're loading pages "34% faster" then we can soon expect those pages to be filled with 34% more ads!

Now the next step

[Anonymous Coward]

Now, the next logical step is to have this algorithm analyze the actual scripts and figure out a way to convince the various malwares that they've been loaded satisfactorily even though they haven't. That way you could avoid downloading almost 99% of modern web pages.

Re:Now the next step

[Anonymous Coward]

Now, the next logical step is to have this algorithm analyze the actual scripts and figure out a way to convince the various malwares that they've been loaded satisfactorily even though they haven't. That way you could avoid downloading almost 99% of modern web pages.

I run the NoScript extension, so I already get all of those benefits without any need for fancy page analysis.

Re:Now the next step

[rudy_wayne]

No, the next step is to kill Javascript which has now become a cancer that is destroying the Internet.

Re:Now the next step

[Anonymous Coward]

For any techie that's security conscious and willing to twiddle with domains in whitelist mode, I highly recommend Noscript. For people who are not so willing to invest that kind of time and effort, Noscript's blacklist mode is recommended.

Watch your hard-earned tweaking work go to waste in a second:
* Parent visits. Tries to opens Facebook. Fails. Complains.
* Friend your own age visits. Tries to watch videos off some random domain. Didn't fail?? Oh, he DID just start off with that OTHER browser you can't uninstall. :)
I really like Noscript, but keep a profile with Flash enabled and other dangerous stuff for the visitors, at least in a "limited" account. They can't be bothered. They'll ask for IE by name sometimes, though I've hidden the icon and taken off the association

Re:Now the next step

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the next step is to kill Javascript which has now become a cancer that is destroying the Internet.

You kid, but regular users would be a little late to the party. Firefox killed the "Kill javascript" switch, remember?
That's waaaay back on Firefox 24.*
Yes, the browser is still my main, but I must keep it several versions behind until there's more trouble and upgrade nags than it's worth.

I grew complacent again at work this morning and went 44->45, my tabs and various menus stopped working.
Disabling multiprocess tabs should fix this again, because I've had this problem on nightly!
Oh, nope. That option was designed to be hidden from the general public too, while changing its behavior.

Re:Now the next step

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

No, the next step is to kill Javascript which has now become a cancer that is destroying the Internet.

I'd agree, but sadly, a huge number of sites won't work at all without Javascript. Even sadder, I actually need to use some of those sites.

And when I say "need", I mean "need", they're not optional for me, I have to use them for work or work-related stuff.

To be honest, I like some of the functionality that Javascript provides (ajax, responsive menus, etc) but yeah, it's wormed its way into even the most basic functions of many sites these days- a lot of sites won't even load a page without it.

Re:Now the next step

[KGIII]

Two things... I prefer uMatrix, it's awesome. It is better than NoScript in my opinion and is whitelist-based. It now has a neat feature that lets you sync it across multiple profiles via the same mechanism that lets you sync your tabs. Yes, it is that awesome. You just need to enable the cloud mode. It's an odd name so i didn't notice it until last release.

The other thing is, if they increase the speed by 34% and people start doing that, they'll just cram more shit in their sites so that it ends up actually being 34% slower after six months. It sure was nice when nobody else had broadband or ad-blockers installed. Man, the web was fast. :/ My speed's gone up but I swear, I have no numbers to prove it, it seems like it is slower.

I had some speedy broadband at the end of the 90s and we had fiber in my office. The net still had .GIF images, maybe some MPEG. I was not just king of Napster, I had a giant hub that ran OpenNap and peered five other OpenNap servers with it. And it was still fast. I think it was only like 3 Mb/sec service. Maybe? I don't remember that long ago - but I'm pretty sure it's not rose-tinted glasses telling me that the actual surfing was a hell of lot faster. Even with blocking and whatnot...

I want something like OffByOne for Linux. I can filter ads out at the firewall if I get less lazy.

Re:Now the next step

[Blaskowicz]

Dillo is the crazy stupid fast browser, it's fast like running Lynx but is a real graphical browser.
The biggest downside is you can't log in to anything, though that used to be possible a decade ago. (I wish the middle click scrolling worked more like firefox too)

Funnily Slashdot is the site that needs javascript the most out there in my experience. Most pages even dreadful ones are read top to bottom, /. need that javascript/ajax thing to load threaded comments else it's a pain.

Re:Now the next step

[khelms]

Wait. I thought Flash was the cancer that was destroying the Internet.

Re:Now the next step

[KGIII]

Indeed. It is fast. Ugly as all hell but it compiled nicely enough. It threw a few errors and I needed to get the FLTK as that wasn't installed. Slashdot is somehow uglier than normal.

Re:Now the next step

[KGIII]

Yeah, I have to login manually each time but it's not too bad. It eats the CSS here and doesn't display well at all. It won't load the mobile site but I bet it'd be just fine for a bunch of things.

The trouble is, more and more sites are starting to rely on some scripting if you want full functionality or any functionality at all.

This does, however, bring back some fond memories.

I think it could use some decorative things - like CSS guessing, fit text to width, SSL support, and the likes. By the way, this and the last were sent in this.

Nifty, thanks. There's a Lynx critter that supports a mouse, a little. I want to say elinks or something? I dunno. That was just a little too mundane but it actually let me stay logged in to Slashdot.

Re:Now the next step

[serviscope_minor]

Er,

Dillo user here. Using dillo right now. I mostly brows using this if I can since it is so damn fast. I get deeply aggravated by the sluggishness of chrome and firefox by comparison. If you go into settings on slashdot and enable classic mode, not only does it work perfectly in dillo, it's like going back to a rose-tinted version of a decade ago, because not only is shit fast, it's REALLY FAST since it's as liughtweight as back then, but your computer and browser are much faster.

Re:Now the next step

[silentcoder]

Go one better, implement a php interpreter in JS, then have your page load a JS script containing the interpreter which loads the PHP scripts and runs them client-side and finally renders the html output (which, of course, can contain lots of JS again - so you can even have your php output JS which contains the interpreter and go full inception mode).

Then market it to companies as having all the power of PHP but client side so they don't need such powerful servers to host pages.

Re:Now the next step

[Bengie]

I actually had an issue with NoScript in Chrome that caused my tabs to sometimes use a large amount of CPU and other times crash. I couldn't even go to Google.com without it crashing. Some pages with absolutely no external links or even javascript would take tens of second to load with it enabled and pretty much instant with it disabled. I was able to find people complaining about this starting many many years ago. I eventually built a new computer, fresh install of Windows. Gave it another try before I even installed any other software in order to see if there was a conflict with a program I had previously installed in my old computer. Same issue. uMatrix has worked fine for me.

Re:Now the next step

[Coren22]

Or just give them their own temporary/guest account on your computer and not worry about what they do? You could even use a read only VM, or boot off a CD and let them use that.

You don't give people access to your main account on your computer do you? That would be a terrible thing for privacy and security.

Re:Now the next step

[KGIII]

That'd be kind of neat. I've done jack and squat for any web work as of late. I am supposed to be involved on a project with a friend of mine (a competition of sorts) but he's asked for an extension to our start date. I should probably be using this time to pick up some skills and refresh my memory.

Re:Now the next step

[Dashiva Dan]

Go one better, implement a php interpreter in JS, then have your page load a JS script containing the interpreter which loads the PHP scripts and runs them client-side and finally renders the html output (which, of course, can contain lots of JS again - so you can even have your php output JS which contains the interpreter and go full inception mode).

Then market it to companies as having all the power of PHP but client side so they don't need such powerful servers to host pages.

Oh dear, I actually almost like this....
(almost)
My current position of a year hired me as a LAMP stack programmer, then revealed they effectively have 0 server access, and need all this junk developed in javascript - Including saving and recovering settings, etc, etc... So for the last year I've been developing in javascript, which I now totally loathe. But the benefit of having PHP (or whatever server side language) is that it.... runs on the server, and (for most websites of appreciable size) work with a centralised database, which can become a trove of business-actionable data, etc, etc... so as fun as a client side PHP interpreter might be, it doesn't really solve anything.
(I can see someone selling it to a ton of project managers however)

Re:Now the next step

[KGIII]

I like your sig. ;-) I write novellas on a very regular basis. (See comment history if curious.)

However, I'll spare you - this once.

My current position of a year hired me as a LAMP stack programmer, then revealed they effectively have 0 server access, and need all this junk developed in javascript

Umm... How the hell does that even happen? A bit more specifically, the "0 server" access part is also intriguing.

Re:Now the next step

[Blaskowicz]

There is SSL support (or let's say, some HTTPS support), some CSS support.
Best of all the browser is actively developed, changelog for the upcoming/unreleased version has the kinds of improvements you wish for (well I don't know what CSS guessing is, but they mention things that have to do with 'width' and CSS)

Re:Now the next step

[KGIII]

Yeah, I'm going to recompile it with HTTPS support. I'm not sure why I didn't do so the first time. I should probably ask 'em what kind of other switches are available. Who knows? Maybe there's something I can do to help. Probably not but it's an idea. I've got a ton of stuff on my plate at the moment so it's hard telling. Maybe I'll just send 'em a few bucks - they can get together and have pizza and beer on me.

It does look like an interesting project and like it has some good potential. I should ask about their tool chain and see if there's a way that I can take a look and maybe at least do a little something to help out. It'd almost certainly never be my main browser but there are many times when I'm just as happy with plain text and a few other features like having a mouse.

I do like elinks at times. I know... I'm not supposed to like it. I really do, it's great for sites with just plain text. I can pop it up in TTY and have a grand old time. I've even browsed/used /. with it - on more than one occasion. On the off-chance that you're unfamiliar with it, here's a link:
http://elinks.cz/index.html

It's a lot like Lynx except you have a mouse. Well, there's no mouse if you're using it in TTY. Hmm... I wonder... You know... Lemme try something... :/ (This is how it always begins...)

Hmm... I think I can get GPM working and have a mouse in the virtual terminal. I am on a mission! *sighs* Yup, this is how it begins, every time.

Re:Now the next step

[Blaskowicz]

I did use elinks, I even found a good use for it : set up CUPS on a remote host (accessing the web interface from localhost).
Some routers can be accessed but not all

Re:Now the next step

[KGIII]

Alright, now I'm curious... Why elinks for that?

Sorry if I'm bugging you - I'm always trying to learn new things and to get additional opinions. If it helps, I only ask for such from people who seem intelligent and I value their opinions greatly. Contrary to popular opinion, I do not know everything and there's opinions other than my own that are quite valuable.

Re:Now the next step

[Blaskowicz]

Because with the default configuration the web interface is available only from localhost I think, not the LAN. So I thought it woud be fun to ssh in and do it from the terminal, although I had other options.
As for a browser for daily use (any uses) a buddy asked me what to do. My opinion was that a "lightweight browser" that is full-featured still (such as Midori or other) can't be an answer anymore, because the web itself is monstrously bloated. I left it at that, and he went with NoScript :)

Re:Now the next step

[Dashiva Dan]

I like your sig. ;-) I write novellas on a very regular basis. (See comment history if curious.)

However, I'll spare you - this once.

My current position of a year hired me as a LAMP stack programmer, then revealed they effectively have 0 server access, and need all this junk developed in javascript

Umm... How the hell does that even happen? A bit more specifically, the "0 server" access part is also intriguing.

I work for a small government department on one of their websites currently. Please don't expect me to be able to explain any of the business practices here, they make my head hurt.
As for server access, apparently the hosting (and original development) was contracted out, and any server changes require about a month of communication and meetings. And my boss loves javascript.
Your sig isn't bad too; I love how casual dolphins are :)
I should update my sig however. At least half the time I manage to keep my posts short now. Well, nearly half the time. Some of the time.

Re:Now the next step

[KGIII]

If your buddy has a technical bent, there's a small learning curve, there's something called uMatrix. It's a bit like an old-school software firewall except it's just for the browser and is whitelist based. Yes, yes it is awesome. Once you get up to speed and add your regular sites and configure for least privilege then you're golden and it's trivial to browse the web with reasonable security from browser exploits.

Re:Now the next step

[KGIII]

I modeled traffic and, as such, I worked mostly for municipalities/governments of various sizes including federal and some international work. (Long since sold and retired.) I understand... Just "government" means that I understand that I do not understand, nor do I want to.

That said, anything worth saying is usually too long to fit on a bumper sticker or make a sound-bite for television. (Bite or byte? I have no idea, having seen it both ways and being too lazy to look.) I also hate repeating myself and, this being Slashdot, I'm often inclined to include all the caveats and prevent all the stupid replies from happening by ensuring that they're covered.

The best part is that people see the length of my replies and think I'm smart. At least that's how the moderation often works. Suffice to say, it's not really that smart - it's just complete.

Is it called ad block plus?

[jimbob6]

I have something kinda like that its called No Script.

Re:Is it called ad block plus?

[dsmatthews9379]

To see a big difference try all of these together Disconnect + AdBlock + ScriptBlock + FlashBlock + Vanilla (cookie blocker and manager)

Re:Is it called ad block plus?

[cheater512]

The big difference being nothing working.

Re:Is it called ad block plus?

[c0d3g33k]

And nothing of value was lost.

Re:Is it called ad block plus?

[Anonymous Coward]

To see a big difference try all of these together Disconnect + AdBlock + ScriptBlock + FlashBlock + Vanilla (cookie blocker and manager)

So instead of just running NoScript, which I can use to selectively whitelist if I choose, and does everything those others do (except cookies) I'm supposed to install and run five different extension, at least one of which (AdBlock) is known to accept money to exclude sites from its blacklist?

No thanks, I'll stick with curating my own whitelist. I really don't care much about cookie management since all my cookies just auto-delete when I close tabs. And I'm not doing it to "stick it to Tha Man, Maaaan" so I really don't care if sites show me non-script based ads.

Re:Is it called ad block plus?

[Cito]

Adblock plus does not accept any money to exclude any sites.

It uses the exact same blocklists every adblocking service uses, from adblocking at dd-wrt level router plugin to Alternative-DNS a free dns servers that block ads at the dns level:
http://www.alternate-dns.com/

the only thing adblock plus added was a checkbox that defaults to unchecked. But if you do check it the only ad it will allow is adsense. Yet noone checks the exlude.

I have 7 blocklists in my adblock plug, from peter lowe's list to the "Adblock Detector blocker" list.

with adblock detector blocker, you no longer get sites that say "We detected you are running adblock, blah blah blah"

also by not allowing the detection of adblock you can now easily block ads on sites that have embedded ads in video like Hulu. :P

There is also a greasemonkey script to hide and block the detection of adblocking plugins.

Anti-Adblock killer: http://userscripts-mirror.org/...

Adblock plus does not get paid to exclude any sites. that's a false statement as the code is open source. you can allow adsense if you want to support some dumbass youtuber begging for sheckels or just leave it off as it is by default.

And never run just 1 blocklist, get the ad blocking list, then get the peter lowe malware, social media like, plus, share, all social media embeds. And block statistic gathering like Statcounter and Alexia from measuring your visits.

Re:Is it called ad block plus?

[KGIII]

I repeat myself but you can save a lot of time and effort just by using uMatrix. Seriously, it does all that and it's tiny as all hell. It's like an old-school software firewall except it's just for your browser. And it is awesome. Err... I've collected a bunch of people who've tried it and claimed to like it. I'm on a mission!

Actually, I'm not even remotely affiliated and I don't particularly care what you use but I've seen you post before and you seem reasonably sane. So, I figure you *really* might want to take a look at it.

I discovered a new feature the other day. I used to export and save my configurations. Now? I don't have to - but I can. I just enable cloud mode and it goes through the same process that does the bookmarking if you're signed into the server to allow that. Opera lets you encrypt the syncing with your own key. I can't speak for the other browsers. Even if they didn't, I'd opt to share that data. (I don't mind sharing data, I mind data being collected without my consent.)

Anyhow, there's a Firefox version of uMatrix now. I've never tried it. It looks the same. It should function the same. There's a slight learning curve but you'll be fine. I've exported my settings and filters and whatnot and have let others use them to get an idea of what it can do.

He's the guy that makes uBlock Origin and HTTP Switchboard, they're all really similar and you can accomplish much of the same tasks with all of them. I don't need to run uBlock but I do. Why? It hides the spaces the ads went a little better and I use uBlock as a poor-idiot's Stylish by adding filters to get rid of shit I don't want to see on a per-element basis. I don't have to do that - but I can.

If you're curious, just search your browser's extension/add-on page for uMatrix. The source is up on GitHub if you want to view it. The guy's pretty cool. I don't want to be specific but I sent him an email offering to donate a decent sum of money for one-man project. I didn't want anything in return. I was just trying to thank him. He declined and pointed to an updated FAQ. He does *not* accept donations or anything of the sort. (It also passes my "new extension Wireshark and firewall logs" test with flying colors. I've seen zero packets that could not be accounted for - not even encrypted streams.)

Re: Is it called ad block plus?

[Type44Q]

I've collected a bunch of people

I guess that's better than collecting just their heads or something...

Re: Is it called ad block plus?

[KGIII]

I don't know about better. A bunch of shrunken heads would be kind of awesome. And, if you've never tried uMatrix, give it a spin. *nods*

I'm actually really, really satisfied with it. Sometimes I don't even bother with uBlock. I just use a live USB OS and keep things in RAM. I do that a lot, oddly. I don't really store any data locally so it's maybe five minutes to get things up to a good browsing experience. I should probably do a few roll-my owns with persistent storage.

Re:Is it called ad block plus?

[AmiMoJo]

But why bother with AdBlock when uBlock is faster, more open, doesn't take any money for any reason and provides even more features?

Yeah, but

[fisted]

would still be cooler if there was no 'dependency graph' of dynamically loaded resources behind my every HTTP request.

Re:Yeah, but

[Mouldy]

This page loaded 488KB of data. It took my browser 25.5 seconds* to download it all. What you're suggesting is all of that page data be included in a single response? So the browser would have to wait 25.5 seconds before it could even start rendering the page? Where it'd be difficult for the browser to then cache content that could be shared across multiple pages? Compare that to the current dependency structure where the DOM was loaded in 2.41 seconds & the page was considered loaded at 5.91 seconds.

Browsers are already pretty good at doing things in parallel and with proper web development, you can sensibly prioritise external content so that the user can see the important/useful bits of a page while the rest downloads in the background to add the polish on top.

I'm obviously being pedantic here because I'm sure that's not what you literally meant. It could be argued in my example that the majority of /.'s 25.5 second load time was for non-critical assets/content considering the page was usable much before the 25.5 seconds had elapsed. But to take that to the extreme & cut out all the non-essential content, we'd end up with a web much like it was in the 80s where everything was just basic text; which would be blisteringly fast on modern connections.

But, alas, this isn't the 80s any more. Web publishers actually want to make money for the services they're providing the world. Consumers are swayed by swishy graphics & interactive DOM elements. Modal popups asking for email addresses do actually increase conversion rates. Tracking and analytics data are genuinely useful to businesses to forecast or tweak things to suit trends & usage. Websites serve so many people now that rendering user-specific pages server side is extremely expensive & slow when they could use a CDN to serve up generic page templates & an API for user data & let user browsers piece everything together.

* Actually, it's a bit vague because /., like many other sites, periodically poll various trackers so I just took the 25.5 seconds to be around where it looked like everything except the polling-javascript finished downloading.

Re:Yeah, but

[fisted]

What you're suggesting is all of that page data be included in a single response?

No. Please think harder.

Re:Yeah, but

[arth1]

would still be cooler if there was no 'dependency graph' of dynamically loaded resources behind my every HTTP request.

Yeah, TANSTAAFL.

Also, always be weary when seeing weasel words like "up to". It's an euphemism for "less than". The overall benefit can even be negative while still satisfying the "up to" claim.

Re:Yeah, but

[Mouldy]

What you're suggesting is all of that page data be included in a single response?

No. Please think harder.

Care to enlighten? Or are you just going to keep to short comments with no real content in them and leave people guessing what you mean?

Re:Yeah, but

[fisted]

My comment was short because I didn't feel like continuing to read yours after

It took my browser 25.5 seconds* to download it all [whereas with a single response] the browser would have to wait 25.5 seconds before it could even start rendering the page?

because it is so obviously flawed reasoning that I had to assume you're trolling.
You can certainly have a full answer:

This page loaded 488KB of data. It took my browser 25.5 seconds* to download it all.

So we agree there's a problem. You do realize (since you're going to mention it) that most of this time is spent traversing the "dependency graph" to pull external resources.

What you're suggesting is all of that page data be included in a single response?

I wasn't suggesting anything particular, but if so I'd be suggesting to do away with most of the junk entirely.

So the browser would have to wait 25.5 seconds before it could even start rendering the page?

I'm startled about how you could possibly believe it would still take 25.5 seconds, when you at the same time seem to realize that a lot of the delay comes from external sites.
That's like complaining about your 3km commute taking 1 hour in stop-and-go traffic, but then arguing that the alternative, 1 hour of high-speed driving, would be just as exhausting. Do you see the flaw?

Where it'd be difficult for the browser to then cache content that could be shared across multiple pages?

Of which there is a huge lot, right? Especially big images and videos are frequently shared across multiple pages. Oh wait, they aren't. It's tiny, irrelevant shit like facebooks "like"-icon that might be shared, but then again, this isn't worthy to cache. Furthermore, caching is mostly irrelevant if non-cached requests don't take very long in the first place. This is basically the same flaw in reasoning as pointed out in the preceding paragraph.

Compare that to the current dependency structure where the DOM was loaded in 2.41 seconds & the page was considered loaded at 5.91 seconds.

I'm not sure what your point is, or what this has to do with the matter. Feel free to elaborate.

Browsers are already pretty good at doing things in parallel

Except, according to you, starting to render an incomplete page before the </html> tag is encountered.
You should note that what external resources are going to be fetched is not a-priori knowledge, though, so your browser cannot just parallelize from the start. It has to wait for the main document which contains references to 1st order depencendies, which it *then* might attempt to parallely fetch, until those contain references to 2nd-order dependencies, and so on. Sometimes not before the javascript engine hat its go at them. There is no such thing as a This-site-will-require: <exhaustive list of resources> HTTP-header.

and with proper web development,

..which seems to be the exception..

you can sensibly prioritise external content so that the user can see the important/useful bits of a page

..like the "This page requires javascript to work"-document..

while the rest downloads in the background

..which sites already do, with moderate success..

to add the polish on the turd.

FTFY. Seriously. "Adding polish on top" makes it sound like the status quo was already very good.

I'm obviously being pedantic here because I'm sure that's not what you literally meant.

I'm not sure what that refers to.

It could be argued in my example that the majority of /.'s 25.5 second load time was for non-critical assets/content considering the page was usable mu

Fix the sites first

[markdavis]

They would all load a lot freaking faster if they would stop designing them with multiple, stupid, scrolling, 20 megapixel background images and dozens of megabytes of irritating javascript "special effects". Just saying.

Re:Fix the sites first

[The-Ixian]

Yeah exactly.

Right here on /. NoScript blocks 7 domains out of 9 and the site looks and loads fine.

Re:Fix the sites first

[AHuxley]

A lot of different ideas have been tried. From Microsoft Chrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... that allowed the users own computer to produce rich content.
Add more gzip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...?
Give the user the site text or images to get them looking, then load in the ads? Load the ads first, then present the full page?
The problem is all the trackers, ads, super cookies need to be connected. Giving the users a bit of quick up front content to then allow ads to load is fun. Keep the user looking for the seconds as the many complex ads get loaded.
What can a site do? Run a script to detect an ad blocker? Suggest a monthly payment and block the page from that user or request the ad block is removed?
The user can then opt to block scripts and have minimal content or not return to the site.

Re:Fix the sites first

[KingMotley]

A better solution is just to bake all the advertising and trackers right into the browser itself so that it doesn't need to keep redownloading it for every site.

Re:Fix the sites first

[Forever Wondering]

What can a site do? Run a script to detect an ad blocker? Suggest a monthly payment and block the page from that user or request the ad block is removed?

Wired http://www.wired.com/ has started doing that and I've started not visiting their site, even though I whitelisted them so I could do it for free. Screw them ...

On the other hand, Stack Overflow https://stackoverflow.com/ has stated publicly that they are fine with ad blockers. Their reasoning is that if you're running one, you don't want ads, and wouldn't click on any if you saw them.

Re:Fix the sites first

[R3d M3rcury]

...Or Spinning Logos.

Re:Fix the sites first

[CanadianMacFan]

Came here to say that. "Designers" and most people that create websites are all concerned about style and not about how it functions. Toss in the fact that they are all on well equipped machines and good networks which makes everything load quickly and they never see the problem so it never gets fixed. It would be great if they even just optimized the images for size!

About ten years ago I was on the maintenance group for a bunch of government websites and there was one site on Cold Fusion. It was slow as molasses and took about 20 seconds to load the main page on our local network. One day I looked into it and I got the page to load in under a second. I showed it to the manager responsible for the site and she was amazed at the difference. One simple change. I moved the graphics off of the Cold Fusion server and onto Apache. All of our web applications were serving graphics from the application servers. Almost all of our apps were written in Java and it would have been easy to move the images to the Apache server and change an environment variable. It wouldn't have been as dramatic improvement but the whole site would have improved as the application servers wouldn't have spent so much time handling requests for images.

Nothing got done.

Re:Fix the sites first

[zwarte piet]

Well, maybe but then we would need technology that ensures the content is only available if the browser can prove to the website that the ads are actually displayed, not just routed to /dev/null

Re:Fix the sites first

[zwarte piet]

Then the ads need to be on the same host, or you would use twice the bandwidth and who will pay that? That might be impossible if you use third party ads.

Re:Fix the sites first

[zwarte piet]

Still better than one of those flash based pinball machine like websites.

It's called AdBlocker

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> Algorithm That Speeds Up Page Load Time By 34%

It's called AdBlocker

Re:It's called AdBlocker

[KiloByte]

Ad blockers do more than 34%, especially if you block tracking rather than just visible stuff.

cut page load times by 90% instantly

[ihtoit]

disable javascript.

Re:cut page load times by 90% instantly

[ihtoit]

only an idiot thinks javascript is vital to the usefulness of the internet.

Re:cut page load times by 90% instantly

[khelms]

Only an idiot would reply to this thread. ...oh, wait.

Re:cut page load times by 90% instantly

[ihtoit]

I never said that. I said it's not vital.

Re:cut page load times by 90% instantly

[ihtoit]

what, because I don't agree with you?

How about a rebuttal intead of namecalling?

Re:cut page load times by 90% instantly

[silentcoder]

That would be an increase to infinity, not a decrease to zero. Literally the exact OPPOSITE of a 100% cut.

You must be using common core math...

Re:cut page load times by 90% instantly

[Medievalist]

Only an idiot thinks this is viable on today's internet.

I'm curious about why you say this.

I'm a computer professional and I've been working full time on the Internet since before it went commercial. I spend eight or more hours a day with a web browser open, and I make enough money to own a home and an acre of productive land, four vehicles, have two children in college, and donate a significant portion of my income to social causes I support. I hope to have a comfortable retirement on my savings, assuming Washington doesn't permanently break the economy before then.

What, exactly, am I missing out on by not bothering with javascript? How is my life and work "not viable" to use your expression?

Incidentally, I made this post without any javascript turned on. I see five script sources, and there would probably be more if I ran those, but I haven't run any of them.

Re:cut page load times by 90% instantly

[ihtoit]

I was parroting the parent.

Vulcanising and HTTP2 Push are the way to go, IMHO

[Qbertino]

Vulcanising and HTTP2 Push are the way to go.
Allthough I do wonder if this method then still has a chance of improving a sites performance.
Personally I'd say well and automatically curated HTTP2 Push and automated minifying and compression are probably the best method overall.
I do doubt that this method could improve much more if that were in place.

But I could be wrong.

Does anyone have experience with http-push and perhaps some insights to offer?
Please comment below. Thanks.

There may be more comments in this discussion.

[turkeydance]

Without JavaScript enabled, you might want to turn on Classic Discussion System in your preferences instead.

no, 51% more ads!

[oneiros27]

You forget -- those ads would be 34% faster, too ... so you could get 51% more ads in the same time it took to serve the original bloated page.

You know what would speed web page loading?

[smooth wombat]

Not having 14 scripts be needed to post a comment, not having 8 other scripts clogging the pipes for one advertisement, 6 scripts for tracking you, and multiple other scripts for whatever reason.

Nor having a giant, moving graphic as the base part of your page which can't be turned off, menus which bounce up or down when you hover your mouse over them, or needing to have the latest and greatest browser so you don't miss out on the latest and greatest "features" of a site.

But no, finding an algorithm to speed web page loading is what we should concentrate on.

Re:You know what would speed web page loading?

[Jahmbo]

anything introduced after the blink tag was trashed is pure shite.

Re:It's Needed

[whipslash]

What's your download speed? I can browse most of the web pretty painlessly

Re:It's Needed

[__aaclcg7560]

We are now only discovering the terrible price of web standardisation and brower stability.

Web design was a lot simpler when the lowest common speed was a 56K dial-up. Now that everyone is connected to the Internet with a fire hose on the last mile, most web designers don't even stop to optimize their pages.

Re:It's Needed

[whipslash]

http://www.wonder-tonic.com/ge...

Re:It's Needed

[__aaclcg7560]

http://hampsterdance.com/classics/originaldance.htm

Re:It's Needed

[__aaclcg7560]

Oh, that's already well in progress.

Seems like all those IE6-only intranet websites are finally fading from existence.

Reading TFA

[darkain]

I went and actually read TFA. It seems all they've done is create a bastardized version of a less efficient SPDY/HTTP2 protocol fetching system. Essentially, they're trying to solve a problem that is already solved, but the existing solution is already faster, more efficient, and more well thought out in general.

Re:Reading TFA

[johannesg]

> I went and actually read TFA

Thank you brother. Your sacrifice is appreciated by all.

Re:Reading TFA

[Anonymous Coward]

I went and actually read TFA. It seems all they've done is create a bastardized version of a less efficient SPDY/HTTP2 protocol fetching system. Essentially, they're trying to solve a problem that is already solved, but the existing solution is already faster, more efficient, and more well thought out in general.

When they get their degrees from MIT, they're already well-prepared to go to work on systemd.

Re:Vulcanising and HTTP2 Push are the way to go, I

[darkain]

Here is a good example: https://http2.akamai.com/demo

Another Algorithm

[RichMan]

Identify the advertisements client side and don't load them. Speeds up loading and rendering pages a lot.

Why not EXI instead of XML and IR instead of JS?

[jensend]

I guess the browser-side performance isn't so much what they're talking about (rather, reducing network round-trips), but still, I have always wondered why we're still sending xml and js, plain or gzipped, rather than sending compact binary formats.

EXI is a W3C standard; it's more compact than gzipped xml and it's more than a dozen times faster to parse.

Rather than coding in JS all the time, lots of people are using javascript as an intermediate representation or bytecode. This is tremendously inefficient.

Though the WebAssembly effort sounds like people are finally realizing they need to address the problem, it sure seems like they're approaching it from a rather odd angle. asm.js and pnacl don't necessarily seem like where one should start if one has the freedom to design a new IR.

Sweet

[jader3rd]

Sweet, now I can bog down my sites with more eye candy, and the users won't notice a slowdown.

Re:It's Needed

[Anonymous Coward]

What's your download speed? I can browse most of the web pretty painlessly

The download speed isn't the problem. The rendering speed isn't even the problem. The problem is multiple DNS lookups and TCP/IP setup/teardowns for craptons of, well, crap that add no value to the content in the first place.

Web "developers" need to stop fucking around with the latest framework and just build a http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/, and if that's not good enough, they can just build a http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/.

Dear Slashot Editors

[Anonymous Coward]

In an effort to regain love of your brand, can we please link directly to the relevant news site and paper (when not paywalled), and not some third-party site that has no value-add?
- http://news.mit.edu/2016/system-loads-web%20pages-34-percent-faster-0309
- http://web.mit.edu/ravinet/www/polaris_nsdi16.pdf

The dependency graph for weather.com alone in the actual paper would lead to a much richer discussion upfront in the comment sections.

EDIT: captcha - euphoria

Re:Take it one step further...

[KingMotley]

OK. http://codepen.io/anon/pen/yOO...

Re:Take it one step further...

[kuzb]

...which is exactly what every popular CMS does...

Re:Take it one step further...

[__aaclcg7560]

...which is exactly what every popular CMS does...

The Joomla! CMS took six seconds or longer to load itself before displaying a dynamically-generated page on one of my websites. After I converted the website to static pages, each page loaded in less than five seconds. More tweaking is needed to reduce the load times. The average Internet user has an attention span of a goldfish (i.e., six seconds or less).

Re:It's Needed

[ihtoit]

Hey, Spartacus, put your name to this post, it's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen! Fuck scripting, just write the motherfucking content! I've only been saying that for the past twenty fucking YEARS!

Re:It's Needed

[ihtoit]

I still write for dialup because I want page loads to take 0.01s, not the what 15 SECONDS that Facebook takes on 200Meg wired fucking BROADBAND? It seriously takes the piss, and I'm still trying to figure out what takes fucking Wikipedia so long to load when I run a WM instance on a dual core netbook and with 380GB of content it's still INSTANT.

Re:Take it one step further...

[__aaclcg7560]

But people don't like frames being used.

Frames are so 1990-ish.

Re:Take it one step further...

[CanadianMacFan]

One place I was at was looking at implementing a new CMS and at one meeting we were discussing the options for the architecture of the system. I was from the maintenance group and was there to provide feedback because we would be looking after it long term. I was in favour of having the system generate static HTML pages whenever a change happens (something the software supported and that we saw another department implement) because it would reduce the hardware required for serving the site. Well, we had the servers already so it would allow us greater capacity with what we had. Also if the CMS goes down the site still is live.

Anyway I promptly got told that I didn't know what I was doing because it was much harder to generate the static HTML than to create the pages dynamically. I've always wondered why that was because the static HTML was exactly the same as what was going to be sent to the user as what was dynamically generated. I didn't stick around to ask because the first question I would have asked the head software architect was how he would have known whether what I was doing was right or wrong because after a couple of years of cleaning up his messes he certainly was qualified to tell.

Re:Take it one step further...

[CanadianMacFan]

They may support it but not every site generates static pages and shows them. Many create their content dynamically even if it would be more efficient to use static pages.

Re:Take it one step further...

[__aaclcg7560]

Also if the CMS goes down the site still is live.

I got tired of hackers beating down the doors of the CMS and occasionally crashing the website. After I converted the website to static pages, the hackers went away because there was nothing to hack.

Re:It's Needed

[ChunderDownunder]

I may be missing the "satire" here but Line-Width, seriously? I shouldn't have to scroll vertically to read your text because you've made a stylistic decision to limit the viewable area to 60-80 characters.

Surely that's the responsibility of a window manager to adjust horizontal width?

*whoosh* ?

Re:It's Needed

[Daniel Klugh]

I agree that the first site is better. And what's with the second site being gzip-compressed; whether my browser (Links) supports it or not. I see the same thing with the Playstation 3's browser as well.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re: Take it one step further...

[Type44Q]

Mosaic?

Thanks MIT...

[rnturn]

``The larger and more resources a web page contains, the better the algorithm's efficiency gets -- which should be useful on today's JavaScript-heavy sites.''

Browsers don't have enough trouble properly dealing with all the JavaScript that web sites shove down out Internet connection now. How nice that you've found a way for web sites lard up their pages with even more of the stuff.

Re:It's Needed

[brantondaveperson]

We did we do that?

To be fair, those cat pictures were pretty distracting.

Re:Why not EXI instead of XML and IR instead of JS

[irrational_design]

All I can say from my own experience as a web developer is that I'd much rather have a human readable format (JSON) than a binary format. It is invaluable when debugging problems.

Re:Noscript

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm on your lawn, fuck you.

The OP really does have a very valid point.

I use FF with adblock, noscript and ghostery installed and my browsing is lighting fast. On my, currently unrooted nexus 6p, I have Chrome and no real means of blocking ads or scripts, bar disabling javascript entirely. The difference between browsing with no ad / script filters is appalling. I've come across many websites I'll just terminate because they load so much shit. Once I make my RMA claim I'm rooting and installing an adblocker.

Not So fast

[invictusvoyd]

Their next project should be an algorithm which converts pages with "scripting junk" to plain nice HTML which can be readable by any browser.

Re:It's Needed

[Waccoon]

Sure they do. Designers now make their pages behave like "apps" with AJAX everywhere, loading content on demand to reduce overall traffic!

Of course, the actual effect is that the "Back" button and all other standard navigation breaks, URLs don't update, scroll bars get fucked up, direct links are impossible, and browser memory usage balloons, making the site feel more like a Flash-based page from the 1990's.

The real result

[argStyopa]

Not (apparently) having learned anything from the switch to digital tv broadcasting (where the higher bandwidth was not used for better quality, but was co opted to shovel more channels of low quality shit) this "34% faster" algorithm will simply result in web coders programming at least 34% more crap ads and scripts into web pages.

Re:Noscript

[Half-pint HAL]

We'd need far less Javascript if they just implemented and tags in HTML. The need for them has been apparent for well over a dozen years.

Re:Vulcanising and HTTP2 Push are the way to go, I

[AmiMoJo]

Google has been working on a new compression scheme where the dictionary is fixed and stored in the browser. It makes sense since a lot of HTML and Javascript is highly repetitive and would likely be selected for inclusion in the dictionary by gzip anyway. You can even optimize Javascript to be more compressible under this scheme.

Re:Noscript

[silentcoder]

I only use chrome on PCs. On the phone where chrome doesn't support extensions (like adblockers) - I used FF with ABP instead.

Re:Why not EXI instead of XML and IR instead of JS

[jensend]

For binary XML, as well as for the various fledgling binary json or binary yaml formats, the binary representation can be quickly converted to a plaintext one that has basically only minor formatting differences from the original. (I was about to say "to a human-readable one that..." but that's a stretch for a lot of XML.)

An AST / IR / bytecode is decompilable; e.g. from what I understand LLVM can do a good job of translating its IR back to C. Obviously a lot more information that could help with human comprehensibility is lost in that process than in the cases above. But decompiled IR can be as readable as minified JS source code is.

Of course, even without using any of these, what's sent over the wire is usually not human readable anyways, it's just that the tools to translate these other formats back to plaintext are higher-level than gzip is.