Slashdot Mirror


Slashdot Asks: Why Are Browsers So Slow? (ilyabirman.net)

Designer Ilya Birman writes: I understand why rendering a complicated layout may be slow. Or why executing a complicated script may be slow. Actually, browsers are rather fast doing these things. If you studied programming and have a rough idea about how many computations are made to render a page, it is surprising the browsers can do it all that fast. But I am not talking about rendering and scripts. I am talking about everything else. Safari may take a second or two just to open a new blank tab on a 2014 iMac. And with ten or fifteen open tabs it eventually becomes sluggish as hell. Chrome is better, but not much so. What are they doing? The tabs are already open. Everything has been rendered. Why does it take more than, say, a thousandth of a second to switch between tabs or create a new one? Opening a 20-megapixel photo from disk doesn't take any noticeable amount of time, it renders instantaneously. Browsers store their stuff in memory. Why can't they just show the pixels immediately when I ask for them? [...] Unfortunately, modern browsers are so stupid that they reload all the tabs when you restart them. Which takes ages if you have a hundred of tabs. Opera was sane: it did not reload a tab unless you asked for it. It just reopened everything from cache. Which took a couple of seconds. Modern browsers boast their rendering and script execution performance, but that's not what matters to me as a user. I just don't understand why programmers spend any time optimising for that while the Chrome is laughably slow even by ten-years-old standards.Do you agree with Birman? If yes, why do you think browsers are generally slow today?

766 comments

  1. Why they are slow? by nospam007 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Because we need a canvas-blocker add-on and a flash-blocker add-on and a cookie warning remover add-on and add-ons to remove all the ads on the page and we need add-ons to remove the dozens of trackers to protect our privacy and also add-ons that remove all the social buttons (twitter, FB, etc) which share our behavior even if we are not a member and add-ons that remove all the javascripts that load popups, do unwanted refreshs and Greasemonkey to make some pages readable and remove the ads that are inside the articles and we need an add-on to circumvent the anti-adblockers and .....

    1. Re:Why they are slow? by nucrash · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Pretty much this.

      I feel that so many websites have gone to insane levels on ad loading that the web has become almost unusable by some standards.

      Yes, I say that with at minimum, 12 tabs open, but most problems I have are around specific ad revenue driven, ad block loathing sites.

      --
      Place something witty here
    2. Re:Why they are slow? by JaredOfEuropa · · Score: 5, Informative

      It's not just ads; a lot of websites pull in JS helper scripts from other sources (instead of hosting local copies of their own). And those sources do not always have the best performance.

      --
      If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
    3. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Using a good, fast third party source for these scripts can actually be a performance gain as things can load in parallel.

    4. Re:Why they are slow? by MouseR · · Score: 1

      Safari runs a web page as it's own process for security reasons.

      Every new window starts up a process. Open process viewer, filter on Safari, the just create empty tabs. You'll see the process list grow.

    5. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Simple solution: stop visiting those sites with obnoxious advertising.

    6. Re:Why they are slow? by SQLGuru · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The idea of not hosting your own local copy is that if everyone uses a common source for the library, then the browser should already have that resource cached even if it's the first time you hit the page. For large enough libraries that the Google CDN (or another CDN) includes it, it's worth it.

      https://developers.google.com/...
      https://www.asp.net/ajax/cdn
      https://www.keycdn.com/support...

      Now, for obscure libraries, you're better off hosting your own so that you can control the version and not worry about the referenced script changing/moving/breaking stuff.

    7. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Isn't process creation on the order of a millisecond or so on a modern computer?

    8. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Have a look at http://decentraleyes.org/, it solves some of what you mention by serving common js from a local copy on your machine instead of the CDN's.

    9. Re:Why they are slow? by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      Those add-ons are supposed to make the browser faster. I'm running Chrome on a fairly unremarkable machine with the many add-ons, and new tabs open instantly, a fraction of a second, as fast as I can ctrl-T and start typing an address/search query.

      Add-ons include:
      Feedly
      Google Docs
      PDF Viewer
      Privacy Badger
      Rikaikun
      SmoothScroll
      Tampermonkey
      uBlock Origin
      + many more

      I think the questioner's machine is either crap or bogged down with malware.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    10. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's not just that the site itself and the swarm of associated sources that fill up the web page (whether intended by the original site or served "courtesy" of ad farms) each bring in their ton of garbage libraries and helper scripts. Add to this the fact that many of these different components each makes its own set of AJAX requests in the background. Memory leaks are bound to accumulate--even if you have a well-designed Javascript engine that tries to clean up memory effectively. This is bad enough when you have only one website open, but it scales really badly when you've got lots of tabs and/or browser windows open. A function I'd *love* to have in a browser would let me disable Javascript for only that one open window.

    11. Re:Why they are slow? by CaptainDork · · Score: 1

      This.

      I am shielded from within the browser so much that I have to grant temporary permission to take one step forward.

      Looking at the stuff that's trying to load, the browser is doing some heavy lifting.

      In the old days (think Netscape) the browser loaded and just sat there with no home page, even.

      -

      Please allow me to step outside the lane here and poise to ponder how much faster and cleaner DOS would be if we had modern technology running a character-based system with no ads. In fact, Netscape had that feature.

      --
      It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
    12. Re:Why they are slow? by tepples · · Score: 1

      But how much memory can these processes share, so that duplicate content doesn't spill out of RAM and into swap? Reference counting turns copy-on-write into copy-on-read, as Benjamin Peterson explains in a talk about CPython's garbage collector.

    13. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Using a good, fast third party source

      LOL

      I see what you did there.

      Also, I just clicked on AdBlock Plus --> Open Blockable Items. There are 31 scripts on this page.

      31 MOTHERFUCKING SCRIPTS ON ONE PAGE!!! You people are insane.

    14. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Process creation may be, but then loading the program into memory, and dynamic linking all the libraries it needs to use are far from that fast, especially when you're dynamic linking an entire web rendering engine.

    15. Re:Why they are slow? by npslider · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's like watching a 7 minute television program in the space of an hour, divided up every 5 seconds by commercial breaks.. and trying to record the whole thnig sans commercials on an old-school VHS deck.

    16. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      The web is unusable. When loading any website containing content intending to be read (news article, blog post, &c.), I poise my mouse over the "reader mode" button and stab it the very instant it appears.

      I will not even try to read content on pages with moving shit in the side-bars, dropping-down menu bars, random crap that unpredictably overrides scrolling, popups sliding up and over and all around the fucking place, sometimes minutes after the page finished loading because they know that's how they can irritate you into looking at it.

      If the reader mode button doesn't show up, I don't even bother trying to use the page. I just close it.

    17. Re:Why they are slow? by npslider · · Score: 1

      Well, that pretty much ends my daily web browsing routine...

    18. Re:Why they are slow? by fnj · · Score: 2

      Safari runs a web page as it's own process for security reasons.

      Isn't process creation on the order of a millisecond or so on a modern computer?

      Bingo. It's actually well under a millisecond for fork + exit on current hardware. More when you add exec including dynamic linking, but still on the order of milliseconds. Much, much faster than you could blink your eyes. It is completely specious to suggest that thread-per-tab or process-per-tab has any detectable effect whatever on real-world performance.

    19. Re:Why they are slow? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Interesting

      This would involve admitting the (arguably ugly; but undeniable) truth that web pages have become a somewhat dysfunctional software development platform; but it'd be nice to see browser caching mechanisms that don't just treat giant JS libraries as a special case of cacheable assets generally and hope for the best; and instead offered something more in the vein of what Linux package managers do.

      If you host your own; the user ends up downloading a copy even if it is identical to the one they pulled from somebody else for a different site that uses the same library. If you avail yourself of Google's...generous...hosted offer, the user is more likely to cache; but then every load of your page also involves a chat with Team Mountain View.

      Ideally, you'd specify that you use JSLibXYZ, with cryptographic has and/or signature specified, and at least one source for a client who doesn't have it to get a copy; but the user's browser could make use of JSLibXYZ from any source, so long as the hash and signature match, since that provides assurance that it's the same thing. Caching mechanisms based on domain of origin are sensible enough for assets that are likely to be site specific(pictures, stylesheets, etc.); but, like it or not, giant javascript libraries, many shared across a large number of otherwise unrelated sites, have a lot more in common with dlls than with images; and it would be handy if they were treated as being a different case. With hashes and/or signatures, you could ensure integrity even in cross-site sharing situations; allow caching to work regardless of how the site operator has set up script hosting, and end the choice between 'serve yourself, lose out of caching/let google do it, get caching but add a 3rd party to everything you do'.

    20. Re:Why they are slow? by frovingslosh · · Score: 0

      Browsers are slow because everything you do and everything you see needs to be reported to Facebook. Even if you are not a Facebook member and never will be one, your browser is constantly telling Facebook what you are doing.

      There are other unwanted links to and from sites that spy on you also. I unfairly pick on Facebook because they are the most abusive example of this. And they are evil devil worshipers in league with HRC.

      If you can limit the browser action to the site that you actually want information from and block it from reporting everything that you do to undisclosed third parties and from delivering harmful malware to you in the form of indiscriminately selected advertising sites who are known to have delivered malware in the past, then the browser runs much faster.

      --
      I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
    21. Re:Why they are slow? by mysidia · · Score: 5, Interesting

      It's not just ads; a lot of websites pull in JS helper scripts from other sources (instead of hosting local copies of their own). And those sources do not always have the best performance.

      What we should do is get the web standards updated to add a Rule:

      Remotely-loaded scripts (Loading from a different server) must specify a SHA256 sum in the Script tag such as
        <script src="https://example.com/mycode.js" integrity="sha256-7d774a8ff0e73f2791c3a12dfc3ef1f9a1a640d470584b9b9222d395e8519fc5">

      If the hashcode is not specified, then the script will not be run.

      If the hashcode IS specified, then it can be cached by any 3rd party.
      The URL becomes "Advisory", and Popular hashcodes can be distributed by Amazon, Google, or your local ISP.

      There should be a way to have a DNS suffix DNS record to specify local object-caching servers that can be queried by code.

      Caching is permanent. An outage of the original source server has no affect.

    22. Re:Why they are slow? by npslider · · Score: 1

      I think the questioner's machine is either crap or bogged down with malware.

      So... it has a single browser window open displaying a common social media site...

    23. Re:Why they are slow? by berj · · Score: 1

      I've opened up hundreds of tabs in Safari on my 2009 iMac just now as a test. Not just blanks either.. lots of web pages.

      Not a delay or hint of sluggishness to be found.

      New web pages (and especially new blank tabs) open just as fast as they did when I first logged in.

      Mr. Birman is definitely doing something wrong.

    24. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The idea of not hosting your own local copy is that if everyone uses a common source for the library, then these companies can engage in surveillance (er, "telemetry") of massive numbers of Internet users requesting the content from their servers.

      The way they frame this scheme for content producers is the idea that not hosting your own local copy is that if everyone uses a common source for the library, then the browser should already have that resource cached even if it's the first time you hit the page. For large enough libraries that the Google CDN (or another CDN) includes it, it's worth it.

    25. Re:Why they are slow? by holophrastic · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You're wrong. I've been doing this for three decades now. If you're serving a page to a client, sending them to a third-party to get the library always sucks. Even if they've already got the library disk-cached, it's actually slower to access the disk cache, and check the cache age, and verify that there isn't a newer library version (did you know the browser often goes round-trip just to check?) than it does to simply serve the library in-line.

      Serving the library yourself can still run in parallel, and it often reuses the same primary connection, so it's about as fast as your server can handle.

      Now you're going to mention the browser's memory cache, instead of disk cache. First, nowadays, with each-tab-in-a-separate-sandboxed-process, those memory caches ain't as fast as they once were. But even when they are, you just ain't a'gonna beat in-line scripts.

      Benchmark it yourself. Serve 100KB of javascript in-line, in the middle of your html file. Compare that to a separate src= js file. Mid-stream, in an HTML file of another 100KB, the javascript runs at full download speed, with full text transmission compression. Those 100KB easily compress down to 50KB, more often 25KB, mid-transmission, and at any modern residential bandwidth, you're talking about the tiniest of fractions of a second. No disk access, no file handles, no separate rendering processes, no sandboxes, and, most importantly, no virus scanners, no swapping.

      But it does eat up your server's bandwidth costs.

      If you're huge, amazon style, then you want to off-load cycles and bits anywhere you can. If you're not huge, then the added 10% bandwidth costs mean nothing to you.

    26. Re:Why they are slow? by holophrastic · · Score: 4, Informative

      Stop instructing your browser to block things. You don't need an add-on to define network connections. Start telling your network stack where to not find them:

      HOSTS-level blocking
      http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/ho...

      And if that's not enough, look into PAC files. You won't be disappointed.

    27. Re:Why they are slow? by istartedi · · Score: 1

      This. If you have NoScript and you pull up the list of domains on most sites, it's at least a dozen. If you want to see the content badly enough, you guess at what you need to enable. Sometimes that spawns more things you need to enable!

      The browsers aren't slow. The web sites are. With all those domains, and all those network requests, your site is only as fast as the weakest link.

      --
      For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
    28. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Except that is not how it ends up working. What you are missing is that even if the browser has the library cached, it still much reach out to the server to see if it has the latest version, and wait for a response.

      S while you are saving bandwidth, your are not getting any improvement in latency.

    29. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      > If you're serving a page to a client, sending them to a third-party to get the library always sucks.

      You're clearly retarded. It'd serve from cache.

    30. Re:Why they are slow? by Bartles · · Score: 4, Funny

      What's the addon that removes all the socials buttons? I need that one.

    31. Re:Why they are slow? by bmo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      >somewhat dysfunctional

      DOOM was 16MB. A whole game in 3D with full on-the-fly animation and sound effects and music. That was amazing for the time when Myst was a game that served up mostly static images.

      A web page mostly serves up text, static images, and sometimes video.

      Yet this needs 16MB to be downloaded to be functional, somehow.

      >somewhat dysfunctional

      Try completely dysfunctional

      Oh, and to the assholes who put in autoplay video that you can't turn off/pause: die. in. a. fire. Your pages actually last 5 seconds in my browser tab, and I'm sure this is the other case with people who are either on mobile, or just simply want to be quiet.

      --
      BMO

    32. Re:Why they are slow? by bmo · · Score: 3, Informative

      That should have a "less than" sign in front of the "5 seconds"

      --
      BMO

    33. Re:Why they are slow? by lgw · · Score: 5, Interesting

      You're talking about fast, as seen by the user. They don't care about that at all - they're optimizing for fast as seen by the server: less bandwidth. Anything they can offload is a win, no matter how much the user experience sucks.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    34. Re:Why they are slow? by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Chatty scripting requiring lots of back and forth. Serving up the ads first before content, trying to make sure the ads are seen. Interacting with ad customization services to eke out an additional fraction of a cent. Scripting that downloads higher quality video in a sidebar ad than the real site. Flash or other crap that runs at CPU max load rather than 99% of it, because the browser makers want that fastest script award and to hell with lockup.

      --
      (-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
    35. Re:Why they are slow? by mrbester · · Score: 1

      As the first ever page with HTML on the first ever site appeared in 1991 and the first iteration of a JavaScript (then LiveScript) engine in a browser was a few years later, I'm questioning the "three decades" claim. I was there at the beginning.

      --
      "Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
    36. Re: Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wolfenstein 3D was a game before Doom, with the same assets and features, and was distributed on a floppy diskette.

    37. Re:Why they are slow? by Rakarra · · Score: 1

      DOOM was 16MB. A whole game in 3D with full on-the-fly animation and sound effects and music.

      Yes, but it was really CRAPPY looking 3D.

      That was amazing for the time when Myst was a game that served up mostly static images.

      Because they were beautiful, prerendered images. They absolutely blew away Doom's visuals. But Doom also had a more active world, while Myst tried to force the user into a particular manner of storytelling. Those two games had two different goals and the graphics supported them the best in both cases.

    38. Re:Why they are slow? by pr0fessor · · Score: 1

      I think you missed the point... Why is the interface sluggish when it's loading only a blank tab or switching to a tab that's already been rendered? Although I can answer the question. Firefox, Chrome, and Opera Leak Memory... I'm not sure which is worse but they all do.

    39. Re:Why they are slow? by lgw · · Score: 4, Funny

      Huh - this didn't summon APK. Maybe he's taking a week off for Christmas.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    40. Re:Why they are slow? by npslider · · Score: 4, Funny

      Just imagine every wall in that doom game filled with dynamic ads for health insurance (before you are fragged of course), places to comment on which weapon you like better (to be posted to social media)... oh and the whole game is just a conglomeration of Adobe flash videos.

    41. Re:Why they are slow? by fnj · · Score: 5, Informative

      OK, I just benchmarked 1000 forks in C++ on the lowest-end desktop Sandy Bridge Core i3-2120T running at a reduced frequency of 1.6 GHz. I got 89,130: a whopping 89.13 microseconds per fork.

      #include <chrono>
      #include <iostream>
      #include <unistd.h>

      #define N 1000

      int main()
      {
          auto start = std::chrono::system_clock::now();
          for (int i = 0; i < N; ++i)
          {
              int pid;
              if (!(pid = fork())) {
                  exit(0);
              } // std::cout << pid << '\n';
          }
          auto stop = std::chrono::system_clock::now();
          auto elapsed = std::chrono::duration_cast<std::chrono::microseconds>(stop - start);
          std::cout << elapsed.count() << " microseconds for " << N << " forks\n";
          return 0;
      }

    42. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > If you're serving a page to a client, sending them to a third-party to get the library always sucks.

      You're clearly retarded. It'd serve from cache.

      I dunno. It appears in my browser (firefox) that almost nothing is served from the cache. Even reloading the page just moments after it was first accessed causes the browser to go back out onto the web to download the page contents all over again. As far as I can tell, the only time that the browser ever touches the cache is when it absolutely must (e.g., restarting the web browser when disconnected from the internet). So, what's up with that? Shouldn't the browser just reload everything from cache as much as possible? Why even have a cache if it is hardly ever used?

    43. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Maybe she means that she was doing it during 3 decades: 90s, 00s, 10s.

    44. Re:Why they are slow? by footNipple · · Score: 1

      I was there at the beginning

      So was I! The 90's, 00's, 10's...three decades ;-)

    45. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You haven't been doing this for three decades. At most you've been doing it for 27 years, but that really isn't likely. 24 years is a much more likely length of time unless you actually invented the web.

    46. Re:Why they are slow? by orgelspieler · · Score: 1

      If you've been doing it since the beginning, you are in your third decade of working on it.

    47. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you're huge, amazon style, then you want to off-load cycles and bits anywhere you can. If you're not huge, then the added 10% bandwidth costs mean nothing to you.

      It might mean something to Google's "Page Speed Insight" evaluation of your page, which could lower your page rank and cost you money.

      Google pushes all kinds of one-size-fits-all "insights" that trump all of your real-world testing and experience with Google's unquestioned genius and stranglehold on web visibility/profitability.

      I've spent many an annoying hour turning web sites in to functional basket cases that check all the Google boxes.

    48. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's not right. You really think hitting the local disk is slower than downloading? My new desktop from Dell has a very fast CPU (Xeon E5-2603 v4), but the hard drive is just dreadful. Dell doesn't give a damn about performance because they know when you get tired of their crappy performance, most companies will just buy a new Dell. The drive is 5,400 RPM with 15 ms seek time. My ping to this site is 125 ms. With the multiple round trips to open a TCP connection, even if the content has zero bytes, it's still an order of magnitude slower than even the crappy drives that Dell uses.

    49. Re:Why they are slow? by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 2

      You're wrong. I've been doing this for three decades now. If you're serving a page to a client, sending them to a third-party to get the library always sucks.

      I agree, partly for the same reasons and partly for different reasons.

      Extra lookups to remote sites suck- more time, more misdirection, etc.
      You run the risk that the remote site has been compromised and is now serving up something malicious.
      Similarly, you run the risk of MITM stuff taking place.
      If they upgrade some file and it introduces an incompatibility it may very well break something on your site.
      If the remote site is down, guess what? So is your site.

      I always host my own library files, period. GeoIP tables, javascript libraries, etc etc etc...if you're on my site, everything you need will be coming from my site. Basically, if I can host it then I will. The only exceptions are certain DNS/Whois lookups.

      --
      Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
    50. Re:Why they are slow? by countach74 · · Score: 1

      Browsers serve from cache based on what the caching headers say they should do. But there's a paradox between keeping content fresh vs caching content. Ultimately how much caching is done will be determined by the individual websites you visit. Also, reloading a page from your browser tells it to bypass cache for resources required for the page to load (follow up asynchronous requests generally will still use cached responses if available).

    51. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You left out "Responsive Design", which is anything but.

      Ever since Google instituted mobilegeddon, every site now has 500KB of extra javascript and css code and now take 5-10 seconds to completely load and render -- with an ad blocker. The internet has turned into molasses over the last 3 years, and personally I've stopped browsing a lot of sites because of it.

      It is incredible to see how fast pages actually transfer when you use something like Dillo, verses how long it is taking them to render now. I've got a MBs/sec web connection, but waiting for pages to render feels like it's taking me back to dial-up waiting times. The blame lies with web-designers, who have bloated things to such a degree that pages complaining about the size of webpages are themselves over 3MB in size.

      Let's take a look at the Apple page that explains iOS on the iPad Pro. .... The page is 51 megabytes big.

      Honestly, I think we need to go back to metered connections and charging per Gigabyte. This can't go on.

    52. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      while they're busy making mobile OSes or arguing over transsexuals they're browsers ( evidently held together with bubble gum and duck tape) are using 50% cpu on an 8350. yes, i have many tabs open but i'm only looking at 1 at a time, ffs! i have enough ram to spare for the waste. i don't have enough cpu, especially when (old?) wordpress sites run it up to 100% and try to lock the whole computer up. why does the browser allow that shit to happen? freakin' pitiful POS...

    53. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Pedant much? The point was web pages today take up a large amount of data to do very, very little compared to the sorts of things we used to do with similar amounts of data.

    54. Re:Why they are slow? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 3, Insightful

      No disagreement here on the quality of craftsmanship that goes into the average webpage. On the other hand; can you imagine how...glorious...the web would be if everyone who didn't have John Carmack on staff still needed to hammer out a bunch of clever tricks in C to get a site up and running?

      It isn't at all elegant; but unless someone discovers a way to churn out good programmers with unprecedented efficiency, I can't say too many mean things about tools that let terrible programmers get merely bad results, since we appear to demand more software than we have talent to supply.

    55. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, but it was really CRAPPY looking 3D.

      Even the crappiest looking 3D, with z-buffers, rotations, collision detection and texture mapping, is two orders of magnitude more complex than any 2D, mostly static webpage. Why should any webpage require more download bandwidth than a 5 minute Youtube video, let alone a DOOM Binary.

    56. Re:Why they are slow? by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      Huh - this didn't summon APK. Maybe he's taking a week off for Christmas.

      APK is recovering from the beating I gave him for re-starting a fight on a two-week-old thread.

    57. Re:Why they are slow? by tepples · · Score: 1

      Extra lookups to remote sites suck- more time, more misdirection, etc.

      Unless the site doesn't need to be looked up at all because it's already cached.

      Similarly, you run the risk of MITM stuff taking place.

      These CDNs use HTTPS nowadays. What's the real probability of a CA compromise?

      If they upgrade some file and it introduces an incompatibility it may very well break something on your site.

      These CDNs use versioned URLs so that they can set Expires: in the far future. An upgrade would produce a different URL.

      If the remote site is down, guess what? So is your site.

      And if your traditional hosting provider is down, so is your site. And if your ad exchange is down, your viewers get hit with "whitelist or pay" notices.

    58. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I make web pages like it's 99 and they consistently rank higher than much more "optimized" pages. People pay too much attention to Google. A fast page that loads scripts inline or from the same server is still far ahead of almost all competition, because the competition doesn't know what it's doing and *adds* stuff to make pages faster.

    59. Re:Why they are slow? by Ayanami_R · · Score: 1

      Which explains why mine does not seem slow. I found the more I tried to fight, the more inconvenient and troublesome web browsing became, and the slower it got, and my batteries started dying faster. I get better results by just leaving it all alone and clicking x's on ads that need that and ignoring the rest. Malware? none in 7 years, I still wonder who is catching all that stuff.

      --
      "Science is the power of man"
    60. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It doesn't take just a single seek to access the disk cache. In practice, loading from the server is faster. Disabling the disk cache is the first thing I do when I install a browser or create a new profile. Web browsing is much better without it. Besides, the many thousands of files in the cache slow down backups and virus scans. Disk cache is an obsolete concept.

    61. Re:Why they are slow? by ArhcAngel · · Score: 5, Informative

      Looking at RequestPolicy this page redirects to 41 other sites.

      41 MOTHERFUCKING REDIRECTS ON ONE PAGE!!! You people are insane.

      --
      "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
    62. Re:Why they are slow? by tepples · · Score: 3, Informative

      Forking a non-trivial program may incur more practical lag than forking a trivial program, as more copy-on-write pages have to get duplicated once the forked process starts running.

    63. Re:Why they are slow? by nmb3000 · · Score: 1, Informative

      You're wrong.

      Actually, you are.

      Even if they've already got the library disk-cached, it's actually slower to access the disk cache, and check the cache age, and verify that there isn't a newer library version (did you know the browser often goes round-trip just to check?) than it does to simply serve the library in-line.

      It depends on cache control headers originally sent by the CDN, but this is usually completely false. Google can set an Expires header a year in the future and the browser will NOT do a round trip to check. That only happens if the cache control is set to must-revalidate, and few good script CDNs will do that. Aside from that, disk will always be faster than network.

      Benchmark it yourself. Serve 100KB of javascript in-line, in the middle of your html file. Compare that to a separate src= js file.

      Modern browsers handle inline script very differently than those pulled in via an external file, so that confounds things somewhat. But even then, the only time it matters is the first time the user goes to any page with the jQuery (or whatever) that gets loaded from Google's CDN. After that it doesn't have to transfer it until the cache expires, so it's always going to be faster than putting it inline. Besides, putting libraries inline is 100% wrong, even if you host it yourself, because it makes client caching impossible.

      --
      "What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
      /)
    64. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's not just ads; a lot of websites pull in JS helper scripts from other sources (instead of hosting local copies of their own). And those sources do not always have the best performance.

      Yes. It wasn't until I started using No Script that I became aware of this. Some sites for some reason feel the need to download half the damn Internet every time you visit one of their pages, that's why websites don't seem to get any faster no matter how much faster our internet connections get.

    65. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Answer: uBlock0

    66. Re:Why they are slow? by profke · · Score: 5, Informative

      Ghostery

    67. Re:Why they are slow? by Merk42 · · Score: 1

      I'm not sure what's worse, that you didn't even read TFS which even talked about a new blank page, or that you got modded +5 Insightful for it.

    68. Re:Why they are slow? by slacka · · Score: 1

      Because we need a canvas-blocker add-on and a flash-blocker

      And the problem is these "canvas-blocker's" don't exist yet. For nearly a decade, I was perfectly happy with the speed of my browser when I had flash set to click-to-play + an ad blocker. But all the flash haters got there way and "killed" flashed.

      Congratulations! You replaced it with an inferior standard that's now built into HTML5, so it's no longer trivial to block. Good job people! Flash is back, more CPU demanding than ever, and even harder to block.

    69. Re: Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You also no control over transparent caching proxy servers used by your ISP, whch may be slower than the source.

      Even with multiple CPUs, you typically only have one network interface, and a single, properly buffered channel is more efficient than multiple, competing channels in many cases.

    70. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's ridiculous. Local drives are orders of magnitude faster than the Internet. A fast hard drive has about 8 ms of latency for the average seek time. A single hop on a T1 has about the same latency, and most home users do not have connections with that low of a latency. Plus, there's lots of hops between the user and most servers.

      I have direct ISDN to the Seattle Internet Exchange (SIX). My ping to Google is usually 60 ms, and that's a best case minimum. That's almost ten times slower than reading a block from disk. That's also ignoring capacity. Most people can only use one channel of ISDN because of the large per minute charges so that is 64 kbps while even a slow harddrive is about 75 Mbps. In other words, over a thousand time the amount of data transfered per second.

    71. Re:Why they are slow? by fnj · · Score: 1

      As I said, exec and particularly dynamic linking do indeed slow it down further, but it's got a LONG, LONG way to go before it gets up to even "blink of the eye" level, let alone actually objectionable.

    72. Re:Why they are slow? by darkain · · Score: 1

      I thought this idea too... until jQuery's official CDN went offline last week, rendering the entire site absolutely unusable.

      Note: yes, I get the idea that "web pages" should historically be static documents. But in this case, the particular web site was a desktop application replacement. It was a very complex application which required custom UI controls to be made and real-time notifications between multiple users (think content sharing/locking scenarios).

    73. Re:Why they are slow? by rickb928 · · Score: 1

      And the pages that incorporate some that plays in the background, interrupting the you were listening to, show no control panel, and have to be killed. This I see in my Android Chrome browser. Perhaps best part is I hear nothing from that gadget. No audio.

      Wtf is it?

      --
      deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
    74. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      >Why is the interface sluggish when it's loading only a blank tab or switching to a tab that's already been rendered?

      Didn't miss the point.

      It's slow because all the crap running in the background- not just web scripts and calls, but internal crap now too. I'm talking to you various Update Managers, always-on dictionaries, and pre-loads for software I'm not even using... you primadona apps you).

      Now add to that the pre-rendered webpage you spoke of, well it's in RAM but not the VRAM- it still has to move from ones & zeros to lighted pixels. And it does not go at the speed of light, because focus must move from BG processes to foreground.

      But basicall- WAAAY too much unnecessary stuff going on in background- and it serves 'them' not you.

    75. Re: Why they are slow? by Z00L00K · · Score: 1

      Don't forget all the tracking stuff that's on the web pages that can slow down a web page severely just to get a single image pixel.

      --
      If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
    76. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think the misconception is that a browser get's fed an all in one package, while what you get is a markup language file that contains links to other data. It might be on the same server, it might be on other servers. The thing is that the time spent gathering and presenting these data takes most of the time. If you use Chrome you can use ctrl-shift-i and bring up the developer tools. Click on "Timeline" in the top, tick off all the boxes and refresh the page.

    77. Re:Why they are slow? by rickb928 · · Score: 1

      Web pages today do A LOT.

      They poke around my machine, looking for data they want to send back.

      They try to add elements to advertise, or capture more data, or identify me.

      They pop up and under new pages to further advertise, identify, track, and harass me.

      They ask to notify me of whatever they want to force on me in the future.

      A lot of this is self - promotion, upon my first visit, as if I'm going to make them a favorite site upon a 3 second inspection.

      But the math is that a 0.00001% response generates revenue.

      Bastards.

      --
      deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
    78. Re:Why they are slow? by Darinbob · · Score: 1

      Just get rid of all scripting. The web worked find a decade ago, and it's been going downhill since then. If you want something the browser can't do then download an application.

    79. Re:Why they are slow? by mrbester · · Score: 1

      Read GP's first line again...

      --
      "Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
    80. Re:Why they are slow? by mschuyler · · Score: 1

      Read my sig.

      --
      How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
    81. Re:Why they are slow? by holophrastic · · Score: 1

      Like I said, that's true for big huge amazon. It ain't true for 99% of web-sites out there, for whom bandwidth and server cycles are in excess supply.

    82. Re:Why they are slow? by Kremmy · · Score: 1

      Such a huge load of wasted effort for something that only affects the first page view of a new site at best. Just serve the damn file, it'll get cached whether it's on a third party server or local server, it doesn't matter at all for the subsequent page views.

    83. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I really don't mean to attack you personally (really, I don't) but your post is a great example of a huge and growing problem in society in general: people who are very very sure of themselves, write well, sound authoritative, but are WRONG.

      Most, if not all, of your argument is based on fast network. Far too many programmers these days just assume huge network bandwidth. They think nothing (MS) of starting a "background" update process which can try to download GIGABYTES of unwanted crap.

      News flash: not everyone has 10GB Internet, Core i7 or better CPU, 16 GB RAM, 1 TB SSD, etc.

      And stop the arrogant attitude of telling everyone they're using dinosaur computers, to "upgrade" everything, etc. By expecting everyone to be on fast Internet, etc., you're shutting out a chunk of your market. I've stopped using many major news sites because a redesign not only looks terrible (if it's readable at all) or takes so long to load it's a waste of my time. The advertisers need to know this, right?

      My poor mom bought a "smart" phone (Android) 18 months ago. Several well-meaning (over-confident, sure they know everything tech) "helped" her by installing many apps. She did not buy a huge data plan, and in 1 month was dozens of times over her data limit- just in the apps constantly 1) phoning home, and 2) updating themselves. The provider was kind enough to forgive her and she gave me the phone.

      And while I'm at it, how about an International law stating that NO website will ever be allowed to download, stream, or otherwise hog network bandwidth without the users 100% knowledge AND permission. Example: I'm trying to read a news article, and an unwanted window starts playing a video without my request nor permission.

      How about ALWAYS, with NO exception, asking the user how much bandwidth they are OK giving up? How about testing network bandwidth BEFORE doing huge downloads? And don't forget latency while you're linking nested .js from around the world.

      About 60-70% of my browsing is done on Old Opera (11.x) because you would be stunned at how much faster most websites are with javascript OFF. I know, all too well, how many websites barely work, or not at all, with javascript turned off. I've studied the code and I see they render in javascript to force you to turn it on because their trackers and ad popups need javascript.

    84. Re:Why they are slow? by HalAtWork · · Score: 1

      No. I get no add-ons and still have these issues. Especially on mobile where if you have more than 3 tabs open something's going to reload, so if you were typing something in and doing reference in other tabs you risk losing everything you were typing. They don't cache the text boxes.

    85. Re:Why they are slow? by holophrastic · · Score: 5, Informative

      My first e-mail address had a comma in it, and token rings sucked for a lot of reasons. That's how long I've been developing web-sites.

      But I didn't say I've been building web-site for three decades. I said, quite obviously, that I've been serving pages to clients for three decades.

      You may be way too young to understand the difference between real-world practical and academic history, but the world wide web was not the start of the internet, the internet was not the start of networking, and networking was not the start of serving pages to clients.

      Caching's been around for a very long time. If you want to learn about the benefits of caching, and the pitfalls, you want to look at archive caches, not transmission caches. When access involves an elevator, or a truck, you quickly learn what does and does not make sense.

      Here's a perspective for you. When accessing a cache from a warehouse two miles away involves a truck, you get to consider the effects of rush hour traffic. So when your third-party server caches your javascript file, you get to consider that it isn't geographically in the same place as your primary server, meaning that not only does your client need to hit "another" server, with another connection, another keep-alive, and another set of caches, but it also needs to get there, through an ISP channel full of traffic. You've just doubled the amount of traffic globally. You can't ever bet on it being fast. You can only hope.

      So, of course, you have a basement cache of your warehouse cache -- i.e. the disk cache. Elevators don't have traffic; or so you say. But the warehouse is full -- always, because that's what a warehouse is. So you get to search stacks and shelves and indexes. You get to have organizational training, and inventory days. Welcome to the magic of disk thrashing. The file table is incredibly slow in terms of file handles. Welcome to WAD files. Defragging is the inventory day, by the way.

      So now you've got your reliable cache, that's only reliable under minimal load. Perfect. But some things get accessed often. So you keep a copy upstairs in the filing cabinet. But the filing cabinet is small. So you shuttle different cabinets up and down per day. Today you need the green cabinet. Tomorrow, the red. And life is good. Welcome to swap files -- memory to disk and back.

      Now you've got employees shuttling cabinets, with dollies, and elevators, and warehouses, and trucks, and traffic. And here's the kicker. You haven't eaten yet! You've got a dozen staff, countless duplicate copies of files, trucks, buildings, elevators, desks. But you haven't done a lick of revenue-generating work yet.

    86. Re:Why they are slow? by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      really ugly nerd losers who are afraid to talk to normal people.

      You mean users? My job doesn't require that I talk to users.

    87. Re:Why they are slow? by holophrastic · · Score: 1

      I said nothing about three decades with "the web". Read harder please.

    88. Re:Why they are slow? by holophrastic · · Score: 2

      Google doesn't care how long it takes your page to load. It doesn't know how important the page is, so it could never judge two pages based on size alone. What google very-much does care about is how long it takes your page to render "something". Put your scripts at the end of the file. Output your logo very quickly, before you do any real server-side work. I promise the top one inch of your web-site can be the very same all the time.

    89. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Great. Now you've just got the big guys caching billions of javascript files with embedded constants that uniquely identify each user, and therefore have different sha256sum. :P

    90. Re: Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      you win the most meaningful analogy award.

    91. Re:Why they are slow? by bmo · · Score: 2

      *runs away screaming"

      --
      BMO

    92. Re:Why they are slow? by holophrastic · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Dell machines are usually designed to be quiet. That's why things are slow. But that's a different story.

      You aren't working cradle-to-grave. hitting the local disk isn't about the disk speed. Those 15ms can be zero for this discussion. Similarly, the ping to the site of 125ms is meaningless. Here's what happens, cradle-to-grave:

      Scenario 1, live streaming:
      connect to site: 125 ms
      download 200KB of html and javascript, compressed to 100KB, 1s

      Scenario 2, external file:
      connect to site: 125ms
      download 100KB of html, compressed to 50KB, 1s
      download 100KB of javascript, compressed to 50KB, 1s

      Scenario 3, external file cached:
      connect to site: 125ms
      download 100KB of html, compressed to 50KB, 1s
      wait for disk to be available, access disk for 100KB of javascript, wait for disk to spin up, 15ms
      wait for virus scan, read cache meta data, determine that our cache file isn't already too old, 1s
      HEAD the web-site file, to compare meta data, check to see that our cache is good enough, 1s
      -- look at all of the side-work involved, and we're still hitting the site much of the time to check the cache anyway!

      Scenario 4, external site
      connect to site: 125ms
      download 100KB of html, compressed to 50KB, 1s
      connect to second site: 125ms
      download 100KB of javascript, compressed to 50KB, 1s

      Scenario 5, external site, cached
      connect to site: 125ms
      download 100KB of html, compressed to 50KB, 1s
      wait for disk to be available, access disk for 100KB of javascript, wait for disk to spin up, 15ms
      wait for virus scan, read cache meta data, determine that our cache file isn't already too old, 1s
      connect to second site: 125ms
      HEAD the web-site file, to compare meta data, check to see that our cache is good enough, 1s
      -- now we have side work, a second connection, traffic everywhere

      And all of this gets even worse when you realize that the connection to your primary site is keep-alived for your entire visit -- minutes at a time -- but to your secondary site, you're lucky to get a full second. Add all of the other hardware that you're using, in terms of disk, cpu, virus scanners. Now add the entire local permission system, cooling system, throttling systems, battery savers, and you're now conflicting with everything else running in the background.

    93. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      >...two different goals...

      Yes, but he's using the example of Doom to reference the ONE GOAL webpages, browsers, designers, and servers should have in common. And that's lack of bloat.

      He was not giving a glowing review of the game, merely reflecting that if software keeps it's mind on itself, and not a lot of background crap, you can do a lot with a little. Once someone found out how to abuse the 'available memory & bandwidth' the damn sure did. Filled up our connections and local computers with constant references to outside activity.

      That's all the comparison was. Trying to get Them and Us to consider one goal, our user experience over their clumsy presentation that we'll exit for.

    94. Re:Why they are slow? by jellomizer · · Score: 1

      Well more to the point the web browser is a very vulnerable software.
      So there is a lot of extra things to do to keep your system safe. Memory sandboxes, double checks on all requests figuring what to do about malformed messages.... browsing and rendering is the least of its conserned.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    95. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    96. Re:Why they are slow? by omfglearntoplay · · Score: 1

      With all my blockers turned on, Amazon's page starts getting slower and slower as I open a couple of tabs of it. Eventually crashing my browser. When I use my "not blocking very much" browser it runs very fast. It pisses me off every time and (luckily for me) probably prevents me from surfing and buying junk on there I don't need.

    97. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Short version, because websites are full of trash.

      Remember the interwebs used to work just fine on a 33k6 dialup modem and equally "slow" CPU, hard drive and memory with browsers like IE3 and Nutscrape 4.

    98. Re:Why they are slow? by utahjazz · · Score: 1

      I don't think GP was referring to CDN vs inline. He was referring to CDN vs locally served.

    99. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't use any of those but mine is still slow don't you think it could be something else. Besides the normal ad that is.

    100. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Let me be the first to say, "Fuck you and your 100K of JS."
      What the fuck people? All of the ridiculous crap people put on pages take away from the original intent of a page.
      I don't need fancy auto-zooms, side scrolling pages and other UI bullshit that detracts from information density.

    101. Re:Why they are slow? by John.Banister · · Score: 1

      If you add a rule like this, what about newer versions of the script? When I first thought about this, I was thinking about how to tell the page that newer versions of the script were ok, but older versions might not work. However, a harder situation seems to be when the older version has a known problem, and so you want to tell the page to allow newer versions, but not be spoofed by malicious actors into accepting the problem version. So, does your server need to subscribe to hashcode updates so that your page only accepts the newest version, or is there a way to accept a range of versions without vulnerability to being spoofed into permitting a problem version?

    102. Re:Why they are slow? by Afty0r · · Score: 1

      the web has become almost unusable by some standards

      Yet time spent online is increasing by just about every metric. Reality disagrees.

    103. Re: Why they are slow? by fisted · · Score: 2

      You also [have] no control over transparent caching proxy servers used by your ISP,

      Yes, you do. It's called https.

    104. Re:Why they are slow? by LifesABeach · · Score: 1

      3 decades? Amazing, with a 80186 or 68000, or maybe a Z8000?

    105. Re:Why they are slow? by LifesABeach · · Score: 1

      2016 - 30 = 1986. Are you listening to H1B Zombies croak? The problem is, they use Metric. LMAO

    106. Re:Why they are slow? by LifesABeach · · Score: 1

      I wish I could mod you up. Damn, where are my Mod Points when I need them?

    107. Re:Why they are slow? by Man+On+Pink+Corner · · Score: 1

      Unless the site doesn't need to be looked up at all because it's already cached.

      What you're describing isn't a cache, it's just a local static copy. If the file is cached, then I have to look up the originating server and initiate a two-way conversation with it before I can use the file, in order to make sure my copy isn't obsolete.

    108. Re:Why they are slow? by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      A web page mostly serves up text, static images, and sometimes video.

      Man what internet are you reading? Something from the Gopher era? Web pages have moved way beyond that long ago for better or (mostly) worse. Each fancy's itself a complete custom presentation engine. Also it's very counter-intutivie to compare something that was primarily designed to deliver pre-designed content to a screen at a fixed resolution and formation, to something which needed to not only present dynamic content but prepare it first.

      Doom is 16MB because it is incredibly simple by standards of what a basic browser can do, and if you want proof of that, you can actually run Doom within your browser too.

    109. Re:Why they are slow? by LifesABeach · · Score: 1

      " I said, quite obviously, that I've been serving pages to clients for three decades."
      In the late 1970's it was "Menu Driven." It may feel like 30 years, but "pages" wasn't an industry term in the 1980's, and up to the mid 1990's. Try "screens." The reason the mouse is faster than the keyboard is that the mouse is looked at first, the keyboard second. 1980's computers are slow enough that one could easily see it.

    110. Re:Why they are slow? by oji-sama · · Score: 1

      Pretty easy with adblock too, but yes, Ghostery is what I now use.

      --
      It is what it is.
    111. Re:Why they are slow? by kuzb · · Score: 1

      What you're witnessing is socialism and capitalism at odds with each other. Many think websites should have to just give their content away. So when a large number of people decide that enough is enough and they start blocking ads, these try to make up the difference by serving more.

      --
      BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
    112. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I've been doing this for three decades now.

      No you haven't. Tim Berners Lee wrote the first browser 25 years ago. I would wager money you started working on the interweb some years after that. So twenty years, maybe. Perhaps the slow downloads just made it seem like 30 years?

    113. Re:Why they are slow? by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      Just because some implementations suck doesn't mean that locally stored data should be accessible with higher latency than remotely stored data on principle. That just doesn't make any sense.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    114. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Or maybe he's acting on my suggestions to SPH. Next time you see him, please feel free to ask him about that.

    115. Re:Why they are slow? by Merk42 · · Score: 1

      ...and that application will only run on Windows, or maybe iOS.

    116. Re:Why they are slow? by amicusNYCL · · Score: 2

      He might just be submitting his latest $100 forum post. That $100 he got 8 years ago has stretched far enough, daddy needs a new sock.

      --
      "Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
    117. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There should be a way to have a DNS suffix DNS record to specify local object-caching servers that can be queried by code.

      Caching is permanent. An outage of the original source server has no affect.

      There is no need for a DNS hack for that, IP anycast is already great for that. That's been used for increasingly by DNS root servers over decade already. Also GLB (global load balancing) is being used to serve from nearest location quite bit these days and supported well by many vendors devices.

      Also probably having GIT backend would bring some nice advantages keeping things better under control. But I like your proposal, it's something I've have had in my mind some time already as I've been thinking that we would need a way to digitally sign web-content sooner or later, that led me thinking GIT, hash values and markup changes that would be needed.

    118. Re:Why they are slow? by holophrastic · · Score: 1

      Read harder. The world didn't start with the web browser. You're an idiot.

    119. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah - if you encounter a website not riddled with advertising, it's blistering how fast they can load. For example, this blog will load and display faster than any other website I've seen.

      How come?

      * Pre-processed server-side files
      * Zero JavaScript
      * Zero externally referenced files - the CSS is inline.
      * Zero images

      This all means that, despite it doing exactly NO client-side processing, because each page is around 5KB, the full reload on each page is still blindingly fast. Much much faster than anything in any javascript framework.

      FIVE KILOBYTES. The whole page is SMALLER than most adverts!

    120. Re:Why they are slow? by holophrastic · · Score: 1

      Of course it does. Look at the pure bandwidth capabilities. Most network cards can receive way faster than any HDDs, and most SSDs. Transmission and memory are, in principle, way faster than long-term permanent secure protected storage.

      That's why we had music before records, and television before VCRs, and live sports broadcasts before instant replays. Storage is tough.

    121. Re:Why they are slow? by LifesABeach · · Score: 1

      The grinning show offs that brought us this marketing crap get paid by the ad sent. Caching is not handled in their business model.

    122. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Also, for HTTPS, it's a really serious problem to embed a 3rd party library - this leaks your metadata to the CDN.
      (and Firefox's strict privacy mode won't actually do it).

    123. Re:Why they are slow? by LifesABeach · · Score: 1

      "Besides, putting libraries inline is 100% wrong, even if you host it yourself, because it makes client caching impossible."
      What would be a Client Useful Solution?

    124. Re:Why they are slow? by BronsCon · · Score: 1

      Ah, but sheets of paper out of a filing cabinet or a file box kept at a warehouse are called... what, now?

      Did you even read he post before you replied? No? I thought not.

      --
      APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
    125. Re:Why they are slow? by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      If you're spoiled by a 10 Gbps connection, sure. Some of us are less fortunate. Also, I was talking about latencies.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    126. Re:Why they are slow? by Humbubba · · Score: 1
      I boot to MS Windows, wait till it comes up. Click on Chrome, wait till it comes up. Click on an internet TV site, and as it starts, it stalls. It runs a bit, then stalls again and again. The router bogs down with whatever MS is doing, always busy doing.

      I boot to Linux on the same hardware, wait a little bit while it comes up, and click on Chrome. It comes right up. I click on an internet TV site, No stalls, no router issues, nothing but smooth. I use other sites at the same time. no problem.

    127. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      the thing about fork() is that it make a complete copy of the current process, then hands the process to the kernel scheduler to run. The new process often will exec() another binary, making the copy of the entire parent process unnecessary and a slow waste of time.

      In your test above, the parent process is very small. If you allocate 1GB of ram in the parent before starting the fork(), it will take a lot longer to make the fork calls. You might even end up out of physical ram and start swapping. Then, the number of fork() calls per second will be very small.

      this is one of the reasons for "light weight processes" or threads.

      they don't copy the parent's process memory. They just run in the same memory as the parent.

    128. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What's 116 - 30?

      86.

      The late 70s are irrelevant to this conversation.

    129. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      An excellent suggestion and URL. Only one problem, Win 10 will not allow you to change the host files. Actually, I believe Win 7 was last OS that let us do that. It's the better OS of course, but still...

      --> wait, am I seeing something special on the page that references 8 and 10? HALLELUAH!

    130. Re:Why they are slow? by tepples · · Score: 1

      If the file is cached, then I have to look up the originating server and initiate a two-way conversation with it before I can use the file, in order to make sure my copy isn't obsolete.

      This check is unnecessary for a resource that has a far-future Expires: date. Future versions will be provided at a different URL.

    131. Re:Why they are slow? by LifesABeach · · Score: 1

      The man said 30 years, is that number to big you? The terms the man uses are current now, not then; that's a second lie. And the Tensor stands that all 3 time liers, are 2 time liers. You want to change your score from zero and one, to zero and two? LMAO

    132. Re:Why they are slow? by nmb3000 · · Score: 1

      What's the addon that removes all the socials buttons? I need that one.

      Ghostery

      Or the Easy Privacy list for AdBlock, if you don't want to use a program written and owned by the very industry you're trying to block.

      --
      "What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
      /)
    133. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Perhaps instead of calling people idiots when they point out that the web isn't that old, you could explain what kind of "pages" you were serving to which kinds of "clients" back in the 80s? Then the confusion about *pages vs. webpages would disappear.

      Just a thought from another internet idiot...

    134. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You'll never get web sites to do that, for the very simple reason that it'll make it impossible for third-party scripts to contain a unique serial number for each download to make it possible to track users from site to site (as long as they don't clear their cache).

    135. Re:Why they are slow? by holophrastic · · Score: 1

      Then you'll want to add input lag into that latency calculation. I'm using a colour-accurate medical imaging monitor. Takes another 100ms to go from mouse-to-monitor. Even more if I'm using a wireless mouse.

      If you're a'gonna measure anything, you've got to me measuring cradle-to-grave, otherwise it's meaningless. So, if you're measuring the speed of the browser, to the user that is, then your only option is to measure click-to-read. That's the time the computer gets its very first input (the mouse click) to the time it sends the very first output (the first text/image of the page).

      After three decades of personal and professional experience, I'm telling you that it's faster inline than disk-cached, every time (for reasonably-sized scripts, and reasonably-fast connections).

    136. Re:Why they are slow? by holophrastic · · Score: 1

      I didn't say "web pages" either. I said pages. If one chooses to re-interpret my words to specifically make them incorrect, then I'm not able to correct them -- they'll just do so once more. This all exists with paper pages, data pages, memory pages, web pages, and every other type of page. For as long as caching has existed, it has been to reduce one resource at the expense of another. In this case, it's to reduce bandwidth at the expense of everything else -- hardware, processing, disk, performance, and speed.

    137. Re:Why they are slow? by BronsCon · · Score: 1
      Since you failed to answer the simple question in my post... Sheets of paper out of a filing cabinet or a file box kept at a warehouse are called pages.

      The man said 30 years, is that number to big you?

      The man also said:

      You may be way too young to understand the difference between real-world practical and academic history, but the world wide web was not the start of the internet, the internet was not the start of networking, and networking was not the start of serving pages to clients.

      He, then, continued on to say:

      Caching's been around for a very long time. If you want to learn about the benefits of caching, and the pitfalls, you want to look at archive caches, not transmission caches. When access involves an elevator, or a truck, you quickly learn what does and does not make sense.

      Further, he states the following:

      So now you've got your reliable cache, that's only reliable under minimal load. Perfect. But some things get accessed often. So you keep a copy upstairs in the filing cabinet.

      Sure sounds like he's talking about paper files. You know, sheets of paper. Or pages.

      So, back to your first question:

      The man said 30 years, is that number to big you?

      No, not at all. It's absolutely minuscule in comparison to the number of years paper files, file boxes, warehouses, and file cabinets have been in use.

      Do you think 30 is a big number? I'd venture a guess it's near, or greater than, your age.

      LMAO

      You laugh now, I'll laugh longer, later.

      --
      APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
    138. Re: Why they are slow? by hackwrench · · Score: 1

      No, I use no blockers and relatively few plugins and browsers on Windows are much slower than the browser on my Android phone.

    139. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, if you're using the internet like broadband never happened, then disk cache may be important to you. On a broadband connection it's obsolete. It's counterintuitive even with the specs of a broadband connection, but in practice getting everything from RAM cache or the server is better than also using a disk cache, if your connection is this side of Y2K.

    140. Re:Why they are slow? by h33t+l4x0r · · Score: 1

      It's not true. Browsers only use 6 connections per host max to load assets, so unless you've only got 5 assets on your page it's faster to load jQuery from a CDN.

    141. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're wrong. I've been doing this for three decades now. If you're serving a page to a client, sending them to a third-party to get the library always sucks. Even if they've already got the library disk-cached, it's actually slower to access the disk cache, and check the cache age, and verify that there isn't a newer library version (did you know the browser often goes round-trip just to check?) than it does to simply serve the library in-line.

      That's nonsense. If it was slower to have a cache, the browsers should just ditch the cache. That's a browser design or implementation issue, but still the best idea for cacheability is to use a common helper source rather than host copies anywhere. That's seen only from the cacheability pov. There are reasons to host your own, but this one above is not one.

      Serving the library yourself can still run in parallel, and it often reuses the same primary connection, so it's about as fast as your server can handle.

      Another nonsense. Cannot run in parallel through the same connection except on http2, and many many sites don't support http2 yet.

      Now you're going to mention the browser's memory cache, instead of disk cache. First, nowadays, with each-tab-in-a-separate-sandboxed-process, those memory caches ain't as fast as they once were. But even when they are, you just ain't a'gonna beat in-line scripts.

      Benchmark it yourself. Serve 100KB of javascript in-line, in the middle of your html file. Compare that to a separate src= js file. Mid-stream, in an HTML file of another 100KB, the javascript runs at full download speed, with full text transmission compression.

      Wrong again.

      For some kind of scripts that may be true, but if it's not one that is critical for page rendering (cough ads cough tracking), then doing it that way just hurts load times. It forces the browser to receive that JS before content, so it cannot display content until it's done receiving, parsing and executing the JS, which can sometimes be a lot as perceived by users. In fact, the reason ads are so bothersome nowadays even when the content isn't obnoxious, is because of this.

      Noncritical JS should be loaded from a separate source, in a different DNS (to make it a separate connection too), and in the background (ie: async, deferred, whatever you want, as long as it doesn't block page rendering).

      It may be slow overall, but it improves the rendering speed as perceived by the user, for what the user really cares about: main content.

    142. Re:Why they are slow? by Grishnakh · · Score: 1

      Also it's very counter-intutivie to compare something that was primarily designed to deliver pre-designed content to a screen at a fixed resolution and formation, to something which needed to not only present dynamic content but prepare it first.

      Web pages were never meant to deliver content to a screen at a fixed resolution. That was the whole reason they came up with "markup language", so that content could be delivered and rendered according to the geometry of the available screen.

      Of course, it didn't take very long until web page designers demanded viewers to have a particular screen resolution: "this page designed for 800x600". But the WWW was never meant to be like that.

      The dynamic content is what's newer: the original WWW was never meant to have dynamic content at all, only static.

    143. Re:Why they are slow? by akita · · Score: 1

      Oops, molded troll by mistake

    144. Re:Why they are slow? by hawk · · Score: 1

      More likely a PDP-11 or a Vax, but there are other possibilities.

      Gopher, etc. predated WWW.

      For that matter, I used to have a program that would connect to a unix server and multiplex 7 virtual VT100 windows, of which about three would be running Lynx, on my 68000 based Macintosh Portable.

      hawk

    145. Re:Why they are slow? by complete+loony · · Score: 1

      Seriously? You have no idea how fork actually works.

      fork() exploits the MMU by marking every page in the parent process as readonly, then sharing these pages with the child process. There is no immediate copying of memory.

      Then whenever *either* process attempts to write to any of these pages of memory, the kernel will trap & duplicate the page before allowing the write to occur.

      fork() is pretty quick. But you have to be careful to pre-initialise as much immutable state in memory as you can, then keep your mutable state centralised.

      fork()-ing a new browser tab from a pre-initialised process may save you a lot of startup time. But if you then go and write small values all over the place, you could easily lose a lot of those gains.

      --
      09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
    146. Re:Why they are slow? by Knightman · · Score: 1

      Your sig is 100% accurate for your post.

      I'd suggest you amend your knowledge regarding browsers. I have mine set to 16 connections/host out of a total pool of 64. And if your browser only have 6 connections per host max, may I recommend you switch to something better.

      --
      --- Reality doesn't care about your opinions, it happens anyway and if you are in the way you'll get squished.
    147. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Just in-case anyone sees your post and decides it's worth implementing, please consider that another use-case for outsourcing javascript hosting is to ensure the latest point release version is always used, so a checksum would obviously be inappropriate for this use-case. Perhaps certificate signing would be a better candidate, although it would require participation by the source object vendor - which I think would be achievable.

    148. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not to mention all the DNS lookups for the thirty different domains the site is pulling from...

    149. Re:Why they are slow? by Cassini2 · · Score: 1

      Many internet concepts and services leading up to websites were in use in 1986.

      The foundational blocks of the web were being built and developed in the 1980's:
      - BBS systems offered real-time communication and interchange, but no graphics.
      - Mail forwarders, mail auto-responders, UUCP and USENET offered internet connectivity, but were store and forward.
      - Apple's HyperCard system was brought to market in 1987. This created a web-page like experience, however everything was centered around data files.
      - The networks were available: TCP/IP links between universities existed.
      - The hardware was ready: 32-bit workstations with MMUs and graphics were on the market.

      In the 1990's, the web quickly developed:
      - The web came on-stream in the early 1990s (1990-1992).
      - By the mid-90's, 32-bit PCs were ubiquitous, and many computers could be upgraded to use the web.
      - By the end of 1995, Bill Gates had his conversion: the head of Microsoft was saying the web was important.
      - At the end of the 90's the basic internet architecture of Linux servers and Windows web-clients was in use everywhere.

    150. Re:Why they are slow? by LinuxIsGarbage · · Score: 1

      A lot of Ethernet connections are lucky to be 100MBps = 10MB/s. 1GBps Ethernet cards are common = 100MB/s.

      100MB/s might be the upper range for linear IO on an HDD, but SSDs saturate at 600MB/s.

    151. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Do you have know of some good tests to support your claim?

      It might be better to serve the JS library off your server, especially if you use HTTP2 and possibly server push. However there's no chance that on any modern-ish system with an SSD drive request to remote server will be faster. At best you can look at 20+ ms to fetch remote resource (assuming server push isn't being used) vs 0-3 ms to fetch the file from disk. Plus you're not blocking your connection to download other resources on Critical Rendering Path (CRP). Implementing server push The Right Way is not that simple, especially when your content is cached on a CDN and you don't have access to response headers (I know only few CDNs that offer such feature).

      Inlining 100Kb of JS might work for some particular cases but as general rule - hell no. First due to TCP slow start this will delay download of the file more than most people realize, HTML parsing will block, early resource scanners etc.will get delayed too. Furthermore browsers probably won't have inlined JS precompiled on page refresh, whereas in case of external JS files this might happen (I actually don't know if this is implemented in any of the main browsers).

      And inlining JS in the middle of HTML file? That's just stupid, it might block fist rendering completely. If you're using JS to adjust page layout on initial page load then you're doing this wrong.

    152. Re:Why they are slow? by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 1

      Unless the site doesn't need to be looked up at all because it's already cached.

      Yes, but it does because it's still got to check a version number. What's the problem if I want to serve it directly? Does that bother you somehow?

      -

      These CDNs use HTTPS nowadays. What's the real probability of a CA compromise?

      Silly me, you're right- no site on the net has ever been compromised and web security is flawless!

      -

      These CDNs use versioned URLs so that they can set Expires: in the far future. An upgrade would produce a different URL.

      So what? Now I have to check for the URL changing, or code it to the version I want. Either way it's simpler and more secure to serve it myself.

      -

      And if your traditional hosting provider is down, so is your site.

      Doing it my way I only have to worry about my site, not all the other sites that remote libraries may reside at. If my site is down that's my problem, if Joe Blow's CDN site is down I'm dead in the water. And then my clients complain that "my" site doesn't work.

      Seriously, what's the problem if I want to serve my files directly? Does that keep you up at night or something? Why do you give a shit how I run my business and serve my clients? If you want to rely on other people to make sure your site is up, be my guest, but I'll do it my way.

      If you're pissing your panties because my site takes an extra 100 milliseconds to load for you the first time you visit, go somewhere else.

      Almost 20 years of operating web sites and serving clients day in and day out has taught me a few things, and one of them is not to rely on other sites or services unless I have to.

      --
      Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
    153. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wow! No! Wow! This is 100% wrong. Wrong! Bigly Wrong! Using a google hosted js library will ALWAYS be faster than you (period). Using a CDN at a major player like Amazon or Google or even MS, will always be faster than you. It's like Ben Folds says, "There's always someone cooler than you."
      And there are a butt ton of people mo' smarter than this dude. He/She is wrongly.

    154. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I use Pale Moon. It's very fast.

    155. Re:Why they are slow? by jon3k · · Score: 1

      For that matter, I used to have a program that would connect to a unix server and multiplex 7 virtual VT100 windows, of which about three would be running Lynx, on my 68000 based Macintosh Portable.

      Really??

      hawk (1151)

      ...ok, checks out

    156. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      it's actually slower to access the disk cache, and check the cache age, and verify that there isn't a newer library version (did you know the browser often goes round-trip just to check?) than it does to simply serve the library in-line.

      Serving the library yourself can still run in parallel, and it often reuses the same primary connection, so it's about as fast as your server can handle.

      Network ping round-trip on fast connections to next-hop is 30ms, let alone to the cloud.. Tell me again how accessing 100k of JS on disk - even ROTATING MAGNETIC DISK - takes 30ms. I'm pretty sure on my M.2 SSD we're talking microseconds.

      Network requests from the browser rarely (if ever) reuse the same primary connection. Take a look at your tcpdump output and watch the source port change with every request from the browser. (HTTP/2, when sites support that, will change that.)

    157. Re:Why they are slow? by h33t+l4x0r · · Score: 1

      The number is 6 for most browsers. It doesn't matter what your settings are, nobody is optimizing their site for your weird setup.

    158. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So now you've got your reliable cache, that's only reliable under minimal load. Perfect. But some things get accessed often. So you keep a copy upstairs in the filing cabinet.

      Sure sounds like he's talking about paper files. You know, sheets of paper. Or pages.

      I don't know about you, but back in the 80's it was common for me and everyone I knew to use "pages" to refer to the files a gopher server sent you from a folder.

      Each "page" file had a path, and from its menu could link to other pages/folders from that server or could be pointers to pages/folders on another gopher server.

      Of course those menus over time could link to other things.
      Popular options were search terms for the Veronica search engine, and binary files like GIFs.
      Telnet and tn3270 pointers were common as well.

      Hell just before gopher died, you could even serve HTML documents over it with URLs back to either gopher or the www

      (Although I admit my TurboGopher client of choice back then didn't support HTML rendering. Everyone recommended Netscape Navigator 1 for that)

    159. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I assume this is what you're referring to with the SHA256 hash in the script tag:

      https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Security/Subresource_Integrity

    160. Re:Why they are slow? by BronsCon · · Score: 1

      There's that as well, which, well... makes LifesABeach wrong even if holophrastic wasn't talking about paper pages.

      --
      APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
    161. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      DukeNukem3D was around that size too from memory (someone can probably check).

    162. Re:Why they are slow? by cciRRus · · Score: 1

      Adblock Plus, really? You should check out uBlock Origin.

      --
      w00t
    163. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      partly True but you could still you could fork hundreds of non trivial programs before it is perceptible to human interacting with it.

    164. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      AdBlock will do this with Fanboy's Social Blocking List (the last list on the page)

    165. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Unless the site doesn't need to be looked up at all because it's already cached.

      What you're describing isn't a cache, it's just a local static copy. If the file is cached, then I have to look up the originating server and initiate a two-way conversation with it before I can use the file, in order to make sure my copy isn't obsolete.

      Not if the cache has an expiration timestamp on it. In that case, the client is only obliged to test/refetch after the time-to-live has expired for the cached item(s).

      Some JavaScript packages might contain logic for checking for newer components, but the browser itself caches based solely on age.

      Even if you do actively check, however, a check can be done with a short, simple request. You don't have to do a byte-by-byte client-side comparison over multiple requests.

    166. Re:Why they are slow? by hcs_$reboot · · Score: 1

      Ghostery does this indeed (can block anything). But be sure to uncheck the "share data" options in settings...

      --
      Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
    167. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Please, tell me what kind of pages! Please! Oh God, please!!!!!!

    168. Re: Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Uninstall your period blocker.

    169. Re:Why they are slow? by the_B0fh · · Score: 1

      Exactly!

    170. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I started with a 6502, then a z80, then a 68000, and finally an 80286. Later an 80386 was my first Windows machine.

    171. Re:Why they are slow? by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      " I said, quite obviously, that I've been serving pages to clients for three decades."

      In the late 1970's it was "Menu Driven." It may feel like 30 years, but "pages" wasn't an industry term in the 1980's, and up to the mid 1990's. Try "screens." The reason the mouse is faster than the keyboard is that the mouse is looked at first, the keyboard second. 1980's computers are slow enough that one could easily see it.

      You use the contemporary language even when discussing historical events. Shocking, perhaps, but true.

    172. Re:Why they are slow? by Seatche · · Score: 1

      Thank you. I don't have the fastest internet connection, and some sites just don't render at all. The idea of keeping a local cached copy on my computer came from early 1990's and it is still a good idea. I really don't give two cents about cross-site scripting/caching/money-making 1/1000th penny bits. It's worthless to this end user. If my internet service gave me a large bandwith, richness of my experience, cross-site shit, and third-party plugins that reference things in Australia for a client in the USA would be no problem. Right now, I am happy with just successful rendering of the resource to which I manually pointed my browser on a given website. That website can blame my ISP, my lack of memory, my CPU's speed or even HD space (that's not a problem right now). To me, the site failed to load, and I PAY THAT WEBSITE INCOME, by rendering advertisement which never loaded in my browser. Loud and clear enough? No? That website designer/engineer/whoever needs to go back to the early 1990's, until they figure it out. Otherwise, I'm skipping that website.

      --
      I'm bad with sayings, so just go live life for crying out loud.
    173. Re:Why they are slow? by Ash-Fox · · Score: 1

      Hi Amicus, you sound like an interesting and fun person. I was wondering if you were open to some sort of online chat (Telegram? IRC? Skype?).

      I have some fun stories regarding APK that you'd probably enjoy. Your linked thread was a really entertaining read!

      --
      Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
    174. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How about an International law stating that NO website will ever be allowed to download, stream, or otherwise hog network bandwidth without the users 100% knowledge AND permission.

      International law? Somebody forgot to tell the Russians and the Chinese or as Hector Barbossa said in the Pirates of the Caribbean films concerning the pirate codes, "they're more of what you'd call guidelines than actual rules."

    175. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I've studied the code and I see they render in javascript to force you to turn it on because their trackers and ad popups need javascript.

      You need to check out the NoScript and RequestPolicy addons in Firefox, they allow you to selectively control what domains are allowed to run javascript and what network requests will be allowed or not allowed between domains. It's amazing how much faster everything is when only the minimal necessary javascript is allowed to run. While you're at it, install AdBlock Plus couldn't hurt either.

    176. Re:Why they are slow? by ayesnymous · · Score: 1

      And yet I've seen multiple people on here and other forums say that there's no need to buy a new computer nowadays since a 5 year old CPU can handle everything. Obviously not even a 1 year old CPU can handle modern web pages.

    177. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Are you THAT anti-social?

    178. Re: Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      another use-case for outsourcing javascript hosting is to ensure your site will randomly aquire new exciting bugs outside your control

      FTFY

    179. Re:Why they are slow? by mysidia · · Score: 1

      If you add a rule like this, what about newer versions of the script?

      They should be published using a new URL, and yes, the hashcode does change.

      Yes, I am saying the person who publishes a website has to be fully responsible for all the code they are executing in visitors' browsers, and No third party should be able to unilaterally change the code being run by a website.
      This is a responsibility requirement the public needs in order to be able to hold people accountable for their website --- not just its performance, functionality, and working state, But also in case of security issues.

      was thinking about how to tell the page that newer versions of the script were ok

      Bad idea. Newer versions are likely to bring in new bugs (Including potential for CSS/CSRF security bugs) and unexpected compatibility issues. Webmasters should test their websites across browsers using exactly the code they are publishing. Stable code (not changing without the includer's knowledge) is vital.

      A "new version" that is not authentic can bring hidden malware, or popup ads courtesy of the CDN provider, just as easily as it can bring improvements.

      A typical remote inclusion URL looks like https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/angularjs/1.5.7/angular.min.js

    180. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      For small files (and anything you need before the page can be shown had better be a small file), pipelining is faster than firing up another connection.

    181. Re:Why they are slow? by TheRaven64 · · Score: 2

      fork() exploits the MMU by marking every page in the parent process as readonly, then sharing these pages with the child process. There is no immediate copying of memory.

      That's not quite true: at the very least, the top stack frame will be copied immediately. That set of MMU updates also isn't cheap on a modern multicore system (you have to flush all of the relevant pages from all of the TLBs). More importantly, there's a lot of in-kernel state for a process (e.g. file descriptor tables) that gets duplicated when you fork a process.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    182. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Can I suggest using a more minimal browser? links is awesome if you like the web lightning fast but looking like it's perpetually in print preview mode.

    183. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Privacy badger

    184. Re:Why they are slow? by dcw3 · · Score: 1

      "You're wrong. I've been doing this for three decades now. "

      You had the web back in '86? Doh!

      --
      Just another day in Paradise
    185. Re:Why they are slow? by dcw3 · · Score: 1

      I was there at the beginning

      So was I! The 90's, 00's, 10's...three decades ;-)

      That's like claiming you've been doing it for two millennium. It's misleading and inaccurate.

      --
      Just another day in Paradise
    186. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Fixed that for you: Before accessing site: Read cache meta data 15ms Scenario 3, external file cached: connect to site: 125ms download 100KB of html, compressed to 50KB, 1s wait for disk to be available, access disk for 100KB of javascript, wait for disk to spin up, 15ms read in-memory cache meta data, check to see that our cache is expired 1ms

    187. Re:Why they are slow? by dcw3 · · Score: 1

      Did the first fork execute as quickly as the subsequent forks? Maybe I'm wrong, but I suspect not.

      --
      Just another day in Paradise
    188. Re:Why they are slow? by dcw3 · · Score: 1

      Thank you, thank you!

      --
      Just another day in Paradise
    189. Re:Why they are slow? by holophrastic · · Score: 1

      Read harder. Never said "web".

    190. Re:Why they are slow? by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      we can't very well be laughing at him when we're laughing with him.

      Why not? This is Slashdot.

    191. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Looking at my plane there are 51 snakes on it.

      51 MOTHERFUCKING SNAKES ON MY MOTHERFUCKING PLANE!!! That shit is insane.

    192. Re:Why they are slow? by dcw3 · · Score: 1

      Then you're off-topic.

      --
      Just another day in Paradise
    193. Re:Why they are slow? by holophrastic · · Score: 1

      Read even harder. Talking about serving pages to clients and caching -- all existed long before "the web".

    194. Re:Why they are slow? by Marxist+Hacker+42 · · Score: 1

      I can beat any inline script with a native compiled desktop application.

      --
      SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
    195. Re:Why they are slow? by Samizdata · · Score: 1

      And this is why I run a piHole instance on one of the machines I use for World Community Grid. Take the load off the client.

      --
      It's not the years, honey, it's the mileage. - Colonel Henry Walton Jones, Jr., Ph.D.
    196. Re:Why they are slow? by Cute+Fuzzy+Bunny · · Score: 1

      Every once in a while I'll open Edge or use a chrome incognito tab where my load of extensions aren't active. I can't freaking believe how much auto start video, flashing ads, screaming audio that there is. Its completely un readable.

      So when companies whine about using an adblocker...#^@% them...they asked for it.

      Now I see that web pages want to scan my system and look at what I'm doing. I had one streaming web site (Showtime or Starz, I forget) tell me I couldn't watch a movie as my windows patch level was too low. It was completely current. I asked tech support 3-4 times why they thought they had any business profiling my computer without telling me or asking permission. They made sure to comment about everything except that and ended up telling me to use a different browser. Now when I move my mouse to the top of the screen to close a tab, I get a popup telling me "please don't leave" or "before you go...". Guess what...I don't want them doing that either. Its creepy. And of course the "we see you're using an ad blocker".

      The privacy violations, all of the advertising and system scanning, extensions out the wazoo, having to wait while ad shovel ware gets loaded, malware in the ads...on and on and on. No wonder browsers are slow.

    197. Re:Why they are slow? by Samizdata · · Score: 1

      Or, you know, set up an old lappy with Debian and set up piHole, like I did.

      --
      It's not the years, honey, it's the mileage. - Colonel Henry Walton Jones, Jr., Ph.D.
    198. Re:Why they are slow? by John.Banister · · Score: 1

      Thanks for taking the time to reply.

    199. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      uBlock Origin has the option to include the lists that Ghostery uses.

    200. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is amazing. Buddy, you don't even understand what you are replying to. How does that go again? Something like this?

      "=> subject". I don't get you socially inept people.

    201. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Pretty much this.

      I feel that so many websites have gone to insane levels on ad loading that the web has become almost unusable by some standards.

      Yes, I say that with at minimum, 12 tabs open, but most problems I have are around specific ad revenue driven, ad block loathing sites.

      I agree. 12 years ago when I had dial-up I'd have thought today's computers with today's internet would make loading a website pretty much instantaneous! But no. Websites get fatter, ads get much fatter, everything seems to stay much the same as it was.
      I guess it's all in the name of progress, but were the relatively speedy websites of 10 years ago really that much worse?

    202. Re:Why they are slow? by Reziac · · Score: 1

      I use HOSTS (that one, in fact), NoScript, and PrefBar (to have control over flash, acrobat, image loading, etc.) and that pretty much strips what I get in my browser down to the minimum to make a given page work. On average my browser loads maybe 10% of what the server would like to send me. (No adblocker required, either.)

      But even thus, modern browsers are still slow, nothing to do with the server or devs' finest efforts at optimization; as best I (not a coder but an experienced observer) can tell the problem really is in the browser itself: If you run any of the Mozilla family on a slower machine, you can actually see it doing linear singletasking (most visibly when asked to save several files in a row). Old Netscape didn't have this problem; it arrived with the opensource version. One suspects a plague of bad coding Zen [a la Abrash's Black Book].

      And why does it take 100mb of RAM just to display a 10k text-only page?? and up to 1.9GB to run a couple videos? the same HTML renders in any other program at a cost of a couple MB, and flash itself uses very little. My observation is that the problem is mostly in plugin-container.exe, but it's not the whole issue. Disabling disk cache entirely helps too (its current convoluted structure seems to cause a major memory leak -- seriously, 1500+ directories holding one file apiece??), but not enough.

      The latest bizarre slowdown (this is in SeaMonkey 2.39, can't run a newer one BECAUSE IT'S TOO DAMN SLOW) is running CPU at 100% for 30+ seconds when asked to merely copy text from a webpage. Thank ghu for the "Copy as Plain Text" add-on, which works around the problem.

      Performance gets significantly worse with every update, which is why I've fallen into the practice of using the oldest browser that will still halfway work.

      Browser devs need to be restricted to working on old hardware, so they can see what they're doing to the rest of us who can't justify new hardware just so the browser doesn't take forever to do its job.

      --
      ~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
    203. Re:Why they are slow? by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      example of a huge and growing problem in society in general: people who are very very sure of themselves, write well, sound authoritative, but are WRONG.

      Huge problem, yes. Growing, I'm not so sure of. People have been doing that as long as I'm alive, and I don't think it started with my birth.

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
    204. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Or even worse they use a cdn and load the entire javascript library (say, jquery or jquery ui) when they only use 1 or 2 items from either library and could use a much smaller more efficient custom build that they could host themselves.

    205. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ...uhhhh not entirely. They also want you to use javascript because that is the only reasonable way to make all the fancy bells and whistles people expect a website to do these days run.
      Side rant: Mostly people demanding these features are people who say things like "god, its [insert current year], [xyz] needs to [fix some bug that is inconvenient]! Why haven't we figured this crap out yet!?" without any understanding the basic concepts of how their things work.

      That said, I do agree with you that since we pay based on data used, sites should be regulated to not be loading and auto playing stuff you don't want to waste bandwidth on. However, I don't see that happening any time soon because there is not an international regulating body that would be recognized by all countries in the world that everyone would adhere to. And even if your country does have such regulation, they have no authority over regulating a website built and hosted outside of said country. Also, unless you start paying fees for all the individual websites you use advertisement is the only way to generate money to run the sites so you will always have to load and view those out of a monetary necessity for the company to keep things running.

      It's all really quite a mess isn't it?

    206. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No NOT Ghostery, It is run by a marketing company.

      If you really need to block social buttons go search for it, it really isnt that hard.

      uBlock Origin and uMatrix pretty much covers everything.

    207. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They also want you to use javascript because that is the only reasonable way to make all the fancy bells and whistles people expect a website to do these days run.

      Graceful degradation is what these web monkeys should be introduced to.

      1. Write valid, standards-compliant HTML

      2. Use external style sheets for your designs and layout

      3. Use externally linked scripts for interactivity

      4. Make sure the content is accessible even to low-level browsers without CSS or JavaScript

    208. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A proxy works just as well if not better.

      I use Privoxy

    209. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not only !
      Many "programmers" make pages in stupid way like "Until load every single pictures, don't show content on screen". In that case you must wait even pictures / content on VERY SLOW servers to see content.

    210. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is a great idea, but...

      the link needs to have a hash on it (so the consuming website can be sure only content that matches that SHA256 hash is allowed to be served up by the 3rd party domain it does not control).
      the link needs to indicate that no identifying information (other than which is necessary is to be retained by the 3rd party website, so no cookie acceptance, no referer header, no unexpected content type, no persistant storage)
      the link needs to contain multiple URLs that the content can be fetched from (maybe one is considered the canonical URL), to allow failover, fallback to a source you control.
      the link needs to contain overriding cache controls / requirement in respect of what the consuming website wants (not what the CDN wants)
      the browser cache needs to be able to take the SHA256 hash (from point 1) and validate a local copy it has (without ever performing a revalidation with an origin CDN, after all jquery-100.99.42.min.js never changes and any copy from anywhere will do)

      Now you are taking about a feature that has the hallmarks of being useful.

      Many of these things are being addressed but were not part of the original thought that it somehow helps performance by having some shared usage, as download speed isn't always the dominating factor, sometimes the DNS/If-Modified-Since cache revalidation is the dominating factor, when we already had to take the hit of some JS/CSS of the consuming website anyway, to making the single hit content larger is cheaper than adding another 3rd party website.

    211. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, I think TFA's author is withholding some important information about his setup.

      I'm using a 2014 13-in MacBook Pro which should be no faster than a 2014 iMac. I always have a bunch of memory hogging applications open (right now I'm running Eclipse, Xcode, iTunes, Skype, Ableton Live and Atom – why the hell does Atom need 3.7 Gb of RAM?), and yet Safari opens new tabs and switches between tabs instantly.

      It's not like I'm doing any effort to keep my computer fast: I almost never close applications when I'm done with them and I only reboot for OS updates. I also never install 3rd party crap in Safari, which might be the reason for the author's performance problems.

    212. Re:Why they are slow? by sjames · · Score: 1

      That was true a zillion years ago, and was why there was a vfork call that assumed it would be shortly followed by exec.

      In anything for the last decade or so, the new process gets it's pages in the form of a copied page table. The new processes pages are the very same physical pages as the parent. The pages only get actually copied when written to. In the case of fork then exec, the child simply unmaps the shared pages again.

      That setup keeps memory usage small and makes things a lot faster.

    213. Re:Why they are slow? by sjames · · Score: 1

      The top of the stack actually is just one case of the COW rules. If it gets modified, it gets copied just like any other page.

      File tables and such may or may not get deferred until a file is touched.

      So forking really is pretty cheap. It's cost is negligible when it's for opening a new tab in the browser.

    214. Re:Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Going by your last sentence, you don't bother to use slashdot either, because it has no "reader mode" button.

      Odd.

    215. Re:Why they are slow? by TheRaven64 · · Score: 1

      The top of the stack actually is just one case of the COW rules. If it gets modified, it gets copied just like any other page.

      The return to userspace will always modify the top of the stack, so it's common to prefault this, rather than bounce straight back into the kernel, though not universal.

      File tables and such may or may not get deferred until a file is touched.

      At the very least, every file descriptor table entry needs its reference count bumping, but typically the entire table is duplicated. This involves a lot of locking (because other threads can be opening and closing file descriptors during a fork), so is not as cheap as you might think.

      So forking really is pretty cheap. It's cost is negligible when it's for opening a new tab in the browser.

      It's pretty cheap, and you're unlikely to notice it in this context. Unfortunately, you are going to notice the increase in TLB pressure from having a lot of processes. This is one of the big reasons why neither Chrome nor Safari will put all of your tabs in separate sandboxes beyond a certain threshold and will instead begin sharing renderer processes between tabs.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    216. Re:Why they are slow? by mysidia · · Score: 1

      There is no need for a DNS hack for that, IP anycast is already great for that.

      IP Anycast is controlled by the owner of the destination IP. You're thinking too small........
      I'm thinking EVERY ISP would (If they wanted) offer to provide their own copy of the most common included resources, And they would not need any 3rd party's assistance or permission to do so.

      They would just need HTML tags that include a SHA256 digest of every remote-included resource, including Scripts, CSS Files, and Image/Picture files.

      Also, with the Hash specified the meaning of the "SRC" Tag changes to "Known Mirror" ---- In other words, the mirror URL is a URL of Last Resort if the DNS lookup/Search for http:///. Fails, so a local mirror could not be found.

      Another possibility is to drop the SRC= tag mostly and just use the hash

      ....
      <script src="file1.js" fallbacksuffix="example.com" hashcode="88df34e6d2287f7873039a8e7f60a8fec5505f5ea565d7516b8de34a9825fd5c" >

      The fallback URL for this script file would be http:/// 88df34e6d2287f7873039a8e7f60a8fec5505f5ea565d7516b8de34a9825fd5c.example.com/file1.js"

    217. Re: Why they are slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Doom was 320x240 compared to today's webpages in 1024x768 minimum. J

    218. Re:Why they are slow? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 1

      This is basically never the reason why hideous giant webpages are bloated(or why lean, bandwidth friendly websites aren't); but complexity and bulk are actually pretty weakly related.

      In the most extreme cases, you have the demoscene and procedural generation types using relatively compact, but mathematically hairy, techniques to avoid pre-canned art assets as much as possible; on the other side you have audio, video, and images uncompressed or with primitive codecs that offer really, really, trivial implementation but are absolutely enormous.

      In the case of websites, most of the big ones are just bloated; and most of the small ones are just KISS-based; but with something like 3d engines; the complexity is substantially greater; but a lot of 'a different sprite for every possible combination of angle and action' art assets were eliminated in favor a polygon model with some textures. A great deal more math involved; but not necessarily bigger files(though this led to an unfortunate period where a number of franchises discarded really nice looking 2D engines, primitive; but with excellent production values and art direction, in favor of 3D engines that were just muddy, bland, low-poly messes on any hardware you could actually afford at the time. Mostly a solved problem now; but it was an ugly transition).

    219. Re:Why they are slow? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 1

      You joke; but games are actually one of the places where Flash(though not Adobe Flash) is arguably most tasteful and inoffensive(plus, since it isn't trying to render arbitrary stuff from wildly untrustworthy sources all the time, probably safest).

      I haven't seen it as much as I used to; but 'Scaleform' is a reasonably popular middleware package that allows you to embed vector art assets authored with Flash tools into 3d engines; typically used for drawing UIs, 2D labels, etc. for 3D engines that had needs for which polygon-based stuff wasn't the best approach. Civ IV's UI, among a variety of others, was done that way.

      I'm told that, as the supply of artists familiar with Flash has declined, along with Flash's popularity, the trend has been toward embedding a tame webkit derivative and using its text rendering and SVG support instead; but for all its sins on the web, Flash isn't a particularly illogical choice if you need to add some vector graphics to a 3d environment; and Scaleform was the implementation optimized for doing that.

    220. Re:Why they are slow? by amicusNYCL · · Score: 1

      I don't do a lot of chatting online, sorry. But I'm sure that others would enjoy your stories too.

      --
      "Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
    221. Re:Why they are slow? by LifesABeach · · Score: 1

      A lie, supported by follow on statements is still a lie.

    222. Re:Why they are slow? by LifesABeach · · Score: 1

      Only a Fool supports a Lier, good luck that.

    223. Re:Why they are slow? by BronsCon · · Score: 1

      First of all, it's "liar", not "lier". Second, if he was serving paper pages in an office environment, he's hardly a liar. Only a fool doesn't read what's right in front of him.

      --
      APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
    224. Re:Why they are slow? by BronsCon · · Score: 1

      And an idiot who can't understand that sheets of paper are called "pages" and people you serve them to are, often, called "clients" is still an idiot.

      --
      APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
    225. Re:Why they are slow? by tepples · · Score: 1

      Output your logo very quickly, before you do any real server-side work.

      I don't see how that's practical. The HTTP status code (200 vs. 301 vs. 404), the document's <title>, and the <meta> elements making up the document's Open Graph summary have to be sent before the start of the <body> element, where the logo appears.

    226. Re:Why they are slow? by tepples · · Score: 1

      Buying a "connection [that] is this side of Y2K" may cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in some places. (Source 1 | Source 2)

    227. Re:Why they are slow? by tepples · · Score: 1

      Dell machines are usually designed to be quiet.

      I replaced my Dell laptop's HDD with an OCZ SSD and it got even quieter. How does your calculation fare with an SSD in your Dell?

      wait for virus scan, read cache meta data, determine that our cache file isn't already too old, 1s

      Have you benchmarked a virus scan taking 1000 ms with MSE/Windows Defender installed rather than something as intrusive as Norton or McAfee? How long does this process take on macOS, GNU/Linux, iOS, or Android, which are less likely to need on-access antivirus? And what fraction of web browsing is performed on Windows, especially now that people are dropping wired home Internet in favor of cellular Internet?

      Speaking of cellular Internet, response time of each individual request isn't the only consideration. Time to earn money to pay $10/GB overage fees to the cellular ISP is another important consideration.

      HEAD the web-site file

      How do cache control headers, particularly Cache-Control: and Expires:, affect how often HEAD is needed?

    228. Re:Why they are slow? by tepples · · Score: 1

      I can beat any inline script with a native compiled desktop application.

      How fast does the correct output of said Windows application arrive when it is run on a Mac, GNU/Linux PC, iPad, or Android tablet?

    229. Re:Why they are slow? by holophrastic · · Score: 1

      You're talking to me as though I owe you something. Do you own work, or pay for mine.

    230. Re:Why they are slow? by holophrastic · · Score: 1

      You're slow. Is that "real" work for your server? I'll re-phrase, for your slow processor: output your logo as quickly as you can, postponing all unnecessary server-side work until thereafter.

      Is that clear enough for you?

    231. Re:Why they are slow? by Marxist+Hacker+42 · · Score: 1

      You recompile native for each operating system, and in fact, for each CPU. Any given native bare metal program is going to always beat stuff running behind the hardware abstraction layer- behind a virtual machine.

      --
      SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
    232. Re:Why they are slow? by tepples · · Score: 1

      You recompile native for each operating system, and in fact, for each CPU.

      If you're a small developer, good luck affording one instance of each operating system and CPU on which to test as well as a code signing certificate for each platform and renewals thereof.

    233. Re:Why they are slow? by Marxist+Hacker+42 · · Score: 1

      Who said anything about being a small developer?

      --
      SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
    234. Re:Why they are slow? by tepples · · Score: 1

      I can beat any inline script with a native compiled desktop application.

      If you're a small developer, good luck affording one instance of each operating system and CPU

      Who said anything about being a small developer?

      "I can beat" and not "My company can beat".

      Besides, all business that aren't spinoffs start as small businesses. Where should a startup find both the time and the money to launch five native applications, one for each platform, on day one?

    235. Re:Why they are slow? by Marxist+Hacker+42 · · Score: 1

      The argument was about the technical difference between native applications and browser based Javascript VM. Has nothing to do with the economic or sociological aspects of the problem.

      --
      SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
  2. Opera is NOT sane. by snarfies · · Score: 5, Insightful

    >Opera was sane: it did not reload a tab unless you asked for it. It just reopened everything from cache

    No. That is NOT sane, normal, or desired.

    Webpages are live. If I want to look at a chached version, I'll save the webpage locally. If I'm pointing a browser at an address, I expect a current webpage. If it takes all of three seconds to give me that, I think that's okay.

    1. Re:Opera is NOT sane. by DigiShaman · · Score: 2, Informative

      Now that they're owned by the Chinese, fuck Opera.

      Try Brave. It's very very fast, and blocks all sorts of crap. It's based on the Chromium browser

      https://www.brave.com/

      --
      Life is not for the lazy.
    2. Re:Opera is NOT sane. by tepples · · Score: 1

      Webpages are live. If I want to look at a chached version, I'll save the webpage locally.

      Which extension do you use to save locally all pages that are open in a dozen or so tabs, so that they can be reloaded back into tabs once you are ready to read them? Or do you need to save each page individually, navigating through your file system to find a folder in which to save each?

    3. Re:Opera is NOT sane. by DigiShaman · · Score: 1

      Forgot to mention; Brave is far faster on iOS than Safari. None of that annoying page hijacking that mousetraps you too.

      --
      Life is not for the lazy.
    4. Re:Opera is NOT sane. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't agree. A computer should do what the fuck I tell it to do, and no more.

    5. Re:Opera is NOT sane. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I hate it when the back button need time to show me previous page. I use it often to go back deeper then 10 steps.

    6. Re:Opera is NOT sane. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It would be easy enough to make this toggle-able behavior in options. If you want the page to refresh you can always press f5, duh.

    7. Re:Opera is NOT sane. by YoungManKlaus · · Score: 2

      > It's based on the Chromium browser

      fuck that then, the only good engine was Presto back in the days. Anything else is crap when it comes to heavy workloads.

    8. Re:Opera is NOT sane. by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      Which extension do you use to save locally all pages that are open in a dozen or so tabs, so that they can be reloaded back into tabs once you are ready to read them?

      Scrapbook Plus

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    9. Re:Opera is NOT sane. by tepples · · Score: 1

      Did you try right-clicking the Back button to see a list of steps that you can skip?

    10. Re:Opera is NOT sane. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    11. Re:Opera is NOT sane. by npslider · · Score: 0

      Actually Apple's new web browser, cOurage, is a far better choice, for those who are not afraid.

    12. Re:Opera is NOT sane. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How does it compare to https://vivaldi.com/?

      I've been using Vivaldi for a while. I'm mostly liking it, but it has its wonkyness. I'm always open to giving something else a shot.

    13. Re:Opera is NOT sane. by kurkosdr · · Score: 1

      Another endorsement for Brave from me. My only gripe with Brave is that it doesn't offer tab sync across devices. Of course, none of the "adblocker" browsers do, because they think anybody who wants to block ads is some kind of a privacy nutter. Also, the "force HTTPS everywhere" feature (which brave has enabled by default on every site) breaks facebook and disqus plugins, and you have to disable it manually. Still better than having Chrome running 3 ad scripts in parallel tho on most sites.

    14. Re:Opera is NOT sane. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think I would spontaneously orgasm if I learned that Presto was open-sourced.

    15. Re:Opera is NOT sane. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I disagree. If I am reopening my browser with a bunch of tabs from last nights' work, I want to *first* see the pages, as I need them, *exactly* as they were when I last fetched them. Some live sites move so fast the content you were reading will have scrolled down, or been pushed to page 5, by the next morning.

      How hard is it to hit CTRL-R when you return to a tab the next day? *Then* you can wait those 3 seconds you feel are okay, after first being able to re-read where you were before.

    16. Re:Opera is NOT sane. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Thank you

    17. Re:Opera is NOT sane. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How is opening a tab considered "pointing a browser at a Web page"? That's asinine. It was current when you loaded the tab. If you want it "more" current, press the fuckin' reload button you lazy asshole.

    18. Re:Opera is NOT sane. by MasseKid · · Score: 4, Informative

      I disagree, when reopening the entire browser it is a perfectly legitimate use case to go back exactly where you were. Opera has long had the feature to tell the browser to automatically reload a page every X seconds, Minutes, or hours. So if you're use case is you need to constantly need updates on the current thing being hosted, Opera already does what you want. Now, perhaps there is a misunderstanding of what the summary is talking about in terms of reopening a tab. This is only occurs when you reopen a group of saved tabs (generally from the last time you closed it). This does not occur if you simply type an address, click a bookmark, or any other "normal" method of opening a link.

    19. Re:Opera is NOT sane. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What, does it remove .jpg support from webpages? That would be in-line with Apple's recent definitions of 'courage'...

    20. Re:Opera is NOT sane. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Brave suck as the DEVs refuse to enable settings so user could decide if they want to update browser or not. As it stands today if the BRAVE decides to upgrade itself lets say when you are in the field browsing thru metered 3G then you are fucked.

    21. Re:Opera is NOT sane. by npslider · · Score: 1

      No.

      It removes support for all forms of HTML in favor of wireless AppleScript.

    22. Re:Opera is NOT sane. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't agree. A computer should do what the fuck I tell it to do, and no more.

      Options are great, but there still needs to be a default behavior.

    23. Re:Opera is NOT sane. by CaptainDork · · Score: 1

      I downloaded Brave; tried to upload a photo to Facebook and it just sat there.

      GODDAMIT! I'M TALKING ABOUT FACEBOOK!!!!

      --
      It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
    24. Re:Opera is NOT sane. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      See!? It's already protecting you and your identity! ...you're welcome. :)

    25. Re:Opera is NOT sane. by Stinky+Cheese+Man · · Score: 1

      If I'm pointing a browser at an address, I expect a current webpage. If it takes all of three seconds to give me that, I think that's okay.

      Except when your phone has lost internet service since you first loaded the page. Then you go to look at it and the browser discards a perfectly good cached page, attempts to reload, and gives you... a blank screen.

      I hate it when that happens.

    26. Re:Opera is NOT sane. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Brave aims to transform the online ad ecosystem with micropayments and a new revenue-sharing solution to give users and publishers a better deal"

      So basically they want to become another advertising platform? I think I'll pass, thanks.

    27. Re: Opera is NOT sane. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Right click? I'm a Mac user, you insensitive clod.

    28. Re:Opera is NOT sane. by jason777 · · Score: 1

      Have you tried Vivaldi?

    29. Re:Opera is NOT sane. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      +1 Nothing is as good as Opera 12, even today. If Opera just updated it with current standards, it would still be better than anything available right now.

    30. Re:Opera is NOT sane. by Ayanami_R · · Score: 1

      It is if you have any sort of limited data plan.

      --
      "Science is the power of man"
    31. Re:Opera is NOT sane. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Fuck Brave. It's an adware browser from a bigot.

    32. Re:Opera is NOT sane. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, you're wrong. You **already** requested it. The page doesn't normally auto-refresh every N seconds to make *sure* you have the "live" version. Switching between tabs SHOULD NOT trigger a refresh. When I load the page the first time, I've requested a copy of the page. That should never change unless I tell it to.

    33. Re:Opera is NOT sane. by Godwin+O'Hitler · · Score: 1

      What sort of use do you make of the Web where a webpage changes its content every minute?
      90% of the Web pages I call up are not live. They are in fact what they say: pages. Not pages from the Daily Prophet but pages full stop.
      I do not want them to change before my eyes. They contain everything I need on the first loading. When I switch back and forth between them I expect to see the same thing every time, not wait seconds while they reload the whole damn thing all over again.

      That seems perfectly sane, normal, and desired to me.

      --
      No, your children are not the special ones. Nor are your pets.
    34. Re:Opera is NOT sane. by mjwx · · Score: 1

      >Opera was sane: it did not reload a tab unless you asked for it. It just reopened everything from cache

      No. That is NOT sane, normal, or desired.

      Actually its NOT JUST, sane and desired, but essential.

      Web pages still manage to crash my browser, I want my browser to re-open the tabs I had previously but NOT load the page that made it crash.

      --
      Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
    35. Re:Opera is NOT sane. by jc42 · · Score: 1

      Opera was sane: it did not reload a tab unless you asked for it. It just reopened everything from cache

      No. That is NOT sane, normal, or desired. Webpages are live. ...

      Not always. For example, I've been experimenting with portables to see how usable they are for displaying music. (Not playing music; I'm talking about readable "sheet" music".) Scenario: I'm going to an event like a jam session, my phone/tablet/whatever may not have Web access there, so I'd like to pre-load a lot of likely pages that I and a lot of other musical friends have put online.

      But when I get there and wake up my gadget, most of the browsers instantly attempt to reload all those pages, find they can't, and display their "not available" message instead of the page they were showing. The buttons showing never include a "show the previous version from cache" choice; the info is just gone. I do a lot of web testing, so I have at least a dozen of the most "popular" browsers loaded on each. So far, the only browser I've found that doesn't fail this way has been Firefox, which just simply wakes up and continues where it was. So it's the only one I use to pre-load things for an event.

      I've found it fairly easy to demo this at home. I just load up a few pages into a few browsers, show people that they all work when I switch between the browsers, etc. I suggest that others do the same on their cell phones. Then I invite people to join me on a short walk. When I get about a block away from home, my home wifi is out of range, all the other wifis have passwords, and I show them the screen, which shows an error message rather than the music it had a few seconds earlier. As we walk, the others also show the same thing happening in the browsers on their screens.

      The vendors (especially Apple) reply that we should just use their apps, which can be set to not screw up that way. But to test my stuff on all those apps, I'd have to get a whole pile of cell phones and tablets, and also pay for service for all of them, which would cost me more money than I have. So I only test with browsers, which the vendors have (knowingly and with malice aforethought .-) set up to fail this way.

      It's weird that Opera also fails this way. You'd think they'd be different. And maybe Opera and/or other browsers have a setting to turn off this automatic reloading. If so, I've never found it. Or, in a couple of cases, I found it in an early release, but it was gone after an upgrade.

      Anyone know a general way to turn off this automatic reloading? I do suspect that it's possible with some browsers, but they do a good job of hiding it or renaming it so it isn't very recognizable.

      In any case, notice that none of the "pages" I'm talking about are "live". They're just pages of sheet music, that stay the same until edited by a human. So there's no need to reload them at all. And discarding a page because there's no wifi service is inexcusable in any case. It's just pure user-hostility on the part of the vendors.

      --
      Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
    36. Re:Opera is NOT sane. by samwichse · · Score: 1

      Have you tried Vivaldi? Made by one of the Opera founders as what the Opera 15+ browser should have been: a true attempt to reimplement Opera on the blink engine.

      Only thing I don't like about it is the old Opera's back-caching behavior... that was instant and took me back to exactly what was showing before. Now I hit back to a forum feed and I have to wait while the feed is reloaded, and the place I was in the list has changed. Ugh.

  3. Why is everything so damn slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Never mind browsers, just opening a folder in Windows you can see the objects being drawn and the icons being loaded. And if you studied computation, as you claim, you wonder just what the hell the CPU can be doing with all these gigacycles per second ??

    How are things NOT instantaneous these days?

    Answer: too many cooks. Too many layers of semi-enginereed not-really-tested software.

    1. Re:Why is everything so damn slow? by tepples · · Score: 2

      For one thing, users expect to see thumbnails of huge images, sync status badges on Dropbox or other online backup services, multilingual filenames written in scripts whose coverage requires multiple fonts, etc.

    2. Re:Why is everything so damn slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Windows I/O rape is one of the major reason why SSDs gained popularity among home users.

    3. Re:Why is everything so damn slow? by thechemic · · Score: 1

      It could also be that restaurant owners are telling the cooks to send out meals poorly prepared and poorly presented.

      --
      Let's make like a bird... and get the flock outta here.
    4. Re:Why is everything so damn slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Never mind browsers, just opening a folder in Windows you can see the objects being drawn and the icons being loaded. And if you studied computation, as you claim, you wonder just what the hell the CPU can be doing with all these gigacycles per second ??

      Calculating hashes of all the files in that folder, and transmitting them back to Microsoft, to be compared against hashes of known child pornography and terrorism-related media. "That's a great idea," people say, without bothering to care that the next target will be their movies and MP3 files

  4. Why are they so slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Two reasons: one, they thrash your disk like few programs can, which incurs a gigantic speed penalty. Running a browser, say, Firefox, on a SSD against one on a HDD, especially one of the newer large capacity ones, is like night and day. The second reason is scripting related: whenever you visit a web page with advertising, your pageview is auctioned off behind the scenes. The latency of the ad network is typically orders of magnitude longer than it takes the rest of the page to render, but the page is prevented from rendering while the advertising is sorting itself out.

    1. Re:Why are they so slow? by arth1 · · Score: 2

      Yes, pages explicitly saying do-not-cache for most if not all elements by default, in order to placate advertisers and trackers is one of the main reasons. Combined with going to https, which defeats proxy caching[*] and needs extra computation, the experience is much slower.

      [*]: This is why Google pushes and advocates https so much - don't be fooled into thinking they truly care about your privacy. Really, they make money on selling your private information and history. With proxy caching, they can't tell whether one person has viewed an element or a hundred, all behind the same proxy. The advertisers want to know that.

      But part of it is code bloat too, with so many abstraction layers that every job takes orders of magnitude more work than needed.

    2. Re:Why are they so slow? by tepples · · Score: 2

      HTTPS doesn't "defeat" a caching proxy near the client. It only requires users of said proxy to take the step of trusting the proxy's root certificate. The one thing it "defeats" is an intercepting proxy that tries to hide its existence from its users.

    3. Re:Why are they so slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It might load slowly but once everything has been loaded into RAM it doesn't really do much I/O on an HDD, at least on GNU/Linux

    4. Re:Why are they so slow? by arth1 · · Score: 1

      HTTPS doesn't "defeat" a caching proxy near the client. It only requires users of said proxy to take the step of trusting the proxy's root certificate.

      If you do that, your browser will only see the proxy server's certificate, not the endpoint's. That's a problem.

    5. Re:Why are they so slow? by tepples · · Score: 1

      Your proxy server sees the endpoint's certificate. If the endpoint's certificate doesn't check out, the proxy server refuses to issue its own certificate for that site.

    6. Re:Why are they so slow? by arth1 · · Score: 2

      If the endpoint's certificate doesn't check out, the proxy server refuses to issue its own certificate for that site.

      That doesn't tell you what's wrong. And it always hides the real security details, showing the proxy server's security details instead.

      And doesn't help if you need to access a site for which you have the CA but the proxy doesn't.

      In practice, https pretty much defeats proxy caching. Which Google just loves.

    7. Re:Why are they so slow? by tepples · · Score: 1

      Context for moderators: A claim that the rise of HTTPS is making the browser slow by making it hard for an HTTP proxy near the client to serve cached versions of public pages to multiple users, especially one in a poor or remote area. Counterclaim that one can run a caching HTTPS proxy and have its subscribers trust the proxy to verify origin servers' certs on your behalf.

      That doesn't tell you what's wrong.

      Another approach is for the proxy server to display the failed certificate's information on a page with HTTP status 502 (Bad Gateway).

      And it always hides the real security details, showing the proxy server's security details instead.

      I concede that you have found a legitimate drawback of an HTTPS MITM proxy that operates in this manner. I'll have to bring it up if someone else makes this claim.

      And doesn't help if you need to access a site for which you have the CA but the proxy doesn't.

      If you have a particular root certificate but the proxy doesn't, then it's probably a private CA, such as a CA for servers on your intranet, and no other subscribers to the same proxy are likely to have the certificate either. So unless it's an intercepting proxy that your network won't let you override, you can tell your browser not to use the proxy to cache that particular origin. In Firefox, for example, try Preferences > Advanced > Network > Connection > Settings > No Proxy for.

  5. Use fiddler and you'll see why by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Seriously, install Fiddler, set it up for HTTP decryption and look at what's going on, or use your browser's developer tools, but Fiddler will give you easier cross-btowser comparisons. But look at all the loads and the size of those loads - 10 years ago, all this shit wasn't being crammed down our throats every time we loaded a page.

  6. Because Use Cases by bfpierce · · Score: 1, Insightful

    'And with ten or fifteen open tabs it eventually becomes sluggish as hell.'

    I don't think that's the standard use case for testing, nor should it be. What the hell are you doing with that many tabs open.

    "Unfortunately, modern browsers are so stupid that they reload all the tabs when you restart them. Which takes ages if you have a hundred of tabs."

    Again, good lord. Hundreds of tabs? What are you even doing.

    As to refresh, I think that's become a user expectation that you see the most recent information when you pull up a tab. Having to manually do it isn't something a standard user is going to do.

    Maybe what you're looking for is to have 'power user' settings in the browser, so you can keep your hundred tabs open.

    1. Re:Because Use Cases by tepples · · Score: 1

      As to refresh, I think that's become a user expectation that you see the most recent information when you pull up a tab.

      Has it also "become a user expectation" that you pay once for high-volume (1000 GB/mo) wired Internet access at home and pay again for single digit GB/mo cellular Internet access just to "see the most recent information" rather than what was current when you loaded the page an hour ago before boarding transit?

    2. Re:Because Use Cases by gordguide · · Score: 1

      'And with ten or fifteen open tabs it eventually becomes sluggish as hell.'

      I don't think that's the standard use case for testing, nor should it be. What the hell are you doing with that many tabs open.

      "Unfortunately, modern browsers are so stupid that they reload all the tabs when you restart them. Which takes ages if you have a hundred of tabs."

      Again, good lord. Hundreds of tabs? What are you even doing.

      As to refresh, I think that's become a user expectation that you see the most recent information when you pull up a tab. Having to manually do it isn't something a standard user is going to do.

      Maybe what you're looking for is to have 'power user' settings in the browser, so you can keep your hundred tabs open.

      I normally have perhaps 30~40 pages live (I don't like tabs, I prefer new windows) when surfing in an ordinary fashion. From time to time, I might even get up to a hundred. My browser does work fine, or to put it another way, roughly the same as when there are only one or two pages open.

      What am I doing? Simple ... I refuse to be interrupted by crap. So when I am reading a news story (for example) I stay on that news story page and read the whole thing, then close the window (or tab, if you prefer). And if there is a phrase or event mentioned on that news page, I copy and paste into a new browser window to search that term and have it ready to refer to next, or later, or whenever.

      Similarly when I'm researching a topic, I stay on the page I'm reading, and again will probably have a number of new pages rendered and ready for when I am good and ready to read them, in their entirety, as topics, phrases, pdf's, links, etc come into the picture.

      Honestly I can't understand why someone would NOT have dozens of pages open at the same time. What do you do ... jump to a new page and leave the one you were supposedly interested in reading?

    3. Re:Because Use Cases by Actually,+I+do+RTFA · · Score: 1

      Among other things, I use hundreds of tabs (and loathe to restart my browser) because I want to read whatever content is there, later. I don't want a live link to something that may be taken down or changed by then. I just want what it is.

      --
      Your ad here. Ask me how!
    4. Re:Because Use Cases by Dixie_Flatline · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Uh, I have 23 tabs open in one window and 39 in another (Vivaldi). I have a dozen open in MS Edge. Lots of them are work related or reference tabs. My Vivaldi tabs are things that I'm reading or things that I always keep open.

      I'm not unusual. When I walk past other people's machines, everyone has dozens upon dozens of tabs open.

      I get that I'm a huge nerd and that my use case is often niche, but browsers are just as much work tools as entertainment tools these days. It IS a useful test case. Hundreds of tabs is maybe pushing it, but it's definitely conceivable.

      Most of the webpages that I have open ARE static content--they're a news story or a review or something that doesn't immediately need updating. It makes it much faster to load. Only a few things like Reddit or Facebook need a lot of refreshing.

    5. Re:Because Use Cases by bfpierce · · Score: 1

      I do that, but to a much smaller scale. And I suspect that a large proportion of users operate in a similar way.

      Deep dive research with 100+ open tabs is not a standard use case for web browsing, it's just not.

    6. Re:Because Use Cases by johannesg · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I don't think that's the standard use case for testing, nor should it be. What the hell are you doing with that many tabs open.

      Speak for yourself. I normally open a bunch of websites I read, and then just middle-click to open the articles I find interesting in separate tabs. You can quite easily end up with dozens of articles. I wouldn't consider that to be unusual at all.

    7. Re:Because Use Cases by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Honestly I can't understand why someone would NOT have dozens of pages open at the same time. What do you do ... jump to a new page and leave the one you were supposedly interested in reading?

      I go to a page and I read it. When I am finished with it, however long that takes, then I close that page and move on to something else. If I think I might want to come back to it (which is not common) I'll switch to a new tab.

      Occasionally, a page will have one or more links to other pages, so I'll open those pages in separate tabs so I can easily go back to the original page. When I'm finished, however long that takes, then I close them. Occasionally, when researching something where I need to look at several sources, I may have up to 10 tabs open, but that's not common.

      I see this a lot -- people complaining that their browser is "slow" when they have a gazillion tabs open. WTF? You can only read one page at a time. If you regularly have 10+ tabs open, the problem is not your browser. You have some sort of ADD problem.

    8. Re:Because Use Cases by ckatko · · Score: 2

      Use case example?

      I'm searching for X programming topic. I enter it into Google.

      Because I'm not a moron, I hold control-click and load all top-ten results in tabs. I then quickly compare-and-contrast them to make sure I getting the complete picture and not a heavily biased, tunnel-vision answer.

      TADA.

      Also, I open windows for separate "tasks" and tabs for related information to those tasks. (For example, one window is personal tabs like YouTube music and Gmail.) By time I end a work day, I've had over 180 tabs open. I use OneTab to store blocks of interesting tabs for later. Great for saving RAM on a netbook too.

      And what happens if Chrome crashes, OR, I accidentally hit Control-Shift-Q (kill ALL CHROME TABS) instead of Control-Shift-W (kill all tabs in a single window.) Well, now I've got to RELOAD EVERYTHING holding control-shift-T until all the tabs I need come back.

      I'm not arguing that Chrome should cache everything you do. But the idea that this use case never shows up is just plain silly. Maybe you should learn to multitask more before claiming other people never do.

    9. Re:Because Use Cases by npslider · · Score: 1

      'Again, good lord. Hundreds of tabs? What are you even doing.

      It's the web
      It's a slashdot user

      Must you ask?

    10. Re:Because Use Cases by freeze128 · · Score: 1, Insightful

      How about this:

      "Why are browsers so slow to reopen 100 tabs?"

      "Because you're using it wrong, dummy! Stop doing that!"

    11. Re:Because Use Cases by Billly+Gates · · Score: 1

      That would drive me crazy. How can you keep track of which is which?

    12. Re:Because Use Cases by bfpierce · · Score: 1

      Do you really, honestly think that's the standard user? I mean, really, come on now, think about who uses the web and what they're doing with it.

      I didn't say that this use case never happens, I've said it's probably not your general user. I'll stand by that, what you're doing is now probably considered 'edge case'.

    13. Re:Because Use Cases by l20502 · · Score: 1

      It's especially annoying not being able to check the weekly weather on a "smartphone" because the developer decided to implement a cache that is invalidated after few hours

    14. Re:Because Use Cases by bfpierce · · Score: 1

      I don't own a smart phone so I can't comment really. This article seemed to be based on desktop browsers, different cases to consider.

    15. Re:Because Use Cases by fnj · · Score: 1

      What the hell are you doing with that many [10-15] tabs open.

      Are you daft? I usually have at least 100 tabs open, and often get to 200-300 before the crappy piece of shit browser gets unacceptably sluggish and is hogging close to 100% of the CPU just sitting idle.

    16. Re:Because Use Cases by bfpierce · · Score: 2

      And each one of them doing background work just like a regular application would, at least nowadays. Ask the idiots designing the pages and loading in a bunch of crap, not the browser writer.

      If I were running 300 programs on my OS sucking up 100% of the CPU would you call me daft? Sure as shit you would.

    17. Re:Because Use Cases by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Use case example?

      I'm searching for X programming topic. I enter it into Google.

      Because I'm not a moron, I hold control-click and load all top-ten results in tabs. I then quickly compare-and-contrast them to make sure I getting the complete picture and not a heavily biased, tunnel-vision answer.

      TADA.

      Also, I open windows for separate "tasks" and tabs for related information to those tasks. (For example, one window is personal tabs like YouTube music and Gmail.) By time I end a work day, I've had over 180 tabs open. I use OneTab to store blocks of interesting tabs for later. Great for saving RAM on a netbook too.

      And what happens if Chrome crashes, OR, I accidentally hit Control-Shift-Q (kill ALL CHROME TABS) instead of Control-Shift-W (kill all tabs in a single window.) Well, now I've got to RELOAD EVERYTHING holding control-shift-T until all the tabs I need come back.

      I'm not arguing that Chrome should cache everything you do. But the idea that this use case never shows up is just plain silly. Maybe you should learn to multitask more before claiming other people never do.

      So get a extension for tabjunkies like you then instead of enforcing your use case on a majority that doesn't fit that use case

    18. Re:Because Use Cases by l20502 · · Score: 1

      Different windows?

    19. Re:Because Use Cases by laie_techie · · Score: 1

      Also, I open windows for separate "tasks" and tabs for related information to those tasks. (For example, one window is personal tabs like YouTube music and Gmail.) By time I end a work day, I've had over 180 tabs open.

      You well said that you've had over 180 tabs open over the course of a work day (still seems high to me), but how many are open at a given time? Don't you close the tab when you are finished with it? Do you keep all windows open until the end of the day, even when you finish that "task"? I can easily see a use case of a few dozen, but 180 at once???

    20. Re:Because Use Cases by fnj · · Score: 1

      No, I call the browser designer daft. There is ABSOLUTELY NO REASON for ANY of those tabs, except the one that is current, to be using ANY CPU at all. A sane design would keep them all frozen and just update one when you revisit it. Duh.

      Even reloading 100+ tabs from the source sites on starting a browser with saved state is STUPID. All the tabs except the active one should just contain a pointer to the source site on startup. Then they can be updated one by one as they are revisited.

    21. Re:Because Use Cases by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Meanwhile I don't think I have ever noticed anyone using more than 8 tabs and that is rare. I can't imagine why anyone would ever want to have more open as it would make it almost impossible to find a desired tab.

    22. Re:Because Use Cases by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So, what your saying is this guy is holding it wrong?

    23. Re:Because Use Cases by Whorhay · · Score: 1

      Given the limited screen real estate I just don't see how it's effective to have dozens of tabs open. I usually don't have a dozen between two browser windows. There is plenty of stuff I want to keep handy for reference purposes and such, which I create bookmarks/favorites for. I would think it's far faster to navigate a quick drop down menu tree than figure out which tab out of dozens is the one you want when there are dozens open and you can't even read the text on the tab.

    24. Re:Because Use Cases by tepples · · Score: 1

      All the tabs except the active one should just contain a pointer to the source site on startup. Then they can be updated one by one as they are revisited.

      Provided the user's computer is still connected to the Internet at the time the browser is restarted. This may not be the case, say, for someone who turns on a laptop to read previously loaded HTML documents while riding the bus to or from work.

    25. Re:Because Use Cases by fnj · · Score: 1

      Do you think that is really reaching? If somebody really wants to read web sites without having internet connectivity, let him "save as" or "print to PDF" ahead of time.

    26. Re:Because Use Cases by Kinematics · · Score: 1

      Tab Groups.

      Per individual window, 8 tabs is about the most that's comfortable, and 10 is when I start looking to trim out stuff that I've finished looking at.

      However Tab groups lets me keep tabs organized. Spatially, it's like having a new window per tab group, but each group is named, and it's easy to move tabs between groups, so usability-wise it's far superior. So I can have a group for the threads I'm reading on some forum, and another group for Github stuff, and another group for programming stuff I'm reading, and another group for research I'm doing on voting mathematics, etc, etc.

      I don't need to find one tab out of 50 on a single window, where you can't read any tab names. I just need to know what topic category I wanted to move to, and scan through 5 to 10 tabs that are easy enough to work with.

      I find this far easier to use than bookmarks, because open tabs are transient; I will eventually close them as each need is complete. Bookmarks accumulate. I have a single bookmark folder of about 30 news sites, probably half of which I haven't visited in years. Another folder of maybe 40 blogs (just for computer stuff), and I'm sure at least some of them don't even exist on the web anymore. Some stuff is worth using bookmarks for, because you find you'll keep going back to them later, but most is either temporary (I won't care about it again after I close it) or ongoing (such as a web serial I'm reading that could take me multiple months to get through the backlog), where bookmarking doesn't serve any real purpose.

      And *because* bookmarks accumulate, the longer you go, the harder they are to use. Other than the most frequently visited of those blogs, I can hardly remember why I bookmarked most of them, or what they were about. If I know I bookmarked some blog about some topic a year ago, I'm still better off using Google than trying to go through each blog one by one to find what I'm looking for. Clicking on each of 50 tabs in the browser window to find a single page is faster than that.

    27. Re:Because Use Cases by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Maybe all this needs is a new addon that displays the tree of links in a graphical way. Soon it would be noticed that reading DFS and browsing BFS causes lots of memory consumption. But once the tree is built up, there's no need to fully create/load the tabs/windows, as this can be done when the reader visits the tree.

    28. Re:Because Use Cases by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Can you really not see that you are an edge case?

      Lot's of my friends ski, doesn't mean that all cars should come equipped with ski racks.

    29. Re:Because Use Cases by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Several years ago, using Chrome I could open over 300 tabs before I ran out of RAM (16GB) and had to restart it.

      Then they changed something, and I could only open around 100 before it got sluggish.

      Sometime after I upgraded to Windows 10 (at the free deadline), things improved a bit again. Not sure what Google did. But I certainly don't have Windows 10 to thank for this: when Windows says I have 80% RAM used, things become unpredictable, and its time to restart Chrome. I save my tabs with Session Buddy first, so I can go back to whatever topic I was researching when I'm ready.

    30. Re:Because Use Cases by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      OK, consider a typically news site. Which would you prefer: clicking on a single article, read, go back, find where you were up to on the front page, get annoyed because the articles have all been re-sorted to match your alleged "interests", fail to find that other interesting article you wanted to read next, oh wait the page has refreshed wtf happened to the article I was about to view, repeat for 20 articles... or just open interesting articles in tabs, read one after the next just like an old fashioned dead-tree newspaper, done.

      Or those "I'll read that next" links. Open in tab, then they're right there waiting when you've finished with your current tab.

      Or you're researching something. Google search throws up a bunch of possible (but probably not) sources. Which is easier: laboriously follow each one, navigating back after every disappointment until you find what you need, or just open the first 10-15 links in tabs, then quickly scan and discard until you you find that one relevant tab?

      Tabbed browsing rocks. Even when it slows down your browser it still beats old fashioned single-window browsing.

    31. Re:Because Use Cases by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Similar here. 20 or so tabs (not windows, though I did it that way pre tabs) are pretty normal. I treat my (virtual) desktop like I would treat physical desktop. I usually have a few relevant documents and books strewn around when I'm working on my physical desk, so why would I restrict myself to just one page from just one book/document on my virtual desktop? That sounds like a hangover from the 90s when computers were under-powered and web browsers primitive and unreliable.

    32. Re:Because Use Cases by Areyoukiddingme · · Score: 1

      Given the limited screen real estate...

      Yeah, if you're a developer with limited screen real estate, you're doing it wrong. I kept my CRTs until I could buy an LCD that was actually an upgrade, not a downgrade. Now I have an UltraHD flat panel primary monitor plus two secondary monitors. I have 119 tabs open in 4 windows and I have no problem identifying the tab I'm looking for when I need it. (And I need about 80 of those tabs on any given day.) And I still have room for a metric ton of source code on the screen.

      As the OP said, browsers are work tools. All reference documentation is HTML nowadays. Doubly so for open source documentation. All corporate 'paperwork' isn't paper anymore—it's HTML. Parts catalogs, datasheets, national and international standards documents, all either HTML or a PDF that came from HTML.

      You need more pixels. If your hardware can't push that many pixels, it's time to upgrade from that crusty old machine you bought in the '00s. If you're trying to develop on an undocked laptop with a monitor that's not even 1080p (as something like 90% of laptops are), my god man, what are you doing? Your monitor is your window into the digital world. Why would you cripple yourself trying to peer through a keyhole?

      A 24" UltraHD TN panel with dual HDMI 2.0 and 1 DisplayPort from Samsung is $308.81 with free shipping on Amazon right now. Price is basically no issue now. Weirdly, UltraHD 3840x2160 panels are cheaper than 2560x1600 panels. TN vs IPS maybe. Regardless, it's time to stop peering through a keyhole. You need more pixels.

    33. Re:Because Use Cases by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      While it would be awesome if they would consider this test case

      the number of people who open multiple dozens of tabs and actually need em, are like 1% of 1%. And, making it fast for someone who needs is HARD.

      So, if you boss asked you to work overtime to make it faster, would you argue that the issue is an important scenario? Or would argue "1% of 1%" and get the test case dropped?

      No offense, and it would be nice if... But it's a little unrealistic to expect them to make it fast when you burn up all your memory and move into virtual memory teritory. Of course, browsers do waste memory badly -- so in theory, could be made better. But that's hard stuff, and it doesn't add the new buzzword that marketing insists is ready in time for the next release....

    34. Re:Because Use Cases by belthize · · Score: 2

      Virtual desktops.

      I generally have 6 to 8 virtual desktops, each dedicated to a particular type of task or project.
      Within each desktop I typically have a browser, 2 or 3 if the browsers are showing fundamentally different things.
      Within each browser I'll have anywhere from 1 to 6 (rarely more) tabs on different slants on the same topic.

      So if I'm working on AWS that would be in a virtual desktop. I might have one browser for dynamic stuff (like their console) and one for documentation. The documentation browser may well have 6 tabs. When I'm not using the browser I icon-ify it.

      Trivial, at least for me, to keep things sorted that way. I know if I'm on desktop X then I'll have a browser dedicated to X, if I don't see it then it's been icon-ified.

    35. Re:Because Use Cases by oji-sama · · Score: 3, Informative

      I use the Tree Style Tab extension in Firefox. Not only I get the tabs on the left side of the screen with easily readable titles, the child tabs are found in the tree creating simple organization automatically. Not sure if I would give up adblock or the tree style tabs if I had to choose

      --
      It is what it is.
    36. Re:Because Use Cases by oji-sama · · Score: 1

      Even reloading 100+ tabs from the source sites on starting a browser with saved state is STUPID. All the tabs except the active one should just contain a pointer to the source site on startup. Then they can be updated one by one as they are revisited.

      Not sure if this is caused by Tree Style Tab extension, but my Firefox loads the content after restarting the browser for only the tabs switched into. Or maybe the actual content is loaded (as memory usage seems to go up with tabs), but at least it is not activated and will not use cpu cycles before visited.

      --
      It is what it is.
    37. Re:Because Use Cases by tepples · · Score: 1

      That'd be fine if there were a "Save All Tabs As" or "Print All Tabs to PDF" button that didn't present a file chooser for every single open HTML document.

    38. Re:Because Use Cases by HatofPig · · Score: 1

      Exactly. This single plugin is the best reason to run Firefox besides all the rest. And despite every drawback.

      --
      Silicon & Charybdis McLuhan Kildall Papert Kay
    39. Re:Because Use Cases by vtcodger · · Score: 1

      "Speak for yourself. I normally open a bunch of websites I read, and then just middle-click to open the articles I find interesting in separate tabs. You can quite easily end up with dozens of articles."

      I reckon that's OK if it works for you. ... as long as you don't then complain that your browser is slow.

      Complaining about browser performance if you have a zillion windows open simultaneously seems sort of like complaining that your Mercedes SUV with a 6 liter engine gets lousy gas mileage.

      --
      You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
    40. Re:Because Use Cases by Cederic · · Score: 1

      Hmm. I go to TheRegister.co.uk once every few days, open 20-30 stories in different tabs then read through them a tab at a time.

      How is this an ADD problem? You want me to click a story, read it, click back, click the next one? That's horribly sub-optimal.

      Then again my tabs open instantaneously and aren't re-opened if I close and re-open the browser. That's what bookmarks are for.

    41. Re:Because Use Cases by Cederic · · Score: 1

      No, the standard user is far less controlled and doesn't understand the implications and impacts of continually opening new tabs/windows.

      The general user is a complete fuckwit and bitches about how slow their browser is.

      People on Slashdot are an edge case, they actually understand much of this shit and how to deal with it.

    42. Re:Because Use Cases by Cederic · · Score: 1

      I open cricinfo in a tab, and use that tab's title to track the cricket score. The tab title updates because the web page is contacting the server and pulling down information continually to keep the score updated.

      On another tab I'm in an interactive chat session with someone. I can't reload content as it's dynamic; you want me to stop receiving chat messages because I switched to another tab?

      A different tab is racking up a new high score for me on Cookie Clicker. Trust me, I'm not going to fucking sit there clicking that game full time.

      There is ABSOLUTELY NO REASON for ANY of those tabs, except the one that is current, to be using ANY CPU at all

      I think I've demonstrated how unfortunately wrong you are.

    43. Re:Because Use Cases by johannesg · · Score: 1

      I reckon that's OK if it works for you. ... as long as you don't then complain that your browser is slow.

      Gee thanks, that's kind of you. My browser isn't all that slow, but if it were, I most certainly would complain. Most of those pages are by and large static text, just sitting there without doing much. I don't see why that would cost me any kind of performance. I'm also not quite sure why a downloaded page of a few hundred kilobyte of text needs to expand into the tens of megabytes range just to display it.

    44. Re:Because Use Cases by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      When I'm not using the browser I icon-ify it.

      Uhh... what? Can't say I've ever heard anybody use that term before...

  7. What kind of garbage is this? by redmid17 · · Score: 0

    So you understand and are amazed at the technologies that can render pages as fast as they do but you want it to be faster and adhere to your whims....because? You can understand these but not basic OS functions?

    No. Just no.

    1. Re:What kind of garbage is this? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      /. is the fucking pits 99% of the time. They post any shit to generate "debate" viz click through impressions.

    2. Re:What kind of garbage is this? by aicrules · · Score: 1

      I agree with this comment. I can't even begin to understand how so many people have contributed useful information to this story when most ask slashdot articles consist entirely of comments bashing the person asking. This one where the person asking and the editor who approved the content both need to be whipped and suddenly slashdot is a helpful community?

    3. Re:What kind of garbage is this? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So you understand and are amazed at the technologies that can render pages as fast as they do but you want it to be faster and adhere to your whims....because?

      Because if you don't give me what I want then I will move on to another website that serves my purposes better. That's why.

      You can understand these but not basic OS functions?

      Oh, I understand just fine, thank you very much. Why is it that you webpage designers always insist that the user must conform to your whims rather than trying to find out how people actually interface with your webpages and design them accordingly?

      No. Just no.

      And when you are waiting in the unemployment line, wondering how it all went wrong, remember "the customer is always right". While it isn't universally true, it is a useful heuristic.

    4. Re:What kind of garbage is this? by redmid17 · · Score: 1

      If I'm in the unemployment line, this country will be unlivable.

  8. This totally breaks the rendering speed. by Parker+Lewis · · Score: 4, Informative

    I agree with the summary. Basically, we have faster engines for rendering for HTML and JS, but the UI is really slow. IE family is the worst in this aspect.

    On Firefox (my default browser), a nice boost in tabs rendering is made turning off the tab animation: changing "browser.tabs.animate" to false in about:config.

    1. Re:This totally breaks the rendering speed. by ckatko · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The UI is not slow.

      What's slow is the fact you're loading MEGABYTE APPLICATIONS full of commands through the web that have to be processed before display.

      Go to a 90's era website with HTML3.2. Watch how magically fast everything is displayed.

      Check out the old website, "Internet Explorer is Evil":

      http://toastytech.com/evil/

      Watch how magically fast the animated GIF backgrounds display. How magically instantaneous the text renders. Why? NO CSS. NO JAVASCRIPT. No 5 MB app being downloaded.

      And even then CSS and JS don't have to be slow. But people designing these websites simply don't give a shit about speed. Have you ever tried to load a Google Document on a Netbook with an Atom processor? Apparently a dual-core CPU with 2 GB of RAM isn't enough TO DISPLAY TEXT and if you try and multi-task it'll bring your computer to a complete halt. I've literally had to panic close tabs in Linux with my netbook with Google Docs open with other tabs, because if it starts getting laggy, it'll quickly get to the point it freezes the whole computer (>15 seconds between mouse moving) and it's actually faster to reboot the entire thing. (SSD ftw.)

    2. Re:This totally breaks the rendering speed. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      wow, that made a huge difference in opening a tab. Why would they do that to us? Slow tab opening somehow makes a users experience better? I'm not a fan of that thinking.

    3. Re:This totally breaks the rendering speed. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The UI is slow because the browser is downloading, loading, and displaying that content it's freezing the UI, Browsers studder while downloading a page, that should be completely unacceptable. Your browser should stay interactive while it's loading that Google Docs page. The fact that your entire computer sometimes locks up tells you how poorly browsers are implemented. That OS lockup is caused by needless disk flushing.

    4. Re:This totally breaks the rendering speed. by Nethemas+the+Great · · Score: 1

      First, I'd recommend getting a better spec'd computer as the issue will not be going away. Second, the reason for things such as the creation of new tabs taking a significant amount of time to be initialized is due to how browsers are now "sandboxing" them in their own operating environment for security concerns. In many respects you are in effect cold starting a new instance of the web browser for each tab complete with it's own virtual environment. That's not cheap.

      --
      Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once ... with negative results.
    5. Re:This totally breaks the rendering speed. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Followed the link. Saw the page with the Bee OS interface. Wanted badly to run it then. Would happily run that today too.

      http://toastytech.com/guis/b5pe.html

      Beautiful pixel graphics.

    6. Re:This totally breaks the rendering speed. by sunking2 · · Score: 1

      The fact that this was even asked shows how sad Slashdot is. We can render 3D games at 100fps but think its the graphics slowing down the web browser. The long pole is network access and the plethora of things that need to all be fetched prior to rendering.

    7. Re:This totally breaks the rendering speed. by antdude · · Score: 1

      My http://aqfl.net/ has very few images.

      --
      Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
    8. Re:This totally breaks the rendering speed. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      if it starts getting laggy, it'll quickly get to the point it freezes the whole computer (>15 seconds between mouse moving) and it's actually faster to reboot the entire thing. (SSD ftw.)

      That means its run out of ram and is paging like mad. I just disable paging these days. If a program wants more ram than I have, chances are paging isn't going to help much - it's just too slow if you need more than a few MB, and with even 2 GB of RAM, anything that needs more is going to need more than a few MB.

  9. Browsers are NOT slow by Yvan256 · · Score: 5, Informative

    It's web pages that are filled with useless javascript libraries that people think they still need to use for cross-browser support even though Internet Explorer is long dead.

    It's web pages that are filled with useless ads that run their own scripts, sometimes with their own libraries too, fetched from multiple servers.

    It's web pages that are filled with useless tracking scripts, sometimes with their own libraries too, fetched from multiple servers.

    It's web pages that are filled with huge animated GIFs that should be in video form instead.

    It's web pages that are filled with auto-loading, auto-playing videos, jamming our connection to download something we don't even want to see instead of downloading the web page we're trying to read.

    Disable plug-ins. Disable javascript. You'll see how fast browsers really are.

    1. Re:Browsers are NOT slow by Calydor · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I am trying to figure out what part of what you wrote (which is all true, mind you) explains why opening a new tab in Chrome or Firefox has to take as long as it does.

      --
      -=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
    2. Re:Browsers are NOT slow by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Browsers are slow. They have some horrible design decisions under the hood. Open up two thousand simple, static pages in Firefox and after 20-30 minutes of loading (WTF?) when the UI becomes responsive again new operations are also slow, even scrolling can lags despite the OS not swapping anything to disk. Opening a new tab will take an annoying amount of seconds. If you have a custom background color set you can see the lag in Firefox by it displaying a white background before it applies your color settings. Part of this is due to insanely, horribly designed recovery options. Instead of just recording which tab changed, browsers simply dump the entire browser's state (all browsers do this). So each time one of those 2000 tabs opens they resave all of the state of the earlier tabs. Then they continue to dump the entire state instead of just what changed from the last dump every 15 seconds! Talk about inefficiency. They could have gone with a folder per session and stored each tab in a file within that folder. A set to hold which tabs changed and then a background thread to copy+clear that set and resave only those tabs/files. But no, can't have efficient designs because use cases of more than 3 tabs are never considered.

      Browsers don't stress test anymore. If you actually try to use your awesome hardware resources, you're doing it wrong. Even a lot of the current posts on Slashdot are saying if you use more than ten tabs you're an idiot. This just shows you how toxic tech people are. It's Apple's fault that users can hold their phones incorrectly yet it's the users' fault if they use browser features? Fuck off. You're just making excuses for shitty programming. It's 2016, code compiling and the program running shouldn't be good enough.

      None of that auto-loading stuff you've mentioned should matter. Once a user leaves a tab it should be suspended. There's little reason to be continually running animations and scripts when its known a user can't see nor interact with them.

    3. Re:Browsers are NOT slow by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      rtfs?

    4. Re:Browsers are NOT slow by bfpierce · · Score: 1

      I'm trying to figure out how opening a new tab in Chrome takes a long time and seems to be some kinda of 'scourge we must deal with'.

      It's instant for me, always has been.

    5. Re:Browsers are NOT slow by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The single biggest source of slowdown is unquestionably CSS.

      CNN.com has a CSS file that's over 1MB in size. Rendering the main page will bring any browser to its knees for several seconds.

      With CSS and Javascript, web pages are basically customised computer programs now. A few more years of this bloat, and webpages will have as much code as a minor operating system. Who knows what they'll do with it.

    6. Re:Browsers are NOT slow by DarkSkiesAhead · · Score: 1

      Good point. Another item is the above list should be:

      - API servers which have become unacceptably slow

      We think of Google as fast because google.com loads quickly. But most other google APIs (including auth, the list of links which show on the new tab, profile info, etc) are extremely slow. I've been recording them lately and I routinely see 1000 ms response times from google on queries as simple as fetching the profile pic.

    7. Re:Browsers are NOT slow by tepples · · Score: 1

      It's web pages that are filled with useless javascript libraries that people think they still need to use for cross-browser support even though Internet Explorer is long dead.

      True, IE 8 is dead, but IE 11 is still in use on millions of desktop and laptop PCs running Windows 7.

      It's web pages that are filled with useless ads that run their own scripts, sometimes with their own libraries too, fetched from multiple servers.

      How can a site operator work around that while still reassuring the site's sponsors that real human beings in the relevant demographic are seeing the sponsors' messages?

      huge animated GIFs that should be in video form

      How can a site operator work around that between now and when the last H.264 patent expires? Edge reportedly supports WebM since Windows 10 "Anniversary Update", but it's half broken. And Safari still doesn't. Though H.264 viewers may not require royalties under the AVC Patent Portfolio License, encoders still do.

      Disable plug-ins.

      This doesn't affect HTML5 video or animated GIFs. Which browsers offer an easy way to disable both of those?

      Disable javascript. You'll see how fast browsers really are.

      And you'll see how many features fall back to a full page reload for each click.

    8. Re:Browsers are NOT slow by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      TWO THOUSAND tabs? Are you fucking insane?

    9. Re:Browsers are NOT slow by Calydor · · Score: 2

      Opening the tab is also more or less instant for me.

      Then a couple of seconds later the search bar appears.

      Three to five seconds later the snapshots of the most commonly visited websites.

      I have no idea how displaying one large image, a text input field and eight (presumably locally saved) thumbnails can take upwards of ten seconds.

      --
      -=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
    10. Re:Browsers are NOT slow by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Both browsers dump the entire browser state to a session file when you open a new tab. They do it so that the blank tab will still be there after a restart if the browser crashes, though if loading that tab causes a crash the browser will happily crash again when you reopen it (well they used to years ago, I don't know if they still do that). Earlier in their lives they focused on recoverability instead of stability and not we're paying the price in terms of performance.

    11. Re:Browsers are NOT slow by bfpierce · · Score: 1

      Me either, because all of that happens in the span of one second for me.

      And yeah, all of those thumbnails are a local cache of the last time you looked at that page.

      Only plugin I use is AdBlock, Chrome on Win7 (Chrome on Win10 at home is the same). It's just a bizarre deal because I've been really happy with how Chrome works, but then you see these reports of 'it takes forever to load a new tab' and I have no idea what would actually cause that to happen, and I can't see it actually being an issue with the Browser itself.

    12. Re:Browsers are NOT slow by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Swapping from javascript pigging all your memory.

    13. Re:Browsers are NOT slow by Calydor · · Score: 1

      My own add-on list is pretty small too.

      AdBlock Plus
      Ghostery
      GMail Notifier
      Backspace to go Back
      And the collection of stuff from Google Docs, apparently. Didn't realize those loaded as extensions until now.

      Nothing in there seems to explain to me why it would take so long, unless the new tab insists on doing lookups to all the listed sites to see if they're currently up or whatever. Given my crappy connection that COULD be the culprit, but it also raises the question of why it would do that. It will slow down bad connections and won't be noticed on fast ones whether it does the check when you go to the site.

      --
      -=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
    14. Re:Browsers are NOT slow by jomama717 · · Score: 1

      That's not my experience at all either - chrome tabs are and always have been instant for me, as are the search bar and thumbnail sites. Chrome is RAM intensive (~100-200MB per tab for me it seems!!!), and I have a 16GB laptop... I suppose that could be it.

      Now when I run IE11 in a Win7 VM on my laptop I see massive performance issues, while chrome on the VM is a bit slower (the VM has 6GB when running) but still pretty snappy.

      --
      while [ 1 ]; do echo -n -e "\xe2\x95\xb$((($RANDOM&1)+1))"; done
    15. Re:Browsers are NOT slow by The-Ixian · · Score: 1

      By the way, that session dump can cost several GB of write operations a day. If you have an SSD, this alone could be shaving months or years off it's operation time.

      https://www.servethehome.com/f...

      --
      My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
    16. Re:Browsers are NOT slow by oji-sama · · Score: 1

      I'm trying to figure out how opening a new tab in Chrome takes a long time and seems to be some kinda of 'scourge we must deal with'.

      It's instant for me, always has been.

      Same for me in Firefox. I do have blank page selected as the new tab option though.

      --
      It is what it is.
    17. Re:Browsers are NOT slow by Solandri · · Score: 1

      I had to track that down on my Firefox (was taking 2-3 seconds to open a new tab). It's all the extensions I had installed to block the ads, scripts, flash, autoplay vidoes, etc. Apparently many of them do some preliminary setup housekeeping when you open a new tab. I only ran into the problem once in Chrome (also with a tracking-blocking script), but since it was being caused by a single extension I just removed the extension. There are lots to choose from.

    18. Re:Browsers are NOT slow by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not sure where this "new tabs are slow" thing is coming from. In my life I've never had opening a new tab lag at all unless the entire system was being bogged down somehow.

      But then I'm still stubbornly on FF 35, so that could be why...

    19. Re:Browsers are NOT slow by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Opening a new tab in my Firefox takes only a couple of milliseconds, fully loaded with most frequently visited sites, snapshots if available, and the search bar.

      Chrome takes a bit longer to do the same thing, something like 200ms.

      Considering the reaction times for the average human, I'd say that opening a new tab happens instantly for all intends and purposes.

      I am not sure what you are doing. Is the machine you're testing this on very low on resources? Do you clear all your local caches every time before you open a new tab? Even on my 7 years old notebook, which struggles to run Windows 10, a new tab opens almost instantly after the 2nd time.

    20. Re:Browsers are NOT slow by brantondaveperson · · Score: 1

      This doesn't affect HTML5 video or animated GIFs. Which browsers offer an easy way to disable both of those?

      None. That's why they were invented.

    21. Re:Browsers are NOT slow by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      On my first generation triple core work pc. opening a tab is faster than blinking for firefox (empty tab). under chrome, it takes approximately half a second to load up the new tab and the google search.

      most websites load and render within a second easely as does launching either browser when they dont have a window open.

      archlinux with 4GB ram, the only extensions i use are ublock origin and umatrix.

    22. Re:Browsers are NOT slow by Waccoon · · Score: 1

      As far as Firefox is concerned, it's the long-standing, decade-old problem of the cache being a massive suck. The browser still has regular freezes every few seconds when the garbage collector kicks in (I can confirm it's not the session manager, at least). Mozilla keeps tweaking the browser just enough each release to make memory management tolerable, but then new web sites come out that need more memory, so the GC runs into the same brick wall over and over again.

      Why the browser needs to fully cache a handful (read: arbitrary depending on memory available) of old web sites is beyond me. Forget the history button, even windows/tabs that have been closed are still "intelligently" cached for a while. Hundreds of megs just sitting around for no reason, and the GC engine won't flush it out until those caches expire. I'm pretty sure it's terrible policy that's the problem, and not really the browser engine itself. I base this on the fact that for years, Pale Moon didn't suffer from these memory management issues.

      The new version of Pale Moon, 27.0, was "retrograded" to a newer version of Firefox, and now behaves just like FF. Same godawful GC behavior and frequent pauses. I've spent the last couple of days trying to figure out why, but I'm not an application programmer and tweaking all the usual user-changeable config settings does nothing, and there's about 40,000 new files in the 27.0 update compared to 26.5. Tracking down the magic change that broke the caching engine (again) isn't going to be fun.

    23. Re:Browsers are NOT slow by dcw3 · · Score: 1

      "...even though Internet Explorer is long dead"

      Huh? At my company (60k+ employees), it's the only browser that's allowed.

      --
      Just another day in Paradise
    24. Re:Browsers are NOT slow by Cederic · · Score: 1

      This is one reason I don't use Chrome. When I want a new tab, I also know why I want it. I don't need some shitty attempt to second-guess me and offer me a visual range of options that's far slower to use than just starting to type in the address bar.

    25. Re:Browsers are NOT slow by hucker75 · · Score: 0

      It doesn't. Not for me on Opera (same as Chrome) on Windows 10 with an i5 3570K (a few years old). I do have 32MB RAM though. For quickness with everything, always max out the memory.

    26. Re:Browsers are NOT slow by illtud · · Score: 1

      Does it take long? I'm on FF on linux, and on a sane site but with lots of elements (eg BBC News in the UK, I get that abroad you get the ad version) it's pretty much instantaneous. Which points to the problems that everybody's pointing out - 3rd party content. eg try http://newspapers.library.wale... (shameless plug) opening search results in new tabs is fast - the slowest part is fetching our image tiles (which we'll improve!) - not a browser problem.

    27. Re:Browsers are NOT slow by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're using Chrome, and I have the same experience with it. Opening a new tab in Safari, however, is instant.

  10. Why make them faster when most people... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    obviously don't care about painfully sluggish programs. Just look at the number of people that find Windows acceptable despite being horrifically slow. If you can get away with inefficient and poor code, why spend the extra money to hire decent programmers to make something not slow. There's no reason why Windows should take tens of minutes after boot before it becomes usable or why clicking on a Windows should usually take more than a full second, but because people keep giving Microsoft piles of cash for giving us crap, they have no reason to fix it.

    1. Re:Why make them faster when most people... by tepples · · Score: 1

      There's no reason why Windows should take tens of minutes after boot before it becomes usable

      Installation of operating system updates is one colorably legitimate reason. First, those parts of Windows that can't be overwritten while a user is logged in need to be updated. And then once you first log in after installing a service pack, your profile may need to be updated to reflect the update (the "Hi" screen in Windows 8 and 10). It's considerably faster for non-update boots. Or is slow installation of updates the problem to which you're referring?

    2. Re:Why make them faster when most people... by kurkosdr · · Score: 1

      " There's no reason why Windows should take tens of minutes after boot before it becomes usable" Windows 7 boots in 1.5 minute or less on my Acer Aspire One (sporting a first-gen Atom N270 and 2GB of RAM) and it also boots in a minute on my HP Compaq NX9420 from 2006 (which has a 32-bit CoreDuo T2500, 3GB of RAM and a harddrive so slow it buffer underruns when burning DVDs, if not recently defragged). My secret? I ditched Avast and other annoying agent-smiths and only use Security Essentials (get real and ditch the malware paranoia, if you haven't messed with windows update settings, you don't need anything more). I defrag every 2-3 months and remove junk from startup (though the last bit only shaves seconds if your PC doesn't contain a ton of software). I am always amused that linuxeros will boast about the performance of GNU/Linux, ignoring that none of them runs any heavyweight antivirus (which used to be a must for WinXP systems and earlier, but not for modern windows). Still not convinced? On the nx9420, my startup time gradually grew to 4 minutes after installing the "lightweight" BitDefender once.

    3. Re: Why make them faster when most people... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      GP here. I used the term "usable" on purpose. Yes, you can login faster than that, but with Windows hammering the hard drive, it isn't really pleasant to use. I hate wasting 20+ minutes after every time Windows crashes.

    4. Re:Why make them faster when most people... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "There's no reason why Windows should take tens of minutes after boot before it becomes usable".
      Hear, hear! Why take ten minutes when Real Computers boot their systems in over an hour? The general rule seems to be that the faster the computer, the longer it takes to get started.

      "why clicking on a Windows should usually take more than a full second".
      That's because the part that makes Windows so slow is known as the User. Redmond should fix that part:-(

    5. Re:Why make them faster when most people... by Nethemas+the+Great · · Score: 1

      A sizable chunk of resources are consumed protected users from themselves. If we could trust users to not be morons we could create much thinner applications that run on systems not burdened by other components likewise trying to protect the user from themselves.

      --
      Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once ... with negative results.
    6. Re: Why make them faster when most people... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      sounds like you are doing something seriously wrong if windows is crashing for you. Yes it sucks but even windows has been a pretty stable OS for a decade now. and 20 mins before usable? wtf even my low end atom based mini PC with 2GB doesn't take more than a couple of mins unless it has gone through some large updates. most probably you have virus's or have been tricked into installing shit that should not be on there.

    7. Re:Why make them faster when most people... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The windows comparison is not really relevant for most users. If there was a faster alternative that was installed on PCs/Laptops as standard and supported pretty much every program any standard user wants/needs I am 100% sure that users would slowly migrate to that. As it stands this is not the case and so people stick with windows.

      I would also add that the vast majority of standard users will never buy a copy of windows (separate from their device) they will buy the device and windows will be included in the cost.

  11. They're not by kwerle · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Possibilities:
    * You have too many slow addons enabled
    * You are out of RAM
    * The page is slow (big/complex)
    * Your network connection is slow/saturated
    * Their network connection is slow/saturated
    * You are out of CPU (unlikely)

    1. Re:They're not by bbsguru · · Score: 1
      Agreed.

      Given what we ask them to do, browsers (even crappy ones, -cough-IE-cough) are remarkably fast.

      If you are seeing 'slow' performance, try analyzing it objectively. Obviously, another machine with a clean browser environment would be a good starting point for comparison.

      As far as "hundreds of tabs", well... maybe the first step should be to
      Get.
      A.
      Clue.

    2. Re:They're not by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      * some ignorant fuckstain of a web developer decided that running 100 scripts pulled from all over the internet on every single goddamn page along with a shitton of ads and multiple auto play videos would make their site the most awesome site evar.

    3. Re:They're not by fnj · · Score: 1

      You can be an apologist for shitty design and shitty programming if you wish. I won't.

    4. Re: They're not by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Usually it's a whole team of said fuckstains. Who aren't even communicating that well with each other.

    5. Re:They're not by kwerle · · Score: 1

      I really don't think I am. But you can't blame the browser for shitty design and shitty JS/Flash/plugin/whatever programming. The fact is that browsers are amazingly fast.

    6. Re:They're not by fnj · · Score: 1

      Now you're just saying "it's fast because I say it's fast". But we have discussed at length all the stupid ways in which its performance is wrecked.

    7. Re:They're not by kwerle · · Score: 1

      Now you're just saying "it's fast because I say it's fast".

      Well, I think that browsers are demonstrably fast.

      But we have discussed at length all the stupid ways in which its performance is wrecked.

      We - you and I - have not. But I've scanned a few of your other posts. It looks like you expect to be able to open hundreds of tabs and not use any resources (unless those tabs are looked at).

      I don't think that's a common use case, and I think that most users and developers would agree with me. When I open a tab, I expect it to load. And when I activate that tab I expect it to be fully loaded already. if I wanted a list of stuff handy and I didn't want it to load, I'd keep that stuff in my bookmarks. Which is what I do, of course.

      If you really want a browser that doesn't load tabs until you look at 'em (and I can understand that use case - it's just not mine), maybe write a plugin.
      https://chrome.google.com/webs...

    8. Re:They're not by Waccoon · · Score: 1

      Another possibility: web browsers are now as complex as operating systems, but nowhere near as competent.

      Seriously, if a web page is slow, that's understandable, but responsiveness issues in the browser itself are entirely the application's own fault. That's especially true if you're not a moron and are testing browser behavior with all plugins and extensions disabled (which, of course, is when nobody ever believes you're telling the truth).

    9. Re:They're not by kwerle · · Score: 1

      You mention FF in several other posts.

      Frankly, I don't consider FF to be a first class browser. Haven't for years. They used to be.

    10. Re:They're not by tepples · · Score: 1

      We can blame browser publishers for allowing JavaScript by default rather than blocking it by default.

    11. Re:They're not by tepples · · Score: 1

      Are any free web browsers "first class"? Edge and Safari are not only non-free but also paywalled, as Edge requires a Windows license, and Safari requires Mac, iPod touch, iPhone, or iPad hardware. Is Chromium (Chrome with the non-free parts stripped out) "first class"?

    12. Re:They're not by kwerle · · Score: 1

      Javascript is not a performance issue unless used horribly - and you really can't blame the browser for that. You might as well say that HTML is a problem - because horrible HTML certainly can destroy a browser's performance.
      What's more, it's been expected behavior (to have it enabled) for more than a decade. If you want it off, turn it off.

    13. Re:They're not by tepples · · Score: 1

      Javascript is not a performance issue unless used horribly - and you really can't blame the browser for that.

      We can blame the browser publishers for the default that they chose. If the user had to explicitly enable scripts on a particular site, then there would be a disincentive to use it horribly, as word would get around that scripts on a particular origin are in fact "used horribly".

      What's more, it's been expected behavior (to have it enabled) for more than a decade

      Then we can blame browser publishers for the present effects of the default that they chose "more than a decade" ago.

      If you want it off, turn it off.

      Because allowing all scripts from all combinations of document origin and script origin is "expected behavior", as you acknowledge, many website operators have made a business decision not to try to accommodate those who "turn it off." Symantec's website is completely unusable with it off. Discourse is read-only with it off. Thus mainstream users are unlikely to consider "turn[ing] it off" for fear that it will break the core functionality of the majority of sites that they visit.

  12. Browsers are fine by sjbe · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Do you agree with Birman? If yes, why do you think browsers are generally slow today?

    Not really, no. Tabs open up basically instantly on the computer I'm typing this with. Doesn't matter much which browser I'm using either. I'm almost always limited either by the bandwidth of my internet connection or the slowness of the database on the other end of the line. I hear people bitching about this browser or that one being "slow" and I frankly have no idea what they are talking about. If you have an even vaguely recently built computer with reasonable hardware then it is a non problem. I also see comparisons between the browsers which claim this one or that one is faster and I simply don't see any meaningful difference. The only difference between them to me is the user interface and what bugs I run into. If there are speed differences they are simply too small for me to care.

    Now he did say "hundreds of tabs" which is probably the root of the problem. My guess is that he's overtaxing his computer and running out of RAM. If you have hundreds of tabs open then you are Doing It Wrong.

    I have a 2012 vintage Mac Mini and it runs just fine. Safari, Firefox, Chrome, doesn't matter. I'm typing this on a PC with a Intel i5 chip and an adequate amount of RAM and it's fine no matter what browser I use. I mostly use Firefox but I'm pretty agnostic about which browser to use as long as it works and I can block ads and trackers adequately. So no I don't think there is a problem with browser speed as a general proposition. I do think people can do stupid things that slow down browsers significantly.

    1. Re:Browsers are fine by 0100010001010011 · · Score: 1

      If you have hundreds of tabs open then you are Doing It Wrong.

      Why is that "Wrong"? Because your brain doesn't work that way? That's how I've always browsed and only recently did it become terrible.

    2. Re:Browsers are fine by PingSpike · · Score: 1

      I run hundreds of tabs in firefox and it runs fine. Things really only take a dump if I load tons of videos at the same time. But that is inane so I don't expect that to work well.

      But I don't see most of the problems described either. My tabs aren't all auto loaded when I start up firefox, they only refresh if I tell them too and they only load up at all if I return to them. I do shutdown my machine each day though, so its not like they're all loaded. There's no delay when I create a new tab view, its basically instant. Switching between loaded tabs, also instant.

      I'm not sure why compared Chrome, Chrome clone Opera and Safari and announced after basically two browsers that they're all bad.

      My opinion is the things that make the browser seem slow are mostly in the web pages themselves. While add-ons add some bloat, by scrapping much of the nasty trash out of a page they speed things way back up resulting in a serious net gain.

    3. Re:Browsers are fine by Allicorn · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "Wrong" is harsh, I agree, but I do wonder about folks that have so many tabs open. Isn't that what bookmarks are for? You're obviously not flipping between 100+ pages in the course of a single /task/. How often do you look at the 99th least frequent of those tabs? Is that frequency worth the resource load of having the page loaded vs loading the page on demand? Is it genuinely faster to find a tiny little tab in a - presumably - rather squashed cluster of 100+ than it is to find a bookmark on a menu and have it load or am I envisioning what 100+ tabs looks like completely, heh, well, "wrong", because I don't do it myself?

      Again, not saying "wrong" at all - just saying I'm one of those users that closes every tab after looking at the page. My average tab count over the course of a day's work is probably three - so having 100+ tabs just seems unfamiliar to me.

      Also, you say it recently became difficult. That's in a particular browser? Any idea what changed?

      --
      OMG!!! Ponies!!!
    4. Re:Browsers are fine by npslider · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I'd say it's a very individual thing.

      Some people think in a straight line, others more like a tree branch. The 'straight liners' only need to keep a few tabs open at a time to follow the single mental thread they are following. Those who quickly branch out and multitask will inevitably have numerous tabs open.

      It's like the case of the spouse who is talking on the phone, feeding the baby, cooking dinner, and folding laundry compared to the other spouse, having a hard time focusing on the football game while reaching for another beer...

    5. Re:Browsers are fine by npslider · · Score: 1

      How to you know where all your tabs are at? Do you organize them in groups on across multiple windows?

    6. Re:Browsers are fine by PingSpike · · Score: 1

      I use the tree style tabs add on. Things just naturally end up grouped by subject and I collapse subjects I'm not currently working on.

    7. Re:Browsers are fine by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > Tabs open up basically instantly on the computer I'm typing this with

      What OS? I'm using Windows 10 on a new i7, and I just counted to eight after hitting ctrl-t to open a new tab in Firefox. Modern browsers are extremely slow and inefficient. Given the popularity of Windows and Microsoft Office, apparently customers don't mind waiting a long time for things to happen.

      The bigger thing that bugs me is that I type fast and can often type faster than Windows, especially in a browser like this, can handle the speed of input. The first computer I worked on professionally was an inventory management software that ran on a Commodore 64. I can't ever remember the C64 not being able to keep up with my typing. Windows lags behind dozens of times per day. Modern casual users just don't care about things being slow.

    8. Re:Browsers are fine by eepok · · Score: 1

      It's wrong in the same way that running your car's engine to the redline before every shift and then complaining that your car overheats is wrong. There is a correct and incorrect way to run any machine to get the intended results for the intended lifespan of the machine.

    9. Re: Browsers are fine by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Turn on Oprah and the roles magically swap

    10. Re:Browsers are fine by MooseTick · · Score: 1

      At some point, you are doing it "wrong." Be that having 10 pages concurrently open, or 100, or 10,000. Software is engineered for use cases. Crazy edge cases like having one million web instances open is beyond the scope of what developers generally engineer for. Is it possible? Sure. It that behavior expected? No.

      If 99.999% of users never have more than 10 tabs open at a time, I suspect most browsers are made to accommodate a small multiple of that without issue. Beyond that and you are asking for trouble or less than optimal performance. Also, remember how much $$ you paid for that browser. You get what you pay for!

    11. Re: Browsers are fine by npslider · · Score: 1

      Heh too true.

      My point was not to paint all men or women into a defined category, but to use a common, but often highly misleading stereotype, to illustrate how different people's brains are wired - this difference can manifest in many ways... browsing habits among them.

    12. Re:Browsers are fine by 0100010001010011 · · Score: 2

      engine to the redline before every shift

      And yet in some use cases that's the desired behavior.

      complaining that your car overheats is wrong

      And Michael Schumacher would have good grounds to go back to his engineering team and tell them they screwed up.

      But I repeat myself. Why is it "wrong"? Because you don't use your tools the way others do doesn't mean that either case is wrong. It means that some tools are poorly designed for some use cases.

    13. Re:Browsers are fine by 0100010001010011 · · Score: 1

      That's in a particular browser? Any idea what changed?

      AJAXy Web3.0. If you really want to get a browser to fail open Facebook (or have someone that does) in 5-6 tabs and then start a discussion with people in one. Every single tab runs a full stack 'chat client' in Javascript.

      Every web page these days has hooks and callbacks to react to every mouse movement or page load event.

      Static generated websites with minimal Javascript/CSS have no problem.

      I use Jupyter Notebooks in browsers as my main IDE and they run just fine having a few dozen open across different browsers. (Opera, Chromium, Slimjet & Firefox).

      Page weights have also increased. The home page of HuffPo was ~10 MB last I checked. Sometimes websites don't even bother to scale down images they load the full sized one then rely on CSS or HTML tags to make it fit.

      Page optimization seems to be a lost art now that they assume everyone is running on 100 MB connections. I used to do multiple pages on dialup and it ran fine, these days you can't load a single web page on dialup. (Which a lot of the country is still stuck with).

    14. Re:Browsers are fine by damnbunni · · Score: 1

      Recent versions of Office added a craptacular 'smooth' cursor animation that's very slow and makes me want to puke because it's really not smooth at all.

      Going into the accessibility options and selecting 'disable unnecessary animations' makes typing in Office or other things using that stupid animation SO much nicer.

    15. Re:Browsers are fine by Whorhay · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I'm pretty sure it's more about mental focus and self discipline. Our minds don't actually let us multitask, at best we switch tasks very rapidly. But I suppose that's being pedantic.

      My wife usually has dozens of tabs open when I look at her computer. She opens articles and such that she wants to read later in a new tab and moves on. I do the same thing when perusing my news feed. The difference is that I usually go and read those articles within a couple hours and close them out. She will stay occupied with other things and end up with tabs that she opened weeks ago still hanging there. When I have an article that I just don't have time for I'll bookmark it and close the tab. Youtube actually has a feature that I love and use the hell out of, and that is the 'watch later' button.

      Neither of us focuses particularly well. I just exercise some self discipline for up to 30 seconds per evening and don't end up with a computer bogged down by dozens of extra browser processes.

    16. Re:Browsers are fine by npslider · · Score: 1

      My browsing style sounds similar to yours.

      The one thing I have noticed about myself over the years is that as my Internet connection speed has increased, the more inclined I am to open more tabs as I am doing my daily rounds. In the past, the decision to follow a link was more considered, perhaps due to longer page load times, and slower computers.

    17. Re:Browsers are fine by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I highly recommend the Firefox extension Tree Style Tab. It makes your tabs into a tree based on what tab they were opened from. Makes it much, much easier to deal with a lot of tabs. I still use separate windows for top-level organization if I have a lot going on.

    18. Re:Browsers are fine by EETech1 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      When I'm verifying electrical drawings, I often have over 100 tabs open.
      Imagine a machine with 20 different sensors. First you have the data sheets for the sensors open to find the pinout. Then you have one for the cable, perhaps two to find the wire color, then one for the mating plug that connects the cable to the junction box, then one for the junction box itself, then one for the cable that connects the junction box to the PLC card terminal block, then one for the PLC card that plugs into that terminal block. You can easily get six to eight tabs open for each sensor. Granted there may be more than one sensor to each junction box, but I often will keep duplicates of those tabs open so I do not have to find the other tab when working with a specific sensor to save time, double check my part numbers, and avoid looking at the wrong one.

      I will often have multiple browsers open, one for each subsystem, with hundreds of tabs open in each.

      Admittedly I may be odd, but it works better for me than printing them all out.

      Cheers.

    19. Re:Browsers are fine by Allicorn · · Score: 1

      Fascinating example use case, thanks!

      --
      OMG!!! Ponies!!!
    20. Re:Browsers are fine by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You are probably also one of those individuals who has an empty inbox and a clean desk :-)

    21. Re:Browsers are fine by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      press ctrl-t, then start to type the name of the open tab. You are then switch to that open tab.

      You should feel lucky that you have so little going on that 'a few' tabs is all you need.

    22. Re:Browsers are fine by zippthorne · · Score: 1

      "Wrong" is harsh, I agree, but I do wonder about folks that have so many tabs open.

      Because browsers either don't retain the state when returning to a page with the back button or simply refresh the page and all its resources anyway, which makes reading documentation with several links in it that you need to investigate a laborous experience[1]. Tabs on the other hand refresh when loaded, and on various programmatically triggered events, but not simply because you choose to view them at a particular moment.

      A page in a tab that is already loaded will come into view quickly, and they usually retain state information like where you've scrolled to when you return them, which the broken back functionalilty unanimousely fails to do.

      Isn't that what bookmarks are for?

      No, bookmarks are for retrieving a specific page, or a pre-chosen place in the page via anchor tags. They are neither intended nor expected, nor capable of storing the page state at the time you viewed the page.

      You're obviously not flipping between 100+ pages in the course of a single /task/.

      Hahah, sure, some tasks don't require that. Other tasks require a lot of tabs open to different pieces of documention that all interact. I don't regularly find myself using 100 tabs for a single task, but I do find myself flipping between two or three tasks where I need six or so disparate pieces of information to be quickly available.

      Is that frequency worth the resource load of having the page loaded vs loading the page on demand?

      Exactly the opposite. Having the page sitting in a tab reduces the frequency of loading the page and can also be used to push that loading into the background while the user reads other material on the original page. Further, even in the case where pages in tabs have scripts running that tax the machine a bit, it's not the computer's time that's valuable, it's the user's time that's important, so a user will keep tabs open that need to be referred to later as long as they don't impact other pages or applications on the machine.

      Is it genuinely faster to find a tiny little tab in a - presumably - rather squashed cluster of 100+ than it is to find a bookmark on a menu and have it load or am I envisioning what 100+ tabs looks like completely, heh, well, "wrong", because I don't do it myself?

      It's self-limiting. A user with a good contextual memory might just just jump to the right spot, other users will only be able to do that with fewer tabs, and they will therefore use fewer tabs. You use as many as you can hold in your memory at once. Also, you don't necessarily keep them all in the same browser window. In Chrome, you can have sets of tabs open in separate windows, grouped by whatever criteria you choose. In firefox, you can have tab-groups that hide sets of tabs away entirely until you want to call them forth.

      --
      Can you be Even More Awesome?!
    23. Re:Browsers are fine by fyngyrz · · Score: 1

      open Facebook

      I found your problem.

      --
      I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
    24. Re:Browsers are fine by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I work with 4 displays, usually have something like 30 applications in my task bar, so I can switch quickly between them. Usually around 10 applications have an active window. But I hardly have more than 10 browser tabs open at a time.
      What does your armchair psychology have say about that?

      I also think that having 100+ tabs open in a browser that was not meant to work in such a way is not a very individual thing. It's clearly not a good way of using it. I'd even dare to say that people are using it wrong. Wrong in a way like cooking your food in the dishwasher or using your food waste disposer as a blender. Sure it can be done, but it's far from utilizing those tools optimally.

      Perhaps what those "multi taskers" need is a specialized internet browser that fulfils their personal requirements.

    25. Re:Browsers are fine by djinn6 · · Score: 1

      I know Slashdot loves car analogies, but this is a particularly unfitting one. Unlike a car, in no way does running 100 tabs on you browser make your computer more likely to break. The moment you close them, your computer is back to where it was before you opened them.

    26. Re:Browsers are fine by djinn6 · · Score: 1

      When coding I often need documentation to several libraries, each with several classes that needs their own tab. And then I have a dozen search tabs (stackoverflow and similar sites). Then there's the bug tracker, with the bug I'm working on, and several related bugs for reference. Maybe there's a few tabs for mocks and other product descriptions too. In total I probably use 20-40 tabs to do just one thing.

      But that's not all. I also switch context pretty often, so I use multiple desktops. For example, while I'm waiting for code to compile, I switch to another desktop to start writing a DB query. Once that's running, I head over to another desktop to do code reviews. Each task requires many tabs open so I can reference them without having to spend time searching my bookmarks, and they can add up very quickly.

    27. Re:Browsers are fine by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Much the same thinking was prevalent back in the DOS / early MSwindows days.

      Why do you need an OS with multi-tasking, much less pre-emptive multi-tasking? You can only do one thing at a time, so it's silly to have multiple processes, multiple terminal windows, multiple desktops, etc.

      Most of those people now won't give up their concurrency, and if you tried, they'd call you some very bad names.

      Bookmarks can become un-manageable very quickly, especially when you're tracking long-term stuff (stuff that I need to get to every now and then), medium-term stuff (stuff I want to forward on to others, read carefully when I get some time, stuff relating to long-term projects), and short-term stuff (stuff I'm currently reading, related pages for a current task, etc.).

      In the end, though, it doesn't matter /why/. It's the way I'm using the tool, and within the specifications of using the tool. If the tool doesn't work, it's broken. "You're using it wrong" is a lousy reason -- show me how I can accomplish the same thing without a lot of tedious work.

      Perhaps what we need is a better mechanism in the browser for managing information. I'd actually not mind using a cached version of a web-page, and only when that tab received focus to perform a HEAD check to see if it needed to update. A timer on the page telling me how stale it is, and an option for me being able to tell a browser how much I care about staleness, from "keep up to date within N seconds even when tab doesn't have focus" to "I will tell you when I want you to refresh this page".

      I will say this -- disabling Javascript (and Flash, Java applets, etc.) makes the Web a lot more pleasant, if you're willing to blacklist websites than snidely tell you that you must enable Javascript. With Javascript disabled, you can open a LOT more browser tabsâ¦.

    28. Re:Browsers are fine by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's like the case of the spouse who is talking on the phone, feeding the baby, cooking dinner, and folding laundry compared to the other spouse, having a hard time focusing on the football game while reaching for another beer..

      Why is she doing all this in the same room as the game???

    29. Re:Browsers are fine by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Actually, if you buy tools designed for the avg joe, yet you are expecting it to perform like NasCar, I would say, you are doing it wrong. If you want tools to do a different job, get different tools

      the wrong-ness isn't in the need for something different. it's taking the same old tool that can't handle it, and asking it to do something its not made for. maybe it will work. but if it fails miserably, then it's time to go looking for a tool that can hack it.

      In this case - web browsers - Id guess that there ARE no browsers designed for performance when you have 100 tabs open at once. So, then, I dunno. Deal with it, or adjust. Or make your own, I guess

    30. Re:Browsers are fine by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You are demented...

    31. Re:Browsers are fine by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      My average tab count over the course of a day's work is probably three

      I don't understand how that works. How do you do research on a subject without opening links in background tabs and going back and forth between them? How do you handle feeds or reading lists? I find it impossible to look at every tab the moment I open it, because that would interrupt my reading flow and I'd sit there all the time waiting for a new tab to load, which would be very likely to blank my short term memory.

  13. Form over Function, thats why by sciengin · · Score: 4, Informative

    Or as this article puts it more eloquently:

    https://medium.com/@eshan/the-...

    With open source software like Firefox it is more a failure of having the right people (engineers) at the right positions (the decision making ones). Instead they are left chasing the latest widget "feature" that no one ever asked for.
    For a long time I thought that the "standard" Firefox was already bad, until I switched to my Tablet 80% of the time: Firefox for Android is just plain torture. Multiple crashes every day. Most of the time when clicking on a text field or adress bar, FF apparently hates those. other times its idling and crashes for no reason. Not to mention its hunger for memory. Unfortunately it is the only browser there that has all the features I need via addons (Mostly adblock and noscript). Opera is much better, unfortunately its adblocking is faulty and it does not recognize my hardware keyboard at all.

    I remember my wikiwalks back in 2005-2007: I used to have 50-130 tabs open and nothing bad happened. That was on a Laptop from 2004 with a single core CPU. So really, it has gone downhill by orders of magnitude.

    1. Re:Form over Function, thats why by ckatko · · Score: 1

      You incidentally described my experience with VLC. Much of the UI and many features are broken and never get fixed on Windows and the developers will straight up say they don't care. VLC ignores the standard which says a disabled audio track should not be the first one played even if it comes first in the steam order. (So you get files with Russian audio playing even though the spec says the first non-disabled track should be English.) VLC ignores color profiles. (GAMMA? WHAT GAMMA?) It loads directories wrong and just won't "see" any files.

      Here's a quote from a bug report about gamma:

      >Noone seems to care about this feature, noone has been working on it.

      Wow. Great guys.

      Now, before some asshole chimes in. I "get it." It's a privately, free program and they don't HAVE TO do anything they don't want. That's not the problem. The problem is too many large projects throw away "usability for their users" just so they can follow features they enjoy as the rest of the code base rots away.

      You're welcome to do that all you want, but you can't also advertise to people that they're getting a sound, maintained software package. You can pretend all you care about is random git commits, but people care about the complete package. Who cares if you added an awesome (stupid) dancing light effect to VLC, if you also broke the file loading routines and no one can use the whole thing?

      You can't release something to the public (for them to use) and then pretend people's complaints don't exist. If VLC (and projects like it) want to be "private" repos for coders to test out silly effects, then great. But don't advertise it anymore like it's a real project for everyone to use.

      And what I "think" happens is that the core, senior programmers leave or become "very part-time" and lots of new programmers come in and either 1) miss out on their core knowledge and are afraid to touch anything, and/or 2) don't care about the project in the same way and only care about their little tweaks. Nobody steps up to become a core maintainer for general bug fixes.

      When I was trying to mod the Dolphin Project, the only people who knew anything about the shader generation routines I wanted to touch were in Germany and only frequented IRC at certain German hours. It was hard as hell to get any information from anyone. Everyone just said, "Only X and Y might know anything about that, sorry." Now I'm NOT saying Dolphin guys are bad guys or the project is an upcoming failure--they're very active and great guys. What I am saying is that I ran into an area where the project had been experiencing Knowledge Loss. When people left or became "almost left", their knowledge of why code existed a certain way went them.

    2. Re:Form over Function, thats why by zifn4b · · Score: 1

      it is more a failure of having the right people (engineers) at the right positions

      Exactly, trying having interns build a large scale civil engineering project and see how the result turns out. It'll probably look a lot like this. Garbage in/garbage out.

      --
      We'll make great pets
    3. Re:Form over Function, thats why by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Replace adblock and noscript for uBlock Origin and uMatrix.

      adblock is poisoned by marketers
      noscript only blocks scripts, uMatrix does that but can control much more like image, css, cookie, plugin, etc.

  14. Web 3.kludge by OneoFamillion · · Score: 1

    Because of browser feature creep, because of building everything on layer-on-layer-on-layer of the latest quickly thrown together crap, and because of the fact that browsers are now used for things they were never intended for.

  15. Add RAM? by schure · · Score: 1

    Usually the problem with many tabs is that they get stored in the hard drive (this is virtual memory) because you run out of (physical) RAM.

    1. Re:Add RAM? by tepples · · Score: 4, Informative

      I've done that. Even after maxing my laptop at 2 GB and replacing the HDD with an SSD, some things remain slow. The CPU graph shows one core maxed out (Firefox 50, which disables e10s because of add-ons) or both cores maxed out (Firefox 51 beta, which uses e10s), which wouldn't happen if it were swapping. I'd replace my laptop, but a new 10" has been hard to find for the past four years (except for laptops that run Chrome OS and beg the user at every boot to wipe Crouton).

    2. Re: Add RAM? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Modern Laptops shouldn't max at 2 gb. Even my 'little' laptop, which is actually a late model Acer netbook, was sold with 4gb and I have upgraded it to 8.

    3. Re:Add RAM? by l20502 · · Score: 1

      Haven't you read the article? He's a Mac user

    4. Re: Add RAM? by tepples · · Score: 1

      Your Acer netbook is probably discontinued by now. Is there an affordable modern laptop with a 10" display and a warranty? Or do I need to settle for to a 13" mugger magnet?

  16. BROWSERS are not slow by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    YOU'VE just snorted too much METH!

  17. If you want to know, measure it. by jcr · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Check out the WebKit project, build it yourself, and run it under Xcode's profiling tools.

    -jcr

    --
    The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
    1. Re:If you want to know, measure it. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You don't have to type your fucking handle at the end of each post. Slashdot automatically writes your name down for you. Fuck you.

    2. Re:If you want to know, measure it. by jcr · · Score: 1, Funny

      I do it just to piss you off, snowflake. Go cope.

      -jcr

      --
      The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
    3. Re:If you want to know, measure it. by psmoot · · Score: 1

      Check out the WebKit project, build it yourself, and run it under Xcode's profiling tools.

      Absolutely. The answer to all performance questions is either "it's complicated" or "it depends".

      We can speculate all we want. As others have posted, it's not a simple answer. Hardware, network, software choices, browsing patterns, what sites you're going to, all of that contributes to the issue. There is no generic answer.

      -- Pete

  18. Sorry, Tech is not Magic by eepok · · Score: 1

    Look, a browser has to do a lot. A WHOLE LOT.

    1. Load page layouts, scripts, graphics, videos, & sound so that when you intentionally trigger something, your requested action happens *mostly* quick.
    2. Sites want to earn money. That means that non-mission-related stuff (advertising) must get loaded as well. This is often worse than the simple text that most of us are actually seeking out.
    3. Weed out malicious crap. Given the sheer amount of malicious crap out there, we're asking out browsers to do 99% of our due diligence for us. That means checking every little thing against massive blacklists and whitelists so that someone in Nigeria doesn't get the ability to turn on your webcam while you're getting intimate with the misses and extort you for money.
    4. To allow us to do a billion different transactions through the same window. Bank transactions. Credit transactions. Messaging. And on and on...
    5. Sometimes it goes to space and back... and then through a hundred other computers.

  19. TANSTAAFL by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    (Though there is, apparently, such a thing as free self-promotion on Slashdot.)

    Sometimes, optimization doesn't mean making a system faster as a whole, and focuses on tradeoffs between parts of that system. Given that:

    - A browser session is opened once, and

    - That session may display many pages over its lifetime

    Investing in page rendering at the expense of performance when creating a new session can be a sensible call.

    That said, this reads less like a coherent critique and more like a pro-Opera, anti-everything-else screed aimed at legitimizing a designer's limited knowledge of programming than anything else.

  20. Web Developers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    They all have computers with 128-bit hexacore CPUs, 256 GiB of RAM, 5 TiB SSDs, fiber connections to the 'net, and 72-inch 8K displays.

    They don't know what it's like for mere mortals to browse their crap.

    1. Re: Web Developers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The web is about content. Web "developers" simply need to become unemployed.

  21. Because ad companies make/sponsor them by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Browsers are slow because ad companies demand that the browsers refresh all content at least once so they can show as many ads as possible.

    Simple as this. There is no real reason why a browser can't keep state and show a local cache other than this.

  22. Awkwardly repurposed... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 2

    There may well be some missed opportunities that I'm in no way qualified to comment on; but at least part of the "browser performance goes to hell when you have a zillion tabs open"/"it takes ages to restore a zillion tabs on restart" trouble seems likely to be connected to the fact that web pages have, somewhat awkwardly, evolved from being pretty much pure markup with a small sprinkling of javascript(which had the advantage, both for inexpensive background storage and quick restoration, of being nearly stateless, aside from any form fields that had been filled in; and could be stored or re-rendered from cached assets at your convenience); to being pretty much full applications, with lots of state all over the place; and often a variety of assumptions on the server side about what the client side is doing and vice versa. You can put such a page on ice; or dump it and re-render it from cached assets; but if you do, don't be surprised if you get dumped to a login screen or the page ignores most of what you've saved on its behalf and starts xmlhttp-request-ing anything that might have changed since it has been away.

    If you feed them retro websites, or sites designed by people with classic taste, contemporary browsers are faster than a bat out of hell with rocket boosters. That just doesn't help you against modern websites; which are both bloated(typically with slow-as-hell 3rd party ad code, just to add injury to insult); and still somewhat awkwardly trying to move from a caching model mostly designed to keep pictures from being unnecessarily retransmitted to something suitable for letting full applications pick up where they left off.

    1. Re:Awkwardly repurposed... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Indeed. A few people may remember WordStar, the 1980s era word processor that kept getting "modernized" -- Like a pig with wings and rollerskates glued on, and then another adapter added to make it work on MS Windows. By the time it died from its final heart attack in the early 2000s, it looked like a 600 pound man who could not be extracted from his own home due to his own size.

  23. Javascript is shit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Javascript is shit. Use "noscript" extension and witness your browser becoming snappy again!

    Using tons of JS libraries to display an ordinary webpage is shit.

    You can do "responsive" things or whatever without a single line of JS if you learn the standards.

    Web developers are lazy fuckers who do shit because they are lazy and their employers want to pay peanuts for websites.

    1. Re:Javascript is shit by tepples · · Score: 1

      You can do "responsive" things or whatever without a single line of JS if you learn the standards.

      Without either reloading the entire page or using JavaScript, how can a comment section like this load newly posted comments when the user requests new comments or load comments below the previous score threshold when the user requests to lower the score threshold?

      And without JavaScript, how can a website reassure its sponsors that the user is likely to have viewed the sponsors' messages? Or do you want to end up having to buy a $4 per month subscription to each site that you find in a web search?

    2. Re:Javascript is shit by lgw · · Score: 1

      Without either reloading the entire page or using JavaScript, how can a comment section like this load newly posted comments when the user requests new comments or load comments below the previous score threshold when the user requests to lower the score threshold?

      I read Slashdot in the mode where there's none of that. It's fast. Well, faster - because it's still making the advertisers happy.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
  24. Has /. become a tech support forum now? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I have none of the issue's listed, tabs open quickly multiple tabs don't cause slow down and firefox only loads tabs on a restart when you click on them.

    The submitter needs to do some basic computer maintenance as what they are describing isn't normal.

  25. KISS Compliant [Re:Why they are slow?] by Tablizer · · Score: 1

    The amount of crap most commercial sites put into their pages is amazing. It's not only slow, but a security risk.

    A non-profit organization can set up a "K.I.S.S." standard and create a minimalist browser. If a site works fine in the KISS browser, they can place a logo on their site to advertise they are KISS-compliant (or have a KISS-compliant alternative site/page, which the KISS browser would automatically redirect to.)

    It's kind of like the concept behind Underwriter's Laboratories.

    KISS wouldn't allow JS, Flash, cross-site images, and pop-ups, at least not without explicit user clicks via standardized icons (and markup) to launch them.

    (And clean up the stupid CSS "float" model so that we don't have to use tables or JS to get decent columns that also are also mobile-friendly.)

    1. Re:KISS Compliant [Re:Why they are slow?] by Tablizer · · Score: 1

      By the way, KISS stands for "keep it simple, stupid".

    2. Re:KISS Compliant [Re:Why they are slow?] by npslider · · Score: 1

      Just view the internet like it was back in the 90's...

      I'd take black text on grey any day... heck resurrect the rotting corpse that was called frames too -- still an improvement!

      https://archive.org/web/

    3. Re:KISS Compliant [Re:Why they are slow?] by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Or, you could use lynx. You're welcome.

    4. Re:KISS Compliant [Re:Why they are slow?] by Tablizer · · Score: 1

      Lynx shows nonsense if a given site uses crazy tricks to force ads or relies on round-about JavaScript for layouts.

    5. Re:KISS Compliant [Re:Why they are slow?] by Merk42 · · Score: 1

      The amount of crap most commercial sites put into their pages is amazing. It's not only slow, but a security risk.

      A non-profit organization can set up a "K.I.S.S." standard and create a minimalist browser. If a site works fine in the KISS browser, they can place a logo on their site to advertise they are KISS-compliant (or have a KISS-compliant alternative site/page, which the KISS browser would automatically redirect to.)

      It's kind of like the concept behind Underwriter's Laboratories.

      KISS wouldn't allow JS, Flash, cross-site images, and pop-ups, at least not without explicit user clicks via standardized icons (and markup) to launch them.

      (And clean up the stupid CSS "float" model so that we don't have to use tables or JS to get decent columns that also are also mobile-friendly.)

      So implement non-standard markup and ignore other standards? Sounds like you want AMP

    6. Re:KISS Compliant [Re:Why they are slow?] by Tablizer · · Score: 1

      Where did I ask for "non-standard"? It would become a standard. It would be relatively easy to implement because it wouldn't have a lot of crap we really don't need.

      Note that perhaps the KISS Standard could be based on a sub-set of HTML/CSS rather than an entirely new standard. That way it would still work on existing browsers. (Or perhaps backward compatible in that it uses new tags to simplify things when using the new browser, but is still usable in existing browsers. And/or it could be a plugin to filter out and adjust HTML to fit the KISS standard.)

      To be certified, a page/site would be run through a markup verifier by the mentioned organization.

      Exploring these possibilities would be part of the project.

    7. Re:KISS Compliant [Re:Why they are slow?] by Merk42 · · Score: 1

      Considering you want it to ignore completely valid markup, ("float") and yet have other (unspecific) features, it does seem sort of counter to the current HTML/CSS standards. A standard on its own, sure, but when I said "non-standard" I meant, non the current standards of HTML/CSS.

      Also, did you look at AMP? It seems to be what you want. It uses a special tag in the HTML to let the browser know it is "AMP" and not a "normal" website.

    8. Re:KISS Compliant [Re:Why they are slow?] by Tablizer · · Score: 1

      The "float" comment was mostly another topic; my transition was poor. I was just thinking if we are going to rework the standard(s), we might as well address the biggest mistakes of the past, and bad/useless float behavior is one of them. Maybe there is a backward-compatible way to do it such that if you have an old browser, the floats still work the same (stupid) way they did before on the old browser.

      And, jury is still out on AMP. Their main goal is mostly different from my stated goal such that it's hard to say if it inadvertently also solves the target problem.

    9. Re:KISS Compliant [Re:Why they are slow?] by fyngyrz · · Score: 1

      Lynx shows nonsense if a given site uses crazy tricks to force ads or relies on round-about JavaScript for layouts.

      So... the site sends you garbage, and Lynx shows you garbage.

      Seems like it's working perfectly to me.

      \_(Oo)_/

      --
      I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
    10. Re:KISS Compliant [Re:Why they are slow?] by Tablizer · · Score: 1

      No, it's more like an entrance gate. If you board up the gate, you cannot enter and get neither ads NOR content.

  26. Inability to RTFA by tepples · · Score: 2

    And then end up getting modded down for making uninformed comments on account of not having read the featured article. Several sites admit that they can't tell tracking blocking (such as privacy.trackingprotection.enabled which uses Disconnect's list) from ad blocking, such as WIRED, The Atlantic, and the INQUIRER, and sites like Slashdot continue to link to stories on these sites.

  27. Scripting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Web sites are programs nowadays, and they don't stop just because they're not in the visible tab. Timers keep running, events keep firing, handlers keep processing. It all gets a lot faster if you block scripting, or at least third party scripts. Of course big swathes of the web stop working if you do that, but oh is it fast.

  28. Are browsers slow or pages/sites bloated? by Freischutz · · Score: 1

    It used to be that you just had to be constantly mindful of the total data footprint of your page. These days pagers are much more complex and developers don't seem to give a shit about optimising. You load a page and it comes with of megabytes upon megabytes of images, flash adverts, it has embedded ads that delay the loading of the page because some ad server isn't responding, you get certificate warnings because somebody at Ads-r-us forgot to renew a certificate, pages are backed by business logic running on servers that are overloaded or slow for some other reason (like lousy coding and bad database design). Finally, try installing something like Ghostery and enable the feature where Ghostery lists the sites that get notified when you load the page. On some sites the list is so long it disappears over the upper edge of the screen so there you have another potential reason for slow loading, if you install privacy plugins it adds another source of latency.

  29. Sometimes, web pages should NOT be reloaded by WoodstockJeff · · Score: 1

    I do development where I need to look at the source code of a page, to make sure that certain elements are present. The attitude that caching the page for even a fraction of a second is "bad" has made it very difficult to do this anymore - If I ask for the source, the browser claims the page is "expired", and demands to reload it. That changes what I'm looking for, making the request invalid.

    Even trying to save the page locally requires that it be reloaded. It's become nearly impossible to check a page's actual content.

    1. Re:Sometimes, web pages should NOT be reloaded by worf_mo · · Score: 1

      Depending on the browser you are using you can simply open the console and look at the page's source code there. Additionally, it will allow you to see network requests initiated by your browser and the server's response even for elements that are loaded and rendered after the initial loading of the page has completed (e.g. when you fetch data/content dynamically from the server), something a simple "View Page Source" will not show. This method of viewing a page's source has never yielded an "expired" message for me.

      On a Mac:
      Chrome: menu bar: View -> Developer -> JavaScript Console (alt-cmd j)
      Safari: menu bar: Develop -> Show Web Inspector (alt-cmd-i -- you may need to enable "Show Develop menu in menu bar" under Preferences -> Advanced)
      Firefox: menu bar: Tools -> Web Developer -> Web Console

    2. Re:Sometimes, web pages should NOT be reloaded by vtcodger · · Score: 1

      "Even trying to save the page locally requires that it be reloaded. It's become nearly impossible to check a page's actual content."

      Oh well. Most likely it's OK. Go ahead and ship it.

      --
      You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
  30. Libraries by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Last time i was poking round some ad servers scripts just 1 library was 6000 fucking lines, they are even embedding ad auction code in there now with multiple XMLHTTP/WS requests while they wait for bids to complete before rendering, basically a massive advertising/tracking/auction application that the user never sees, multiply that by 5/10 ad providers and there isnt much browser rendering capability left for the actual content.
    the poor browser is drowning in massive adlibs/jquery/angular/json/socket bullshit.

    The only attempt to streamline it is minifying which does shit for rendering quality, its as if the developers didnt even take into consideration performance and whether the browser could do anything else other than run their code and nothing else.

    block all that shit and the boost is amazing and more like how the performance should be to run their actual content/carousels/infinite scrolls etc

  31. Deep stacks by Bryan+Ischo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I don't know the specific code in question, but I have seen enough code to have a theory.

    Long-lived software projects that implement programs with complex features (and web browsers have an astounding array of features), especially those that interact directly with users, who put programs into a position of continually having to respond to extremely complex sets of inputs (just think of how many valid inputs there are to a web browser at any one moment), tend towards a style of implementation that can best be described as "layers upon layers upon layers of framework".

    One aspect of programming that many engineers are, in my experience, not very good at, is deciding when to simplify frameworks versus making them more complex. I think it comes from a fear that many people have of painting themselves into a corner -- we've all seen code so inflexible that it makes extending it at a later time difficult, and I think that many people respond by going too far in the opposite direction - to avoid painting themselves into a corner, they put 100 doors in every room so that there is always a way out.

    The end result is that every aspect of the complex program is designed to be extensible well beyond anything that will ever likely occur in practice. And the interactions between these complex layers of framework become so complex themselves that new layers have to be invented just to try to simplify things and allow any hope of rationally moving forward.

    So what you end up with is incredibly deep stacks of function calls for almost any action, as various extensibility layers are passed through, along with the layers that consolidate previously implemented extensibility layers into simplified layers that more directly match the actual requirements of the program.

    I have occasionally seen stack traces from programs like Firefox, and I expect Chrome is no different, and the depth of the stack at the point of a crash is always somewhat breathtaking. You may end up going 30 - 40 layers deep before you actually get to a piece of code that has a tangible effect on the state of the program.

    Now imagine that a particular user input requires running through a function that has to call out to several parts of another framework layer, and you're going to be paying the deep stack penalty multiple times.

    What you end up with is a large code base that does everything necessary, but in a way that is embellished to a nearly pathological degree, where every action takes 10 - 20 times longer than it would had that action been encoded much more directly and with far fewer framework layers.

    The advantage of such a large code base is that it has enough flexibility to rarely, if ever, require a complete redesign as new feature requirements come up.

    The disadvantage is that it will never operate as efficiently as a more directly coded program, and you get user interfaces that require executing literally billions of machine instructions just to effect fairly simple changes to its internal state machine.

    That's your web browser.

    1. Re:Deep stacks by Pausanias · · Score: 1

      Thank you for this---my thoughts exactly. I call it framework creep. When a framework calls a framework calls a framework calls a framework, you will have oodles of unnecessary code executing.

    2. Re:Deep stacks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      You may end up going 30 - 40 layers deep before you actually get to a piece of code that has a tangible effect on the state of the program.

      This! So much this! I make my living as a consultant with a reputation for optimizing existing c/c++ projects. Approximately 70% of my work involves removing pointless abstraction layers (the other 30% is often fixing or changing a container style algorithm). I have custom made my own tools to handle debugging because existing commercial tools cap out at 64 or 128 depth on stack traces... and that is often not enough for me!

    3. Re:Deep stacks by LordWabbit2 · · Score: 1

      Man you are so spot on with this - I am currently working with a system that has this exact same disease. Very flexible and dynamic, but SO over engineered it boggles the mind.

      --
      There are three kinds of falsehood: the first is a 'fib,' the second is a downright lie, and the third is statistics.
  32. ads by ole_timer · · Score: 1

    the ads, and their infrastructure, even with blocker turned on

    --
    nothing to see here - move along
  33. It's called advertising by manu144x · · Score: 1

    Advertising is becoming more and more agressive, multiple banners, multiple videos, multiple cookies, multiple scripts, images, all tracking the activity continuously...

  34. Opera 12 was the last sane browser by YoungManKlaus · · Score: 1

    I really don't know why they killed Presto tbh ... it was faster (in real-time execution speed, which mostly means DOM performance, not useless JS benchmarks) than any other browser, and it took less resources. I mean heck, My workflow (on a 256 MB machine, mind you) was opening roughly 50 to 100 forum threads at once, and it didn't slow down perceavably. Try that on chrome or firefox and they die after the first 20 pages or so even if you have multiple gigs or RAM.

    1. Re:Opera 12 was the last sane browser by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wow. No wonder that was the only graphical browser I got to work usefully on a 486 SX 25 (an antiquated, Opera 2.62 version I think, or similar). I was even tabbed, or rather "multi-windowed".
      I have to admit I didn't dare trying Internet Explorer 5, Windows 3.1 version...

      My guess for Opera classic getting killed : too big a development effort needed, in the dozen millions dollars, whereas I don't know where they'd get their money.. Not only Opera on desktop is not terribly widespread but everything mobile/non-desktop is more and more trending towards an Android monopoly, with less demand for a non-default or more efficient browser (e.g. $100 phone is some Android crap with 1GB RAM and quad-core 64bit CPU, full of Google crapps). No more stuff like Nokia Asha or whatever, proprietary firmware instead of monopolistic OS on consumer electronics gets less common.

  35. A second or two to open a blank page?! by berj · · Score: 1

    Sorry.. but something is seriously wrong if a 2014 iMac takes even a second to open a blank tab.

    I'm sitting at a 2009 iMac that opens blank pages nearly instantly.

    I call PEBKAC

    1. Re:A second or two to open a blank page?! by Imazalil · · Score: 1

      I second this.

      I'm on a 2007 iMac. Firefox (and everything else) takes a while to start up, but once it's up and in memory, opening tabs, switching between them, etc is pretty much instant.

    2. Re:A second or two to open a blank page?! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      My late 2008 does this faster now than it did when I bought it -- essentially instantly.

      The issue this user has is likely one of:

      - not enough RAM
      - a defective disk (perhaps a bad SSD; they tend to lurch and freeze)
      - a defective extension
      - or a corrupted OS install.

      Safar is not quick in some things, but it's quick at this. End of story.

  36. Try Firefox by johannesg · · Score: 1

    Firefox opens new tabs instantly, not only after two seconds. If I hold down ctrl-T it pretty much keeps up with the key repeat rate. Switching between tabs is pretty much instantaneous as well. And when you restart your browser, Firefox will only reload any given tab when you click on it, and not try to load all of them at once. In other words, isn't the problem more that the OP is using the wrong browser? Or, alternatively, is running that browser on hardware that is just too low on memory (something that has a very significant impact on browsers, given the incredible amounts of memory they use)?

    BTW, I do agree with his doubts about the effectiveness of the cache. And I also wish it would cache IP addresses more effectively; when travelling, I'm extremely frequently greeted by endless (and very long lasting) DNS lookups for the same domain, over and over.

    1. Re:Try Firefox by Motherfucking+Shit · · Score: 1

      You can control DNS caching duration in Firefox through the network.dnsCacheExpiration preference. It defaults to 60 seconds. This is generally useful with the prevalence of CDNs and everything being in the "cloud," as some CDNs use sub-minute TTLs (sigh) as a hacky method of load balancing. You can bump it to 3600 seconds without any trouble.

      --
      "BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.
    2. Re:Try Firefox by johannesg · · Score: 1

      Thanks! The thing I normally see in these situations is a popup (at the bottom left of the screen) saying "looking up www.whatever". That stays on the screen for 10-20 seconds, then disappears, and immediately comes back up again. I'm not sure if the lookup is failing completely or just very slow. It certainly happens multiple times within 60s.

  37. I don't have those problems by The+MAZZTer · · Score: 1

    Stop trying to surf the web with your toaster.

    But seriously, I expect the answer to performance issues has something to do with pleasing the people who complain about browser memory usage. If you open 15 web pages with tons of graphics and videos and whatever they're going to use a lot of memory. If your computer can't handle it all, something is going to give, and a performance hit has to happen SOMEWHERE as a part of that.

    When you open that photo, you're ONLY opening the photo. Easy. When you open a web page with the photo on it, you're downloading the file from the server, caching it on your local hard disk as well as in memory, loading the whole web page and all included files including scripts, not just a single image. The image viewer knows how to scale images fast because that is what it is designed to do. Your browser does as well but it wasn't designed to scale images for any specific purpose so it can't assume, for example, that the image won't be overlayed or it won't have an imagemap for interactivity or any number of things.

  38. a better question... by Lumpy · · Score: 2

    Why are most websites so badly designed and so bloated they load slow?

    Slashdot before 2.0 was screaming fast. Then they introduced all the JSON garbage that slowed it down. It's all about being pretty over functional.

    --
    Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    1. Re:a better question... by zifn4b · · Score: 1

      Then they introduced all the JSON garbage that slowed it down. It's all about being pretty over functional.

      Sorry that's not the reason. I've written enterprise web portals using tech like Angular, NodeJS with a JSON style rest service and when the back-end was written appropriately it responded to most requests in

      Where performance gets tricky is load balancing requests across web servers so that you can scale up to a large number of simultaneous users. That usually doesn't have much to do with the actual software design. It requires good, experienced architects to write good, snappy, scalable web portals. Sadly most companies don't want to pay for it so they settle for half-baked solutions.

      --
      We'll make great pets
    2. Re:a better question... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sorry bit it is. When you send 10Kbytes to load your webpage compared to 247Kbytes, you load a lot slower. All that useless js that is there only for ohh shiny is what is slowing all the websites down.

    3. Re:a better question... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why aren't you running NoScript when you browse slashdot?

      No JSON. Pages load fast. Low-score posts aren't rendered - and that's a good thing. Think of how much time you save by not reading at a lower score.

    4. Re:a better question... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I remember when I would open comments/sub-threads in tabs to read them all.
      Nowadays there's irritatingly slow javascript on slashdot, but I'm not opening a dozen tabs anymore. Sucks balls that loading a simple wall of text is CPU bound, but it's very functional.. when I'm logged in and javascript is enabled. Logged out, or no javascript (including with the tor browser), or stuck on a mobile web browser that can't move the sliders to read at -1 (!) the functionality is awful, yes.

  39. Developers work on high end equipment .. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    .. and high end environment, network, etc.. This prevents them from seeing bottlenecks.

  40. Is he really living under a rock? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Wait, but didn’t I restart my computer or the browser sometimes? Of course I did. Unfortunately, modern browsers are so stupid that they reload all the tabs when you restart them. Which takes ages if you have a hundred of tabs. Opera was sane: it did not reload a tab unless you asked for it. It just reopened everything from cache. Which took a couple of seconds.

    Firefox enabled lazy load by default many years ago, it's his fault if he's using a browser with poor tabbed browsing or reskinned chrome.

  41. Needing add-ons to make a page less complex by tepples · · Score: 1

    * You have too many slow addons enabled
    [...]
    * The page is slow (big/complex)

    The problem is that fixing one of these can break the other. Nowadays, one needs an add-on, be it a browser extension or a DNS blacklist manager, just to block the parts that make pages overly complex with upwards of 1 MB of scripts and video ads for a 4000-word article.

    * You are out of CPU (unlikely)

    On a phone or tablet CPU, it's surprisingly likely.

  42. Bloated webpages, advertisers, and web sockets by smartr · · Score: 1

    It definitely feels like things are slower these days. I find the whole hair brained decision to semi-save state and never close things after a program crashes or is actually terminated very user unfriendly. AdBlock, uBlock, and Privacy Badger seem to be doing more work than ever. I've seen plenty of professional web designers who are completely happy to just push a bunch of images over a MegaByte right over the wire. That was not normal so long ago. Throw a bunch of WebSockets, javascript thread loops, flash videos, and multiply that by a bunch of tabs that the some idealist thought should never be closed for the user, and we have a recipe for slow browsers that have been optimized for idyllic users, idyllic websites that are no longer there, and idyllic speed tests that mean less and less.

    1. Re:Bloated webpages, advertisers, and web sockets by jason777 · · Score: 1

      It definitely feels like things are slower these days
      Eh, I dont know about that. I remember browsing the web back in 1998. You'd be online all night, and see 3 girls.

  43. Browsers are fine. Web design is a disaster. by gestalt_n_pepper · · Score: 2

    As long as web sites pack every possible space with bandwidth sucking animations. As long as refresh is used with wild abandon by incompetent web designers, browsers will appear slow.

    --
    Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
  44. Because people are stupid. by pigsycyberbully · · Score: 0

    Because people browse with cookies enabled tracking cookies. Because people browse with Java enabled it does not need to be enabled until you find what you are looking for. Or because people are using Google spyware browser whose business is spying selling for advertising companies. And the obvious one because people are stupid.
    comodoca.com

    JSESSIONID
    tag.crsspxl.com

  45. Look at the website by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I run NoScript. Many, many sites, I may see only two or three things blocked, but when I unblock the site itself, and look at NoScript, there are a dozen or more, of which 3/4's serve ads. You're not only waiting for the website, and whatever its scripting is doing (much of which could actually be done in straight HTML, but that's so Old School.... duh), but you're also waiting for each and every one of those other sites to respond.

    No, I never allow google-analytics, or doubleclick, or any of the ads.

  46. Browsers are not slow... by lactose99 · · Score: 1

    ...you're just too damn fast!

    --
    Fully licensed blockchain psychiatrist
  47. Flash by nateman1352 · · Score: 1

    I'm pretty sure most of the problem is Adobe somehow managed to make the newest version of Flash even slower and more resource consuming than Flash from a year ago. But you absolutely have to make sure you have the newest version installed at all times, since Flash is also a security mess, despite the fact that Adobe has also made keeping Flash up to date a huge PITA (to the point that MSFT and Google handle the updates for them on their respective browsers.) The performance and security of Flash has been a continuing problem for decades now.

    Why they bother to continue to develop and release new features for it puzzles me, plugin based content is very clearly a dying platform at this point and its partially Adobe's fault (we wouldn't want to get rid of Flash if it didn't suck so hard.)

    1. Re:Flash by ebvwfbw · · Score: 1

      Anyone running with Flash enabled... well that's like walking through the ghetto and flashing $100 bills. You're asking for it. Now that they have a new version, well I might install it again. Up to now, it was just chock full of security holes.

      My browser sits on top of a machine with 16 GB of memory, runs Linux and it's still slow because some sites are loading up an incredible amount of crap. Forget about clicking on the click bait anymore. Click on that sucker and it grinds to a halt it can't pull the ads in fast enough. Sometimes I think just from my one click, someone out there just made $500. I know, probably the Russians.

  48. The short answer is... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ... tabs and Javascript. It's come a long way speed wise, but running hundreds of instances of the interpreter is slow. Running more than one tab is slow. Running 50 tabs (such as I often do) is slow. What helps the most? Making sure you have enough RAM and plenty of CPU cores. The more cores you have, the better the browsing experience is going to be.

    I find it amusing that the desktop paradigm was originally derided as bloated and that web applications were going to be our savior. We could all have crappy computers -- even tablets and do all the work that we used to do on the desktop with next to no RAM or CPU. Tell that to a Facebook tab which uses 1 GB of RAM and eats CPU like it's going out of style -- if that were a desktop application, it wouldn't use more than a couple of hundred megabytes even considering news feed preload, images and history.

  49. Flamebait by whitelabrat · · Score: 1

    First of all "modern browsers are so stupid". Oh really? Sounds like a pebkac to me?

    Network latency? Web servers that can't keep up? Inefficient javascript written by someone with introductory programming skills? Loads of clickbait ads and garbage? SSL handshake madness?

    Sure blame the browser. Whiner.

    Plenty of sites out there that load up instantly, or if you are storing all the content locally on SSD, it's crazy fast.

  50. They aren't? by kunwon1 · · Score: 1

    Firefox user here, about 20 extensions including ubo and noscript, on a modern computer with ssd and high end gfx card. None of these problems manifest here.

    --
    Specialization is for insects. -Heinlein
  51. Confessions of a Firefox Convert by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It do sound like the submitter desperately wants to use Firefox. There is nothing wrong with that, Iilya.

  52. Far-future Expires: header by tepples · · Score: 2

    What you are missing is that even if the browser has the library cached, it still much reach out to the server to see if it has the latest version

    Not if the version number is in the URL. Then the CDN can serve the library with an Expires: header with a value years in the future.

    1. Re:Far-future Expires: header by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 1

      What you are missing is that even if the browser has the library cached, it still much reach out to the server to see if it has the latest version

      Not if the version number is in the URL. Then the CDN can serve the library with an Expires: header with a value years in the future.

      What would any of that matter if the browser would simply restart showing the page from cache -- everything needed to display from the cache should be current with respect to the cache.

      --
      It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
  53. How much is native machine code? by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 1

    How much of modern browsers are written in assembly, or C++, or a directly compiled language? How optimized is it? Or are they sloppy about writing it because everyone has 9000GB of RAM plus a swapfile and 256 main processor cores, so who cares about 'efficient' or 'optimized'? That, plus aren't things like Javascript incredible resource-hogs and slow to execute compared to native code? Then there's the fact that the vast majority of websites are pulling 'content' (read as: mostly useless crap) from literally dozens of domains all over the planet, not just from one server. Are these the issues that are making a web browser on multi-gigahertz, multi-core machines run like it's 1995?

  54. IE 6 only uses 64 megs by Billly+Gates · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Just saying ...

    1. Re:IE 6 only uses 64 megs by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Really? 64MB doesn't mean it's fast. I mean just the process of loading a second page in IE makes modern browsers look like the future. Compare:
      Chrome: Open a link. 1 second. Open another link 1 second = Total 2 seconds.
      IE6: Open a link 2 seconds. Open ... nope wait there's a message. Now my computer has crashed. Wait for computer to reboot. Message about all my files being encrypted and something about bitcoin. Format computer. Reinstall windows. Reopen IE6 and navigate to the other link. = Total 7 hours.

      7 hours to open up 2 tabs is just too long despite how little memory is being used.

    2. Re:IE 6 only uses 64 megs by hcs_$reboot · · Score: 1

      And yet it was SLOW. Two algorithms implentations may take each 1 MB. However one is O(n) and the other is O(2^n).

      --
      Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
    3. Re:IE 6 only uses 64 megs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, it only needs 64 megs, but it crashes every minute or so.

      But I have a conspiracy theory for this: maybe contemporary browsers don't crash so much because they use huge amounts of memory. So maybe over the 2G my firefoxthing uses to display google.com, only 64megs are used to actually display the page, and the remaining 1984 megs of memory are error and crash-correcting code... maybe

      Also 1984 is big brother!

  55. HTML by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Because web based apps suck and are a giant step backwards in programming. Not because of the universality of them but because we base them on a MARKUP language. HTML was never meant to write apps! Which is why you need all these stupid add ons. One day you will all "get it" and actually write a protocol designed to do write apps and be secure NATIVELY.

  56. Subresource integrity by tepples · · Score: 1

    You're referring to subresource integrity, correct? That exists, but only Firefox currently allows the server to specify that scripts from a particular origin require SRI.

    1. Re:Subresource integrity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think subresource integrity is not thinking big enough. The cryptographic hashes allow content based addressing. If you describe the resource with a hash, why would you care where it comes from?

    2. Re:Subresource integrity by mysidia · · Score: 1

      Yes. Multiple browsers support this, however: a couple limitations
      (1) They don't currently require this as a mandatory pre-requisite for Cross-Site script inclusion, AND (2) There's too much flexibility regarding which hash is used..... As a result, multiple developers could reference the same resource and come up with a different hashcode.

    3. Re:Subresource integrity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Indeed that wouldn't matter.
      But as far as client/browser/HTML standards are concerned, SRI might already be enough to make it like that, using anycast or location-dependent DNS.
      For example, a page points to a resource with some hash on hostname "sricache.sometld". And all ISPs configure their DNS to resolve that hostname to their local cache server.
      Then the question remains, how do ISPs get the resources/hashes onto their cache, but that doesn't have to involve the client/browser/HTML.

    4. Re:Subresource integrity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Whoops, nevermind. Of course the cache server wouldn't know which hash to serve if the client doesn't tell it, which is not in the spec.

  57. Because programmers are incompetent by mi · · Score: 1

    According to Moore's Law, our computers have become 1024 times more powerful today, than they were 15 years ago. This awesome increase should have accommodated the increased number of things we expect from our desktops, browsers included.

    That it has not, is explained by the people involved. Programmers — of both the web-pages and the browsers. jQuery is bad enough, how about multiple instances of jQuery — because different components of the same web-page ask for a different version of the library?

    What used to be coded in C or C++ is increasingly being implemented in Java, Go, Python, Rust or Ruby. Because it is more convenient for the programmers. Oh, yes, it is slower — just get a faster machine, would you? And I don't mean to trash these languages here — you could write good code in them. But you could also, without even realizing it, write bad code — and ship it...

    Sysadmins aren't much (if any) better. Tracking package-dependencies is hard — let's use containers. This application needs Java-1.8u67, but this other one has only been tested with 1.8u63 — so we are going to run both JREs side-by-side, who cares about the wasting more RAM by doing so, than a typical desktop computer had in 1993?

    For better or worse, humanity needs many more programmers, than are naturally born. Folks going into a profession without an enthusiastic calling for it aren't going to make things great, they are happy to settle for "good enough"...

    --
    In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
  58. Strange, I'm running Chrome on Fedora 25... by OneSmartFellow · · Score: 1

    ...and I just now opened a new tab (fully rendered) in about 1 second; this with a Dell Inspiron 1545 (2009, not at all new) with 10 tabs already open, two of which are playing media simultaneously, the other 8 are on a variety of content bloated websites like grabien.com (don't ask, I just followed a few News links from google).

    I agree 1 second is an eternity for a PC, just to load a new (blank) tab. Especially compared to what I did at work today, which was to configure a gnuplot generated graph of a multi-dimensional rendering of about 25,000 data points, and it did this in the blink of an eye, it is a bit disappointing, but, get real, a second ? What did you do during that second you had to wait ?, you don't even need to breath every second.

  59. Why? by AndyKron · · Score: 1

    Why would you want 100 tabs open?

    1. Re:Why? by jason777 · · Score: 1

      porn?

  60. Three decades? by MooseTick · · Score: 1

    "I've been doing this for three decades now."

    You've been working with browsers since 1986? You are a true poineer! I guess Sir Tim Berners-Lee stole his idea from you in 1990.

    1. Re:Three decades? by holophrastic · · Score: 1

      Read harder. I didn't say "browsers". I said "serving a page to a client". The world didn't begin with browsers. The web didn't start the internet. The internet wasn't the first network.

    2. Re:Three decades? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      He means he's been trolling for 30 years.

    3. Re:Three decades? by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 1

      "You've been working with browsers since 1986? You are a true poineer! "

      A frontier dyslexic?

    4. Re:Three decades? by LifesABeach · · Score: 1

      In 1994 Bill Gates gave a speech at a computer conference in San Francisco on the concept of a Client Server System. It would be what all take for granted as how web applications are today. I was there, my first reaction was ya, right. I'm going to give up my job coding everything to some API that another programmer got paid to do. That business model would survive another 10 years. Before I would convert over. Then it would be some obscure thing called a "Pattern" and MVC would dominate. Now it's Natural Language Processing thatis emerging; amazing. And the current problem I'm facing is not only asking the machine to answer a question, but be able to give the machine a real world problem to solve and it starts by using only the 'net; one can only imagine what step 2 is.

    5. Re:Three decades? by Frobnicator · · Score: 1

      Read harder. I didn't say "browsers". I said "serving a page to a client". The world didn't begin with browsers. The web didn't start the internet. The internet wasn't the first network.

      In 1994 Bill Gates gave a speech at a computer conference in San Francisco on the concept of a Client Server System.

      And he was late to the party with it. MIT had been doing it for 11 years at that point. They had a project that muddied the definitions at the time; the terminal in front of the user was converted to a server and the machines doing the work became the client. The work eventually branched into the X Window System, which anyone who uses Linux knows well.

      But even that wasn't the original. Dumb terminals have been around since the beginning. Code trying to make the client into the server has been around since the mid 1970s. The pendulum has been swinging for ages. "Get this stuff off the mainframe and out to the terminals." "Consolidate it back from the terminals and back on the mainframe." "Send this out on the web browser and let the browser do the processing." "Web 2.0 lets us send it all back to the server and get data updates live." "New Responsive pages move the work out to the individual freeing up the servers."

      Like the people above, it's a pendulum that we've watched swing back and forth, over and over, for decades. They come with similar problems that we've seen time and time again.

      --
      //TODO: Think of witty sig statement
    6. Re:Three decades? by MrDoh! · · Score: 1

      Aye, I recall... hmm..dates might be a bit off, very very late 80's/early 90's using x-windows and having a method of a server rendering data to send to a dumb rendering client. Was a horrible binary mashup of the bare minimum RTF we wanted, some terrible in-house curses library and voodoo I think. We got something working for what we needed (make some remote x terminals show very very basic graphics/simple text formatting), but as soon as we saw a browser/html "Oh, that's what we've been using, but far better, lets change to that!" (well, as soon as the guy who wrote the hacked in house version of curses we used bogged off so we had the excuse of not trying to understand his mess). Tech often seem to be "Oh, that's what we were kinda doing in house, but working! With better documentation than our stuff!"

      --
      Waiting for an amusing sig.
    7. Re:Three decades? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They had a project that muddied the definitions at the time

      No it didn't. The confusion comes from big central computers being called servers just like the server process in client-server communication.

      In client-server communication, the server controls a shared resource, which many clients can use. A print server controls access to a printer, to which many programs connect to print stuff. A web server (e.g. Apache) controls access to a web site, to which many programs (browsers) connect to retrieve the pages. A display server controls access to a display, to which many programs connect to display stuff.

      Keep the big central computer out of the discussion, and X works just like any other client-server software.

      Back when X was developed, the big central computer was probably known as a "mini" or "mini-computer" anyway (it was smaller than a mainframe and bigger than a micro-computer, which includes PCs). So there was no confusion.

      Along with web servers (or around that time) came the confusion that the computer hosting the web server (software) also became known as a web server (hardware).

  61. First Post! by PPH · · Score: 4, Funny

    What do you mean, 'slow'?

    --
    Have gnu, will travel.
  62. photo vs. webpage, really /.? by Imazalil · · Score: 1

    Really, someone on /. does not understand why a jpg image stored on a local drive loads 'instantly' vs. a collection of scripts and code that needs to be "compiled" before displaying.

    I'm not expecting everyone to be a rocket scientist on here, but come on, think about the difference between the two for even a minute.

  63. Can I get it as an APK? by tepples · · Score: 1

    HOSTS-level blocking

    I have a Galaxy Tab A running Marshmallow. Like most other Android tablets, it supports Unknown sources, but it isn't rooted, and editing that file requires root. Can I get DNS blacklisting as an APK that I can install?

    1. Re:Can I get it as an APK? by holophrastic · · Score: 1

      You can get a device that is actually yours to control. If you've purchased something that's designed to screw you over, then you've got what you requested.

    2. Re:Can I get it as an APK? by tepples · · Score: 1

      Sticker shock, for one thing. Not everybody purchases all their hardware; many receive it as a gift. This is particularly true of K-12 and undergraduate students. And not everybody is willing to spend hundreds replacing all their hardware the moment they start caring about "a device that is actually yours to control."

      For another, one cannot buy what is not offered for sale. In not all form factors is it easy to find hardware controlled by the user. For example, affordable 10-inch laptop PCs capable of running a 99% free operating system (except BIOS and Wi-Fi firmware) were discontinued at the end of 2012 in favor of tablets, which had a higher profit margin at the time. The Nokia N900 also never got a worthy successor to my knowledge.

    3. Re:Can I get it as an APK? by 0100010001010011 · · Score: 1

      You can self host your own DNS server inside of your own network. I use Unbound in a FreeNAS jail. You can also use PiHole on a RaspberryPi (or any other machine you have laying around).

    4. Re:Can I get it as an APK? by tepples · · Score: 1

      You can self host your own DNS server inside of your own network.

      Great for my own Wi-Fi, not so great for restaurant Wi-Fi or cellular data.

    5. Re:Can I get it as an APK? by Pikoro · · Score: 1

      Look up DNS66

      --
      "Freedom in the USA is not the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want"
  64. Riddle me this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Why does firefox on Ubuntu consume 25% of my CPU (which is 100% of one of its four cores) just sitting there with NO TABS OPEN?

    WHY???

    1. Re:Riddle me this by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      Browser hamster is taking a smoke break while waiting for you to do something.

  65. Yeah, they're slow but... by rnturn · · Score: 1

    ... not all of the blame lies with the browsers. My theory is that there must be some really poor code libraries that have gained a wide acceptance in the web designer community.

    In a slightly off-topic vein but related to the browsing "experience": a major pet peeve of mine is web designers' failure to use the image size information to preallocate space on the page. Depending on the site and how busy it is, it can take as long as ten seconds for the page to finally quit re-rendering after every image dribbles in. "Behold our graphics-rich page layout! Isn't it impressive and worthy of an award? Oh, you wanted to read the content? We never took that into account." This is just laziness. The way to avoid this has been around since the Netscape days and is nicely described in O'Reilly's original HTML text.

    --
    CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
  66. I'll take slow over non-private by cfalcon · · Score: 1

    Privacy is getting harder and harder to find online, which is why it is important to work for it where we can. Moving everything to different processes, making use of OS level security features- all of these create redundancies. I'll also point out that PCs offer another solution in general to software inefficiencies- buy better hardware. While this is not an ideal solution (and arguably doesn't even address the question at all), it does reduce the market demand for efficient software.

  67. Lynx by CrankyOldEngineer · · Score: 1

    Ditch all the multimedia BS and see how fast your internet connection can be.

    --
    COE
    1. Re:Lynx by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      yup, lynx, links, even dillo if you want a GUI

  68. Alternative to mass reloading of tabs by cfalcon · · Score: 1

    One thought I had as an alternative to mass reloading of tabs isn't really a consumer level solution, but it might be interesting to some.

    If you run your browser through a VM, and save a snapshot, reloading that snapshot may take awhile, but it won't reload your tabs from remote. Might be worth looking into if this is important and you have an SSD though.

    I'll also add this: when you close your browser, you might not WANT images of webpages to be automatically saved to disk, ready for reload. Having this as a basic functionality would probably not be the wisest decision from a privacy perspective.

  69. The browsers makes coffee now... by fbobraga · · Score: 1

    ... they not just render webpages, you know (they call it "bloat", I think...)

  70. Blame SSL/TLS by Miamicanes · · Score: 2

    Much of the recent blame should be placed on the new universality of using SSL/TLS for everything.

    The problem is, negotiating a cold SSL/TLS handshake from scratch takes a certain amount of time... and there's very little you can do to speed it up with current standards. Adding certificate-revocation lookups compounds the problem and adds even more time. In the past, a site that "used SSL" might need to do one or two key exchanges for one or two different hosts. Now, a single page might require a dozen or more key exchanges... and some of those key exchanges might not even be known by the browser to be necessary until after it's done the first few (because some script delivered via https references some other asset via https on a different host).

    SSL/TLS itself is generally a good thing... but the WAY it's currently being used was NEVER seen as a realistic use case 20 years ago when it was first implemented. Simply put, SSL/TLS key exchange and CRL doesn't scale well in their current form.

    This is also part of the reason why it's so common to end up with "five bars of LTE signal strength, but no working data-connectivity" -- mobile apps are "chatty" to begin with, and many of them do a shit job of keeping https sessions alive between requests, so every single background https request requires yet another new handshaking and revocation-lookup. In areas where you have a cell site with limited backhaul connectivity and occasional surges in the number of users (say, a cell tower near a large state park serviced by only a T-1 line or two... on July 4th, when 60,000 people might descend on the park for a few hours), the endless key exchange traffic ITSELF can almost fully-saturate the tower's backhaul capacity.

    1. Re:Blame SSL/TLS by Kasperinfotech · · Score: 1

      kasperinfotech.com provide a Website design & development services in India. We have dedicated team of specialized experts, our expert development team are full offered Web development company in india website designing in India

  71. Time to first byte and javascript by SmSlDoo · · Score: 2

    There are several different phases involved in loading a web page. The first is how long it takes for the site to actually send the response to your request. If it takes 5 seconds to request index.php, there is not anything the browser can do to fix this. Caching and optimizing code will help, unfortunately most sites are build on a CMS (ie wordpress), and most designers / admin do not know how to optimize this properly. If this is slow it is usually either bad code, or trying to store entirely too much stuff in the database. Some, very poorly designed, sites will also make remote calls to external servers, this is painfully slow.

    After the html is sent to the browser, the browser will start the rendering process. This involves loading all CSS and Javascript files referenced in the html. Old logic was to move the javascript to the footer to ensure they load after the main content is loaded. Unfortunately, with new browsers this does not matter. They will delay rendering of the content until all javascript is loaded on a site. This is to avoid information being moved around on the screen when files are finally loaded.

    Hopefully, most designers will move their expensive javascript functions to a $(document).ready function but that only speeds the page display up after the javascript files have been loaded. Beyond that the best thing that designers can do for javascript heavy sites is defer the loading of their javascript. This allows the html to render before attempting to load javascript. Not all libraries support this, namely jquery, by default. But it will help speed up the time from the request to the time something is displayed on the screen.

    With all of these methods, the time that it takes to completely load and render all content on the page will be about the same. But, from the users point of view, the page will appear to be loading faster.

  72. iMac opens a new blank tab instantly by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    My 2012 iMac opens a new blank tab instantly.

  73. Speed dial by tepples · · Score: 1

    Many users expect the new tab page to have the speed dial feature, which shows a screenshot of each of several sites that the user commonly views. This is even more true of visual learners, who may associate a site with its logo or color scheme rather than the text of a <title> element. It's also helpful for sites that pay little attention to putting useful information in a document's <title>, in part because many browsers have begun to deemphasize <title> in their presentation of HTML documents. Each item in Yvan256's laundry list applies just as much to generating said screenshots.

  74. Some browsers are slow, others not so by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    First of all you must account for all the time spent downloading files from the Internet. Of course, the web is totally broken and users are waiting for files to download, instead of receiving results at the site's convenience.

    Secondly, some web pages include JavaScript and Java Applets. These may literally take sextillions of years to run (after being downloaded and before your page is rendered).

    Still you will find that some browsers like Firefox are overloaded with bugs & features and eat up huge amounts of CPU time and memory, even when idle, while other browsers such as Lynx start, wait and run quickly without overburdening memory.

  75. Depends on which browser by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The author may have a point when talking about Chrome, Chromium or Firefox. I find each of them, especially Firefox, takes an unusually long time to do anything. Starting up one of these browsers takes several seconds and opening a new tab takes a second or so. Definitely long enough to notice the delay.

    But other browsers don't have this problem. Step out of the narrow list of mainstream browsers and most of them are much more reponsive. I use Qupzilla, for example. It opens in about a second and switching tabs (or opening a new tab) is virtually instant. It takes about 25% of the time to do anyhting in Qupzilla on all of my computers compared to Firefox. Other light browsers like Midori or Vivaldi tend to give better performance too.

    Browsers in general are not slow. A handful of mainstream, bloated browsers are slow. Pick the right one for the job.

  76. Netscape Navigator was fast by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Try Seamonkey! It is the successor to the Mozilla Suite which is the successor to Netscape Navigator. It runs fast on computers with only a few hundred MIPS, yet it still supports all of the modern features. (Granted, slow pages are slow, but it can open light ones instantly.)

  77. SSD to avoid data charges by tepples · · Score: 1

    How much does the increase in data charges from operating your web browser without a cache compare to the cost of moving your boot volume from your 5400 RPM HDD to an OCZ SSD?

    (Yes, data charges. Not everybody lives in the service area of an ISP that offers a 1000 GB/mo quota to home users, such as Xfinity by Comcast. They have to rely on 10 GB fixed-cellular service. And even those who do live in range of fiber, cable, or DSL may have to drop home wired Internet to afford mobile Internet.)

    1. Re: SSD to avoid data charges by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I pay 40 USD per month for 1 Gbps down with no cap. Sucks, right?

  78. How To Open Hundreds Of Tabs by the AC by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    1) Skip browsing Slashdot for a week.
    2) Open up Slashdot's main page then open up all the pages you've missed until your last viewing date (so you don't have to remember where you were if you get interrupted)
    3) Skim through each of these article listing tabs and open up the articles you want to read in new tabs. Open any summary links as well.
    4) Go through each article one at a time. Open any interesting links for later viewing.
    5) When you post as AC, there's no way to track your posts so open your posts in new tabs as well.
    6) When you get to a previously posted tab from a day or two ago, refresh that tab to see if anyone commented. If so, reply and keep tab open. If not, close tab.

    Eventually you won't have enough time to get through the articles you want to read and your tab count will grow and grow and grow. Luckily the browser ALWAYS eventually crashes and wipes out all your tabs thus giving you a fresh start.

  79. Blame the audience moving to mobile by tepples · · Score: 1

    Does "mobilegeddon" affect results of searches performed from PCs? I remember reading somewhere that it does not; only results for queries on touch-driven devices are affected. If not, then any effects of "mobilegeddon" are ultimately the result of your audience abandoning PCs for web browsing in favor of touch-driven devices.

  80. A browser windows isn't just a 'window' anymore... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Google acquired application security company GreenBorder in May 2007. GreenBorder technology automatically sandboxes web code and network traffic by creating a bridge between applications. The GreenBorder technology isolated Internet Explorer or Firefox instances into a “sandbox” inside virtual machine instances. These sandboxes form the code isolation layers of Google Chrome, protecting other tabs and the parent operating system from the code executing on each web page."

    Trying to protect us from ourselves I see...

    From: http://www.niallkennedy.com/blog/2008/09/google-chrome.html#acquisitions

  81. BROWSER SUCK! by tuorum · · Score: 2

    I've complained and complained about how poor the performance of Firefox and Chrome and IE Javascript and CSS rendering engines to every board that they have!! I just can't get them to fix the speed with my desire to have 15 javascript frameworks and 38 custom stylesheets and have those automatically generate all the text in my site in a specific location so that I can resize the screen and have things bounce around and look just a little bit different in case someone with a mobile phone happens to come across my page and managed to get it loaded into the mobile browser before the render engine the browser to run out of memory and be killed by the operating system!!!!!

    When you write up a nice block of text, browsers are super duper fast. Add in some images: still super fast. Add some basic javascript: cool beans, they can handle that. Some CSS to make things pretty? SURE! Oh, you want to lump in a generic framework of 800 functions, of which you really only need to use 10 of them, and an associated set of stylesheets that are then rewritten by parts of said JS Framework to draw out 13 little buttons? Well, that's going to work but your going to pay a price.

    Web developers, do the internet a favor and test your pages on a browser running in a virtualmachine with 25% of 1 CPU and 512MB of memory, and force the network speed down to 2-4Mbps. And on that same VM, profile the page to see how it's render performance is handled. Then fix the page until it works there. Please, use all the JS files you want, but if your page takes more then 3 seconds to fully render, you're doing a disservice to the whole web.

    And go away with any "upgrade your computer" BS. No one's using a C64 here. If you're page can render in 3 seconds on that VM, imagine what it will do on a modern PC.

    1. Re:BROWSER SUCK! by tuorum · · Score: 1

      There's supposed to be a "&LT sarcasm &GT" at the end of the first paragraph. :P

  82. Forecasts update every few hours by tepples · · Score: 1

    The (U.S.) National Weather Service and other weather forecasting agencies do update their forecasts every several hours when they re-run their models based on new conditions read by sensors. And a forecast past five days is a crapshoot.

  83. Enter Web 4.0 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Computers with a terabyte of RAM, 10 Gigabit 6G Internet and Real time ad analytics mesasuring your telemetry with millisecond accuracy slowing it all down to a 486 on a 14k modem.

  84. Sounds like an opportunity! by MacTechnic · · Score: 1

    If the most popular web browsers all suffer from the same problems, could you build a new browser that avoids some of the problems with significantly better performance and remains compliant with web standards? Surely some group could fork Firefox and offer at least a Linux variant!?

  85. This post makes me feel old by zifn4b · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Ok, I am very astonished by this question "Why are browsers so slow?" which since you're most likely a millenial you might as well re-phrase the question as "Why are browsers slow AF?"

    No offense but you obviously have no idea what a slow browser really is. Try Netscape 6 or IE6 and let me know if you think Chrome is still slow. First of all, are you sure you can attribute all the slowness to the browser itself? Did you crack open the modern browser developer tools that we all have now (hint: Firebug and Chrome developer tools didn't used to exist until a few years ago) and look at the network tab or equivalent to make sure that the web server/REST service/whatever isn't taking a long time to serve back data? Better yet try profiling your own javascript code with console.log, console.time/console.timeEnd. Since you can use an identifier, you can even do it asynchronously, how fancy is that? I seriously doubt you've done any of these exercises because most modern browsers take javascript, compile it into native code and cache which is about the fastest you're going to get javascript to run. Microsoft completely rewrote it's rendering engine multiple times the latest of which is Edge. Firefox, Chrome and Safari have all had similar efforts. I've been a web developer for a number of years and I can tell you, the stuff we have now is lightning fast.

    You try serving up a web page to Netscape Navigator using a cgi-bin perl script from an old version of Apache and let us know if you think modern tech is still slow.

    It just appalls me. No matter how much better we make technology there is always a generation that comes along and tells us all of our effort are crap because they think everything needs to be bigger, better, faster. If you want to complain, you get engaged and make it what you think it ought to be. Until then you have no room to complain if you're just going to comment from the peanut gallery. Gah.

    --
    We'll make great pets
    1. Re:This post makes me feel old by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      eli5 y browser slow af?

    2. Re:This post makes me feel old by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      My computer has 20 times the speed, 16 times the RAM, 100 times the space, and 400 times the internet speed than what I used to have.

      Webpages should be loading in a heartbeat, but no. They have refused to optimized, refused to cut down on space, refused to follow basic standards, dynamic elements where none are needed, and refused to keep things simple. This is not ignorance or ineptitude, anyone can make a webpage and we have decades of experience in designing them. Poor optimization on web pages, oversized images, bloated scripts, and poor loading times are a result of REFUSING to keep things straightforward. There are professional web designers out there who don't even know when you use jpg and when you use png. I should know, because I fired one a month ago because he insisted on using jpg for images which had 13 colors total.

      They are bloated, they are huge, they are ugly, they are overly complicated. There is nothing wrong with the technology, the problem is that there's an arms race between trying to keep up with demands and demands increasing for absolutely no reason. I mean, what does Skype do with its massive filesize and several hundred MB of ram usage that the last version of MSN Messenger doesn't? Absolutely nothing.

    3. Re:This post makes me feel old by Big+Hairy+Ian · · Score: 1

      Millennials should be made to use dial-up for a month before they complain about how slow the internet is

      --

      Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.

    4. Re:This post makes me feel old by zifn4b · · Score: 1

      My computer has 20 times the speed, 16 times the RAM, 100 times the space, and 400 times the internet speed than what I used to have.

      Webpages should be loading in a heartbeat, but no.

      You have no idea what you're talking about. The problem with Moore's Law is that you're assuming that we're using faster computing technology to serve up the same content faster. Nay. People used to serve up content that was realistic based on available computing power. When the computing power increases people think "I wonder if we could do this fancy thing now" and then the computing requirements increase. Did you notice that smart phones have to be replaced every couple years because as Google and Apple make their OS more fancy it runs slower on older hardware and drains the battery more. It's the same exact problem. Seriously, you need to get more educated in this field if you want to attempt to talk intelligently about the problem domain.

      --
      We'll make great pets
    5. Re:This post makes me feel old by Waccoon · · Score: 1

      In Firefox, every time there's a freeze, the developer tools clearly show garbage collection and cycle collection taking up all of the benchmark time. The more memory it uses, including for caches, the worse the performance. This has only been a problem for, oh... over ten years. The same problem they keep blaming on bad plugins and extensions, of course (the ones I disable every time I do these tests).

      Firefox can't manage memory worth shit.

    6. Re:This post makes me feel old by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You try serving up a web page to Netscape Navigator using a cgi-bin perl script from an old version of Apache and let us know if you think modern tech is still slow.

      I'd think that would be quite fast.

      Actually, blazing fast if you remove the CGI part that requires a fork.

    7. Re:This post makes me feel old by zifn4b · · Score: 1

      Firefox can't manage memory worth shit.

      Now that I agree with. Many tickets have been opened with Mozilla and some ivory tower developer over there basically said "deal with it". So I switched to Chrome.

      --
      We'll make great pets
  86. People are crap at multitasking by sjbe · · Score: 2

    Why is that "Wrong"? Because your brain doesn't work that way? That's how I've always browsed and only recently did it become terrible.

    It's "Wrong" in the sense that just because you can do something it doesn't mean it is a good idea. Your brain doesn't work that way either even if you think it does. People are demonstrably terrible at multitasking. That's why we can't talk on the phone and drive at the same time safely. You cannot possibly convince me that you are doing anything productive with most of those tabs. It's merely a form of hoarding. Opening that many tabs chews up a ton of memory and then you complain that things get slow? Of course it gets slow! What else would you expect?

    Now it's your prerogative to run your browser any way you want but don't whine to me that it gets slow when you are doing something that very predictably should result in it running poorly. Furthermore don't pretend I'm stupid enough to believe that you are maximizing productivity by opening dozens of tabs you cannot possibly be actively working with.

    1. Re:People are crap at multitasking by EETech1 · · Score: 1

      I design machines with (tens of) thousands of individual electrical parts. When you have to be sure that this will fit that, and that will fit this other thing, that has to be compatible with something else that needs to fit yet another thing...

      Wire sizes, the lugs they fit in, where those lugs bolt to, what size hole does that have, should I use one big wire or two smaller wires, hopefully i don't have to use the expensive wire, electrical codes, wiring diagrams, conduit sizes and fittings, derating specs, panel dimensions, fuse types, circuit breakers, device ratings, nominal loads, short circuit current ratings, device clearances, multiple manufacturers, on and on and on.

      How would anyone ever properly invent such an animal without hundreds of tabs open?

  87. Fight pedantry with pedantry with Peter Noone by tepples · · Score: 1

    Here's a quote from a bug report about gamma:

    >Noone seems to care about this feature, noone has been working on it.

    Perhaps a better approach is to make test clips that include Herman's Hermits footage. Then you can use Noone to your advantage, fighting pedantry with pedantry.

  88. it's their job by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Developers of the few major web browsers deliberately pile on the feature creap so that the task of rendering a web page becomes as complicated as possible, thus erecting a huge barrier to entry that locks out any competition.

    Developers of web sites happily play along so that they can stay employed.

  89. Yes, I agree by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yes, I agree. Optimise browsers please.

  90. What is the environmental impact by econnor · · Score: 1

    ... of all this crap on the web? Every cat photo. Every dumb script. Oversized image files. Etc. Each one has a tiny cost, if only to power the routers that smear it across the globe.

    We learned to live with the dumbing down of design to accommodate acessibility and mobile. Could we live with image rationing and yellow on blue again, if it turned out the internet was pissing away enough resources to feed a small country every day?

    (I guess jobs are created too. But I'd argue the people who do them would be better employed digging holes and building stuff.)

    Has anyone done the sums?

  91. why are WEBPAGES slow by kennethmci · · Score: 1

    I think why are webpages slow is the more relevant question. and to find a detailed answer, right click on the page and click "inspect" in Chrome.

    click network - the amount of http/s requests the browser is making and how long their response takes. slashdot.org for me, a total of 151 requests from webserver(s) to obtain all data and assets for the page.

    click timeline and profiles to view JS activity/response times.

    the other part of the question - regarding tabs, it COULD just show the last rendered pixels when you click on the tab - but how long would this be relevant? it would probably quickly show it to you then have to run the scripts to pull the latest data anyway ( e.g. an ajax request for latest content ) - so in either case - it either loads on click of tab, or a fraction of a second after the click which would potentially just "flash up" the new data and might be jarring for the user.

    Some of this is important for all devices ( even though its focused on mobile ): https://www.ampproject.org/lea...

  92. It's obivous! by Merk42 · · Score: 1

    Why, if every browser maker and/or web developer did what I want then everyone would be happy.
    However, I won't actually do any of that, lest I be proven wrong. That way I can smugly act like I have all the answers.

  93. But their precious hit counts! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I am convinced Web sites do lots of dirty tricks with mandatory refreshes for the sake of serving more ads and cranking up their stats.

  94. Sloppy markup by Dracos · · Score: 1

    It doesn't help that browsers are expected, to a degree unheard of in most other software, to accept then try to normalize sloppy input (markup) across 6+ version of HTML, and that the latest standard canonizes sloppiness.

    1. Re:Sloppy markup by hackel · · Score: 1

      So true. I'd really like to see a browser that entirely rips out *all* compatibility with anything but strict html5 and ecma2015. Absolutely no compatibility fixes or html4 whatsoever. Google could do this. Their market-share has gotten so out of control, that it would force all the shitty sites to update practically overnight! Let people launch a completely separate "compatibility mode" browser if they that desperately need to access some shitty, old site (or load it dynamically in a tab--whatever). The thing is, compliant markup just isn't that difficult. It always comes down to programmer incompetence.

  95. Slow? by WillAffleckUW · · Score: 2

    I don't get why you think they're slow.

    My Mosaic browser works ultra fast.

    --
    -- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
  96. WHAT BROWSER WAS THIS, IN 1986? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "I've been doing this for three decades now"

    You LIE!

  97. Dear DEsigner Birman, by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    >I understand why rendering a complicated layout may be slow...

    No, the page layouts need not be complicated- that's the damn truth. It's an annoyance actually, and as a professional it is your job and expertise to de-clutter.

    Now what you could say is that dealing with multiple layers, iFrames, script calls, ad-servers, roll-overs, automatic videos, stealth pop-unders, web-beacons, etc. and so on is what MAY be making your job difficult. In which case you're allowing the page to become crap. Clean it up like a real pro should. Oh is marketing giving you a hard time because you're pushing back a little? They need an education, do it nicely.

  98. Browsers Are NOT Slow by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Browsers are not slow. Sites are slow.

    Reasons sites are slow:

    A dozen calls to various third party tracking sites.

    A dozen calls to ad sites.

    Two dozen images on the page and their size is now 5 times that of yester year's, because "bandwidth is plentiful, CPU is cheap, memory is cheap, disk is cheap".

    Javascript rendering of everything, instead of static HTML text. Compounded by the Javascript staying "live" so long as the page is open.

    AJAX - It's now an old concept but it massively increases the data transfer and latency.

    Multimedia content.

    Browser code bloat.

  99. Firefox by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    In Firefox it stores not just those tabs but the last 20 or so pages for each tab so you can go back. Try this: In Firefox goto about:config and set browser.sessionstore.max_tabs_undo and browser.sessionstore.max_windows_undo to 0. Set browser.sessionstore.restore_hidden_tabs and browser.sessionstore.resume_from_crash to false

  100. I agree & an argument I won vs. imbecile by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    See subject: Rendering scripts + ads, using tracking cookies slows you down (I block it w/ my hosts program) https://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=10009625&cid=53532463/ on exactly what this article's about (which my program helps stop).

    * For the best hosts file creator there is, bar-none, that does FAR more for FAR less resource consummation giving you more speed, security, reliability & anonymity online APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-4 32/64-bit https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&biw=&bih=&q=%22APK+Hosts+File+Engine%22+and+%22start64%22&btnG=Google+Search&gbv=1/

    APK

    P.S.=> Enjoy going faster & safer online using it (it's free & 100% safe https://www.virustotal.com/en/file/e01211ca36aa02e923f20adee0a3c4f5d5187dc65bdf1c997b3da3c2b0745425/analysis/1433430542/ )... apk

    1. Re:I agree & an argument I won vs. imbecile by Ash-Fox · · Score: 1

      APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-4 32/64-bit

      Doesn't work against this malicious ad. This advertiser maintains dossiers and tries to find out people's real life details to harass them if they expose the truth behind it.

      --
      Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
  101. Perhaps, but that doesn't explain mine... by gosand · · Score: 1

    Firefox has been my browser of choice for a very long time. (My browser before FF was Netscape)
    I have only a couple of add-ons. I run Linux/XFCE, have plenty of RAM and CPU.
    A few years ago Firefox started to really bog down, so I switched to Chromium for about 6 months. I kept updating and trying Firefox, and eventually it got better. So I came back to it.

    About 6 months ago it started slowing down again. Here is how it would behave: when I would launch the browser, it would come up rather quickly. But it would be unresponsive for about 30 seconds. It wasn't using CPU or RAM, just sitting there. By default it opens to a blank tab. There was NO reason I could tell for the slowdown. Even if I opened it with a url, like from an email, it would still open in zombie mode and wait 30 seconds before even showing the url in the address bar. It was maddening.

    So now I am running Pale Moon and love it. It's not slow, yet it maintains all the things I like about Firefox.
    My wife is on Win7 and she faced her own issues with the recent versions of FF, and she switched over to Chrome.

    --

    My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.

    1. Re:Perhaps, but that doesn't explain mine... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I run Linux/XFCE,

      Firefox? It's been a while but what happened to IceWeasel?

    2. Re:Perhaps, but that doesn't explain mine... by kwerle · · Score: 1

      Yeah, I used to love FF. Gave up on it a few years ago and switched to Chrome and haven't looked back. I don't know what they're doing over there, but I'm not a fan.

      Actually, I do still fire it up on occasion - and it seems to perform OK. Maybe they've fixed whatever was up with it.

  102. They aren't by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    They aren't slow, you just need to stop using a 10 year old laptop to browse the internet.

  103. Slow because ... by emzee · · Score: 1

    Of all the software that tracks your every move to help monetize the time you spend online.

  104. really by unami · · Score: 1

    "Safari may take a second or two just to open a new blank tab on a 2014 iMac." no, it won't - it doesn't even take half a second to open a full homepage on my 2011 mac. "And with ten or fifteen open tabs it eventually becomes sluggish as hell." nope - maybe OP should look at his/her computer, add some RAM (4 GB is so 2001) and uninstall useless crap and bloatware that slows down the system.

  105. Safari also lazy-loads tabs by santiago · · Score: 1

    Unfortunately, modern browsers are so stupid that they reload all the tabs when you restart them. Which takes ages if you have a hundred of tabs. Opera was sane: it did not reload a tab unless you asked for it.

    Safari doesn't reload background tabs until you switch to them. (Unlike Chrome, which does try to open every tab at once, hammering the internet connection, the processor, and the RAM.)

  106. HTML tables are too slow by WaffleMonster · · Score: 2

    One consistent performance problem I see across browsers is large tables take forever to render even with static column attributes. You can load an excel spreadsheet with tens of thousands of rows instantaneously.

    The same data in a table pegs a core and consumes a GB or more of RAM with minutes or more delay. Often as the number of rows increase there is a huge corresponding drop-off in performance until it becomes practically unusable.

    Otherwise I have no real issues with browser performance. Sure browsers like IE do the darndest things you've ever seen sometimes including getting so slow as to be unusable when display large ASCII text files. That's right.. not complex HTML but text rendered as TEXT.

    Browsers are like everything else. The EE's give us incredible hardware and we go out of our way to waste it with lazy sloppy coding simply because it's cheaper not to care.

    Browsers are the same way.. all kinds of hard work on fancy algorithms and optimizing performance ... obliterated by "developers" who think HTML/JavaScript/CSS are "too hard" and instead insist on piling on layer upon layer, framework upon framework, widget after widget, piecemeal XMLHttpRequest after XMLHttpRequest, fill site with social media bugs, cross site trackers, ads/malware, use third party bugs to get web stats because you are too lazy to install a stats package to analyze your own access logs. Some sites just enjoy selling out their customers to stalking firms who often cross sell-out customers to other stalking firms leading to hilarious trees of connections when accessing a single page. Yet others are completely oblivious to what is going on behind the scenes.

    Web sites written by people who care about wasting their users time load instantaneously. It's amazing. Never really had issues with browsers themselves not being responsive divorced from the bullshit occurring within them. I'm not really sure how what is being described by TFA is even possible given so much runs in separate process/memory space these days.

  107. hundreds of tabs? by j2.718ff · · Score: 2

    I think I found your problem:

    Which takes ages if you have a hundred of tabs.

    I can't imagine my browser being remotely functional if I had hundreds of tabs open.

  108. A hundred tabs? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "hundred of tabs" -- This, is not helping. Bookmark some things, and close the window.

    The browser might know what tabs are the most recently used. But thats about all they know. The browser tabs all use a TON of memory. (maybe that is its own problem, but thats getting off track).

    The more tabs you have, the more likely the data you want is not in memory. It's in virtual memory. Which is a fancy way to say its on DISK. Virtual memory is really slow, cause it's disk. And Windows is doing certain generic memory management to it -- but whatever windows does with it, is not optimized for your browser.

    If you close the tabs you never use, and only keep the ones you might actually need, then there's a lot better chance the tab you want is actually in real memory, and will appear a lot slower.

    Startup will be faster too -- since the browser won't try to get data for a hundred tabs.

    I don't know your workflow. If you really need that many tabs open at once, you may need to find a browser with some kind of "don't load tabs on startup" option. But honestly, --- you need to realize that your "hundred tabs" workflow is a lot of the problem. It's not what the browser designer expects, so it's not something they try to make fast.

    I'm not here to tell you all browsers are great, and that nothing needs to change -- I'd love it if they could reduce memory overhead, and could open a small html text page without needing hundreds of megabytes for the extra tab.

    but, really, 100 tabs is way more than the designers expect. Your experience is outside of the test cases they are working to make better.

  109. Addons = inferior & inefficient vs. hosts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What hosts do addons can't (or as well):

    PROTECT vs.:

    1.) bad sites (past ads)
    2.) fastflux C&C
    3.) dynDNS C&C
    4.) DGA C&C
    5.) downed DNS
    6.) poisoned dns
    7.) trackers (dnsrequestlogs/ads/transparent ISP proxy)
    8.) spam/phish payload
    9.) dns blocks
    10.) slowdown 2 ways: adblocks & hardcodes

    11.) Multiplatform
    12.) Ez data edit
    13.) Block efficiently (cpu/ram/I-O)

    14.) UBlock no DNS bennys = poor imitation = "sincerest form of flattery"
    15.) NoScript tag parses. Hosts block adservers before it cheaper

    APK

    P.S.=> Addons = INEFFICIENT: AB+ 151mb http://cdn.ghacks.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/adblocker-memory-consumption.jpg/

    UBlock 64MB http://cdn.ghacks.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/adblocker-memory-consumption.jpg/

    (hosts ~6mb)

    ClarityRay defeatable

    Don't work http://www.businessinsider.com/google-microsoft-amazon-taboola-pay-adblock-plus-to-stop-blocking-their-ads-2015-2/

    SLOWER: http://superuser.com/questions/686041/which-leads-to-faster-browsing-an-ad-blocker-or-an-edited-hosts-file/

    1. Re:Addons = inferior & inefficient vs. hosts by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      What hosts do addons can't (or as well):

      Uh...addons (at least on Firefox) can do pretty much anything. The whole browser is written using the same technology. So it doesn't make any sense whatsoever to say that addons can't make the browser do any arbitrary filtering or processing. (Chrome addons are deliberately crippled, admittedly.)

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    2. Re:Addons = inferior & inefficient vs. hosts by Ash-Fox · · Score: 1

      What hosts do addons can't

      Addons exist like "SwitchHosts" or "Change Hosts". So an addon can even do hosts file. Stop spreading lies.

      1.) bad sites (past ads...etc

      Considering an addon in say, Firefox, is perfectly capable of intercepting a URL being accessed before it's accessed in a webbrowser, there is no reason why an addon couldn't do that.

      Multiplatform

      Generally I've not had issues installing Chromium or Firefox addons on Linux, Windows and macOS ?

      --
      Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
    3. Re:Addons = inferior & inefficient vs. hosts by Ash-Fox · · Score: 1

      Part 2: Due to lameness filter sucking.

      Ez data edit

      I don't know about that, most people have a hard time figuring out how to run notepad as administrator.

      Efficiency

      There are numerous cases where hosts files are less efficient. For example, the fact it resolves an IP address will mean the browser by default will try to connect to it, even allocating a socket before failing. If you block it on the DNS level and get a NXDOMAIN, that doesn't happen. Alternatively, you could even intercept it in an addon, again, preventing such cases. Additionally, try blocking entire domains, with all their subdomains, you're reaching 1TB+ hosts file size just to block a couple of domains fully, which, the operating systems fail to load, but not before wasting massive I/O resources and still maintain part of that in memory, wasting massive amounts of RAM.

      --
      Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
    4. Re:Addons = inferior & inefficient vs. hosts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hello again.

      Bit of a double post, there. And then you've posted the same thing again, and again.
      Why is that? Do you think that somehow, someone has missed it?
      Does _anyone_ else on this forum act this way? The copy'n'paste trolls usually only post once per thread. You're the only one that spams the thread with the same thing.

      But, enough about the style (you won't answer the questions, anyway). On to the meat;

      Draw with addons
      1.) bad sites (past ads)
      2.) fastflux C&C - I know you dispute this, but you're arguing technicalities. If my script blocking won't let the payload run, then whether it's blocked by an entry in the hostfile is moot.
      3.) dynDNS C&C - same as 2.) (you're padding your list)
      11.) Multiplatform

      Win to add-ons
      7.) trackers (.../ads/...) - not from same site
      8.) spam/phish payload - so does a scriptblocker and they are a whitelist
      12.) Ez data edit - a thousand line host-file is not easy to edit, even if the format is. Having to use a 3rd party tool, like yours, before each browsing session to update the file is not easy. Having an add-on update automatically each time I open my browser and even during use is much, much easier.
      14.) UBlock no DN5 bennys = poor imitation = "sincerest form of flattery" - uBlock is not imitating you. If it includes the option of using hosts and integrates with my browser then it's a clear win over your tool. I address your 'DN5 bennys', below.

      Win to host files
      13.) Efficiency (cpu/ram/I-O)
      10.) slowdown 2 ways: adblocks & hardcodes
      15.) NoScript tag parses. Hosts block adservers before it cheaper

      I'm going to have to break this in two to get around the lame-ness filter.

      YT, part 1

    5. Re:Addons = inferior & inefficient vs. hosts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      YT, part 2

      Edge cases
      5.) Dynamic Name Service down - I have no idea of how bad your service is, but for most people this doesn't 'go down' often enough to need to hard code names
      6.) poisoned - Infrequent and better addressed by digital signatures, either DNSSEC or confirming that the sites certificate matches.
      9.) blocked - Only if you are visiting so many dodgy websites that you can't remember all the IP addresses.
      7.) trackers (dnsrequestlogs/.../transparent ISP proxy) - Only if you live somewhere where the sites you visit are being logged and/or are something that you are worried about. This information is much more likely to be constructed from the actual _connection_ you make. Who cares if I tried to find the address of google.com? Anyone logging my usage is going to check to see if I connected to it. This is just padding your list.

      Overstated or misleading
      4.) DGA C&C - Bullshit. The only way you can block DGA is to exhaustively list every domain it can generate. You can only do this after it's been identified and analysed to discover either the algorithm or list. At that point, it's no longer 'dynamic' and is just another list of known bad names. If you want to block something 'dynamically' you need to use something that can block by pattern - wildcards, regex expressions etc. Like most add-ons allow.

      ---

      The 'DNS bennys' you mention are protection against low-probability faults or failures. If you live in a 3rd world (internet provider speaking) and have outtages or are visiting sites that are illegal, then maybe you want a host file pinning those incriminating IPs in your 'favourites' section. I'm having trouble working out when you would visit a site so dodgy that it's blocked by Name Service, but that you'd want to have listed for the authorities to find.

      To summarise. The only clear win a host file has over add-ons is in resources used. Using your figures, a host file uses ~60MB less memory than uBlock. On a modest system with 4GB of memory, for eg, that represents 1.5% of total. And is similarly trivial for CPU and IO. In return for this overhead, I get a range of features that your solution cannot provide and I save the most precious and constrained resource - my time.

      Other than that, add-ons are as good (draw) in four of the cases you list, win four and only lose on the three mentions of resource savings - which as I have said, is so slight as to be all but imperceptible.

      As time has passed and systems grown more powerful, the main advantage of a host file has become less relevant. At the same time, as sophistication of threat has grown, blacklisting has proven less and less useful.

      This is not a solution to anything except edge cases.

      Extras
      ClarityRay - Bullshit. You've been making this claim for years with nothing to back it up. You make your claim based on _their_ claims. I cannot find a single site that uses it, detects an ad-blocker and restricts content. The ClarityRay webpage doesn't react to my use of uBlock Origin. The only site I could find that is/was supposed to use it is a French TV network and it didn't react to my use of uBlock Origin.

      Adblock Plus - yes, the author of the software chose to do something that undermines the entire point of the software. It says nothing about ad blockers, specifically, that doesn't apply equally to any software, including yours.

      From the superuser.com link

      Blocking via the host file is almost certainly going to be faster just because it's much more limited in capability ...

      A reasonably powerful computer probably won't have much of a problem with a real ad blocker ...

      The host file is almost certainly faster seeing as it is baked into the OS and is doing something quite simple. On the other hand, Adblock probably stops more ads and requires less upkeep.

      I

    6. Re:Addons = inferior & inefficient vs. hosts by Bartles · · Score: 1

      Thanks for the info and the time you took to post, but what language is that?

    7. Re: Addons = inferior & inefficient vs. hosts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Please double post this every time APK spams /.

      Thanks

    8. Re:Addons = inferior & inefficient vs. hosts by EETech1 · · Score: 1

      Linux version?

    9. Re: Addons = inferior & inefficient vs. hosts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's not the real APK. the real APK logs in.

  110. Why is my browser so slow? by ceoyoyo · · Score: 1

    Why does it take so long to switch between tabs? Why does the browser pre-render tabs when I start it? Why when I have a hundred tabs open each containing a complex and sizeable document do things slow down?

    Seriously? The question started out possibly interesting and soon degenerated into contradictory whining.

  111. Worst Slashdot article ever by MobyDisk · · Score: 1

    Safari may take a second or two just to open a new blank tab on a 2014 iMac

    Not it doesn't: My wife has one.

    And with ten or fifteen open tabs it eventually becomes sluggish as hell.

    No it doesn't.

    Why does it take more than, say, a thousandth of a second to switch between tabs or create a new one?

    It doesn't.

    Right now, I have a 3-year old development machine, running Firefox, with 20+ tabs open. Hang on.... *presses ctrl+t* Wow, that was instantaneous.

    Why did some guy's rant about "Why is my computer so slow?" make it onto Slashdot?

  112. Addons = inferior & inefficient vs. hosts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What hosts do addons can't (or as well):

    PROTECT vs.:

    1.) bad sites (past ads)
    2.) fastflux C&C
    3.) dynDNS C&C
    4.) DGA C&C
    5.) DNS down
    6.) poisoned dns
    7.) trackers (dnsrequestlogs/ads/transparent ISP proxy)
    8.) spam/phish payload
    9.) dns blocks
    10.) slowdown 2 ways: adblocks & hardcodes

    11.) Multiplatform
    12.) Ez data edit
    13.) Efficiency (cpu/ram/I-O)

    14.) UBlock no DNS bennys = poor imitation = "sincerest form of flattery"
    15.) NoScript tag parses. Hosts block adservers before it cheaper

    APK

    P.S.=> Addons = AB+ 151mb http://cdn.ghacks.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/adblocker-memory-consumption.jpg/

    UBlock 64MB http://cdn.ghacks.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/adblocker-memory-consumption.jpg/

    (hosts ~6mb)

    ClarityRay defeatable

    Don't work http://www.businessinsider.com/google-microsoft-amazon-taboola-pay-adblock-plus-to-stop-blocking-their-ads-2015-2/

    SLOWER: http://superuser.com/questions/686041/which-leads-to-faster-browsing-an-ad-blocker-or-an-edited-hosts-file/

  113. Multiple tabs... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Scripting events.

    Open a bunch of plain (no script) HTML documents in tabs (without no-cache directives).

    As long as your system doesn't resort to swapping out memory you should get nearly instant results switching between any number of tabs as this should not cause the document's state to expire.

  114. Wow... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ... and I thought it might have to do with my old system... which ofcourse I know can do web browsing just fine in the older days...

    I never thought I would see a topic like this on slashdot ! It's totally awesome !

    And yes I totally agree with topic poster...

    Webbrowsers have become slow... especially firefox has become insanely slow when trying to switch between tabs... and it's annoying as hell.

    Probably bad coding, idiots at the coding wheel or websites have become larger... or lots of spying going on...

  115. Addons = inferior & inefficient vs. hosts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What hosts do addons can't (or as well):

    PROTECT vs.:

    1.) bad sites (past ads)
    2.) fastflux C&C
    3.) dynDNS C&C
    4.) DGA C&C
    5.) DNS down
    6.) poisoned dns
    7.) trackers (dnsrequestlogs/ads/transparent ISP proxy)
    8.) spam/phish payload
    9.) dns blocks
    10.) slowdown 2 ways: adblocks & hardcodes

    11.) Multiplatform
    12.) Ez data edit
    13.) Efficiency (cpu/ram/I-O)

    14.) UBlock no DNS bennys = poor imitation = "sincerest form of flattery"
    15.) NoScript tag parses. Hosts block adservers before it cheaper

    APK

    P.S.=> Addons = AB+ 151mb http://cdn.ghacks.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/adblocker-memory-consumption.jpg/

    UBlock 64MB http://cdn.ghacks.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/adblocker-memory-consumption.jpg/

    (hosts ~6mb)

    ClarityRay defeatable

    Don't work http://www.businessinsider.com/google-microsoft-amazon-taboola-pay-adblock-plus-to-stop-blocking-their-ads-2015-2/

    SLOWER: http://superuser.com/questions/686041/which-leads-to-faster-browsing-an-ad-blocker-or-an-edited-hosts-file/

  116. Addons = inferior & inefficient vs. hosts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What hosts do addons can't (or as well):

    PROTECT vs.:

    1.) bad sites (past ads)
    2.) fastflux C&C
    3.) dynDNS C&C
    4.) DGA C&C
    5.) DNS down
    6.) poisoned dns
    7.) trackers (dnsrequestlogs/ads/transparent ISP proxy)
    8.) spam/phish payload
    9.) dns blocks
    10.) slowdown 2 ways: adblocks & hardcodes

    11.) Multiplatform
    12.) Ez data edit
    13.) Efficiency (cpu/ram/I-O)

    14.) UBlock no DNS bennys = poor imitation = "sincerest form of flattery"
    15.) NoScript tag parses. Hosts block adservers before it cheaper

    APK

    P.S.=> Addons = AB+ 151mb http://cdn.ghacks.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/adblocker-memory-consumption.jpg/

    UBlock 64MB http://cdn.ghacks.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/adblocker-memory-consumption.jpg/

    (hosts ~6mb)

    ClarityRay defeatable

    Don't work http://www.businessinsider.com/google-microsoft-amazon-taboola-pay-adblock-plus-to-stop-blocking-their-ads-2015-2/

    SLOWER: http://superuser.com/questions/686041/which-leads-to-faster-browsing-an-ad-blocker-or-an-edited-hosts-file/

  117. Simple: They aren't by allo · · Score: 1

    Uninstall all addons but a adblocker and a scriptblocker and browsers are blazing fast, because renderengines were optimized in the last few years to get every bit out of them.

  118. Addons = inferior & inefficient vs. hosts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What hosts do addons can't (or as well):

    PROTECT vs.:

    1.) bad sites (past ads)
    2.) fastflux C&C
    3.) dynDNS C&C
    4.) DGA C&C
    5.) DNS down
    6.) poisoned dns
    7.) trackers (dnsrequestlogs/ads/transparent ISP proxy)
    8.) spam/phish payload
    9.) dns blocks
    10.) slowdown 2 ways: adblocks & hardcodes

    11.) Multiplatform
    12.) Ez data edit
    13.) Efficiency (cpu/ram/I-O)

    14.) UBlock no DNS bennys = poor imitation = "sincerest form of flattery"
    15.) NoScript tag parses. Hosts block adservers before it cheaper

    APK

    P.S.=> AB+ 151mb http://cdn.ghacks.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/adblocker-memory-consumption.jpg/

    UBlock 64MB http://cdn.ghacks.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/adblocker-memory-consumption.jpg/

    (hosts ~6mb)

    ClarityRay defeatable

    Don't work http://www.businessinsider.com/google-microsoft-amazon-taboola-pay-adblock-plus-to-stop-blocking-their-ads-2015-2/

    SLOWER: http://superuser.com/questions/686041/which-leads-to-faster-browsing-an-ad-blocker-or-an-edited-hosts-file/

  119. Addons = inferior & inefficient vs. hosts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What hosts do addons can't (or as well):

    PROTECT vs.:

    1.) bad sites (past ads)
    2.) fastflux C&C
    3.) dynDNS C&C
    4.) DGA C&C
    5.) DNS down
    6.) poisoned dns
    7.) trackers (dnsrequestlogs/ads/transparent ISP proxy)
    8.) spam/phish payload
    9.) dns blocks
    10.) slowdown 2 ways: adblocks & hardcodes

    11.) Multiplatform
    12.) Ez data edit
    13.) Efficiency (cpu/ram/I-O)

    14.) UBlock no DNS bennys = poor imitation = "sincerest form of flattery"
    15.) NoScript tag parses. Hosts block adservers before it cheaper

    APK

    P.S.=> AB+ 151mb http://cdn.ghacks.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/adblocker-memory-consumption.jpg/

    UBlock 64MB http://cdn.ghacks.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/adblocker-memory-consumption.jpg/

    (hosts ~6mb)

    ClarityRay defeatable

    Don't work http://www.businessinsider.com/google-microsoft-amazon-taboola-pay-adblock-plus-to-stop-blocking-their-ads-2015-2/

    SLOWER: http://superuser.com/questions/686041/which-leads-to-faster-browsing-an-ad-blocker-or-an-edited-hosts-file/

  120. Too many 3rd party scripts being called. by Kernel+Kurtz · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Even with no-script (or especially with it as may be the case), I try to load a page. It partially works, but needs some scripts to work properly. I tell no-script to allow all this page, but then when it reloads it wants even more scripts from more places. Tell no-script OK again, and then when it reloads, it still wants more, or some of them change.

    Sometimes takes 3 or 4 tries allowing and reloading just to get pages to render by the time I've approved the 50 other sites they want to load content from.

    Generally speaking, I try to avoid websites that go overboard this way, but it is sadly getting to be way too common. Sometimes the no-script list is so long I have to scroll through it.........

    1. Re:Too many 3rd party scripts being called. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Try uMatrix instead, it gives you more control on what to load.

  121. Best hosts file creator by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-4 32/64-bit https://www.google.com/search?...

    Ads rob speed, security (malvertising) & privacy (tracking).

    Hosts add speed (hardcodes/adblocks), security (bad sites/poisoned dns), reliability (dns down), & anonymity (dns requestlogs/trackers) natively.

    Works vs. caps & PUSH ads.

    Avg. page = big as Doom http://www.theregister.co.uk/2... & ads = 40% of it.

    Hosts != ClarityRay blockable (vs. souled-out to admen inferior wasteful redundant slow usermode addons)

    Less power/cpu/ram + IO use vs. DNS/routers/addons/antivirus (slows you) + less security issues/complexity.

    Compliments firewalls (blocking less used IP addys vs. hosts blocking more used domains) & DNS (lightens dns load).

    Gets data via 10 security sites.

    APK

    P.S. - Safe https://www.virustotal.com/en/... (Verified by Malwarebytes' S. Burn "seen the code & it's safe" http://forum.hosts-file.net/vi... )

    1. Re:Best hosts file creator by EETech1 · · Score: 1

      Linux version?
      Does not work under wine.

  122. Addons = inferior & inefficient vs. hosts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What hosts do addons can't (or as well):

    PROTECT vs.:

    1.) bad sites (past ads)
    2.) fastflux C&C
    3.) dynDNS C&C
    4.) DGA C&C
    5.) DNS down
    6.) poisoned dns
    7.) trackers (dnsrequestlogs/ads/transparent ISP proxy)
    8.) spam/phish payload
    9.) dns blocks
    10.) slowdown 2 ways: adblocks & hardcodes

    11.) Multiplatform
    12.) Ez data edit
    13.) Efficiency (cpu/ram/I-O)

    14.) UBlock no DNS bennys = poor imitation = "sincerest form of flattery"
    15.) NoScript tag parses. Hosts block adservers before it cheaper

    APK

    P.S.=> AB+ 151mb http://cdn.ghacks.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/adblocker-memory-consumption.jpg/

    UBlock 64MB http://cdn.ghacks.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/adblocker-memory-consumption.jpg/

    (hosts ~6mb)

    ClarityRay defeatable

    Don't work http://www.businessinsider.com/google-microsoft-amazon-taboola-pay-adblock-plus-to-stop-blocking-their-ads-2015-2/

    SLOWER: http://superuser.com/questions/686041/which-leads-to-faster-browsing-an-ad-blocker-or-an-edited-hosts-file/

  123. Not seeing it. by Tjp($)pjT · · Score: 1

    I have a 2012 Macbook Pro 2.7GHz quad core with a nearly full SSD and 16GB RAM. I have several apps open nearly all the time, about 10-15, including Xcode and some Adobe apps, Fireworks and Photoshop among them, Preview and TextWrangler and a few more depending on what I'm doing, several messaging apps sit open as well, email and of course my browser. Safari with two windows open, one for work tasks with 3-4 tabs and one for news with 12 tabs. Opening a new blank window or a new blank tab happens fast enough not to bother measuring. Opening the Drudge Report is under a half second. Refreshing it is about the same. Opening Apple.com with it large format graphics is equally quick. Opening Kickstarter is a bit over one second. And I am doing this on a 27 inch thunderbolt display with the browser covering all but two columns of desktop icons to the right and the dock at the bottom. I interrupted posting and shutdown safari, then reopened it. I was fully loaded, both windows and all the tabs on the front window (couldn't see the tabs on the occluded window) in under 2 seconds.

    I have flash disabled. I have ad blocker plus installed (/. is whitelisted because they haven't served me a virus payload or porn or claimed my windows pc was infected) and I have Java applets disabled (but not javascript because that broke way to many sites that should know better and get on the CSS and HTML5 bandwagon) I disallow third party cookies, I used to background load tabs, that isn't a selectable option anymore, but sometimes Apple prefs lose UI but not there presence. I also have another ad-blocker enabled KA-Blocker.

    So the poster problem may be resulting from a slow internet connection or lots of background activity with Safari playing nice citizen ... I can't offer much else without more details. But I don't have such issues. Oh, Frontier FIOS at 100/100 residential ... I have a busy active system that runs 24/7 and don't see the problems he sees.

    --
    - Tjp

    I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!

  124. Maybe crappy programming??? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Among all the other reasons stated, I do note that currently, Firefox is running 67 separate threads. Good thing i only have on tab open.
    I see this with Java programmers all the time - there is no new feature that cannot be implemented by spawning another thread.

    I have no idea what those 76 threads are doing that someone deemed so important that they have to run concurrently, but you have to understand that thunderbird is running on 59 threads!!!! A freak'n mail program..!!!

    Sorry, lame programmers making lame code.

    Dirk

  125. Best hosts file creator by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-4 32/64-bit https://www.google.com/search?...

    Ads rob speed, security (malvertising) & privacy (tracking).

    Hosts add speed (hardcodes/adblocks), security (bad sites/poisoned dns), reliability (dns down), & anonymity (dns requestlogs/trackers) natively.

    Works vs. caps & PUSH ads.

    Avg. page = big as Doom http://www.theregister.co.uk/2... & ads = 40% of it.

    Hosts != ClarityRay blockable (vs. souled-out to admen inferior wasteful redundant slow usermode addons)

    Less power/cpu/ram + IO use vs. DNS/routers/addons/antivirus (slows you) + less security issues/complexity.

    Compliments firewalls (blocking less used IP addys vs. hosts blocking more used domains) & DNS (lightens dns load).

    Gets data via 10 security sites.

    APK

    P.S. - Safe https://www.virustotal.com/en/... (Verified by Malwarebytes' S. Burn "seen the code & it's safe" http://forum.hosts-file.net/vi... )

  126. short release cycle killed the browser by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It was the accelerated release schedule that killed off firefox as my daily browser. unstable release after unstable release after unstable release. nothing is ever fixed, and when something is fixed it breaks everything else. the browsers are so buggy that linux requires a restart after an aw snap or a crashed tab in firefox.
    MAKE ME REBOOT LINUX!?!?!?
    the pkill command has helped with the reboot but the buggy unstable nature of the just released browser is self evident.
    Like a brown and serve dinner roll, they aren't quite cooked yet.
    I think sometimes that there is a secret bet between Mozilla and Google as to who can achieve version 100 fastest.
    Comodo IceDragon for windows and Pale Moon for linux.

  127. Pages are full of junk by MoarSauce123 · · Score: 1

    The pages these days are full with junk from a gazillion sources. Even this page pulls content from EIGHTEEN different sites, about half are just trackers and ad services. The insane overhead that HTTP brings with it gets grown massively by having to make all these connections to all the sites. It gets even worse, when scripts pull from various sources as blocking calls. If this this page came from one site it would be much faster. As far as tab content goes, I don't have any issues using Pale Moon. What bites is when having pinned tabs or default pages in place. Upon browser start those are loaded up into memory and depending on how the site set the expiration on content new files are pulled rather than using files from local cache. Comparing with opening an image from disk is not apples to apples. The image is already in a displayable format while HTML/CSS/JS first have to be interpreted and then rendered. There is a heck of a lot more to do there.

  128. Code? Or 'how' the code is executed?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You all are focusing on code, HTML design, etc... Modern day browsers are running your 'tabs' in a VM:

    GreenBorder was a security software company that specialized in using virtualization to create safe zones for online activities for Internet users. GreenBorder let computer operators combine hardware and software to create "virtual" machines where tasks such as reading e-mail or exploring websites could be done without exposing systems to viruses or other malicious programs. Web-based programs that try to access files or computer registries are stopped from leaving what are commonly referred to as online "sandboxes" created by GreenBorder. The virtual "sandboxes" vanish at the end of each session, taking attacker assaults such as spyware, viruses, and trojans with them.

    GreenBorder was acquired by Google and integrated into their Chrome teams in 2007.

  129. Best hosts file creator by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-4 32/64-bit https://www.google.com/search?...

    Ads rob speed, security (malvertising) & privacy (tracking).

    Hosts add speed (hardcodes/adblocks), security (bad sites/poisoned dns), reliability (dns down), & anonymity (dns requestlogs/trackers) natively.

    Works vs. caps & PUSH ads.

    Avg. page = big as Doom http://www.theregister.co.uk/2... & ads = 40% of it.

    Hosts != ClarityRay blockable (vs. souled-out to admen inferior wasteful redundant slow usermode addons)

    Less power/cpu/ram + IO use vs. DNS/routers/addons/antivirus (slows you) + less security issues/complexity.

    Compliments firewalls (blocking less used IP addys vs. hosts blocking more used domains) & DNS (lightens dns load).

    Gets data via 10 security sites.

    APK

    P.S. - Safe https://www.virustotal.com/en/... (Verified by Malwarebytes' S. Burn "seen the code & it's safe" http://forum.hosts-file.net/vi... )

  130. Best hosts file creator by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-4 32/64-bit https://www.google.com/search?...

    Ads rob speed, security (malvertising) & privacy (tracking).

    Hosts add speed (hardcodes/adblocks), security (bad sites/poisoned dns), reliability (dns down), & anonymity (dns requestlogs/trackers) natively.

    Works vs. caps & PUSH ads.

    Avg. page = big as Doom http://www.theregister.co.uk/2... & ads = 40% of it.

    Hosts != ClarityRay blockable (vs. souled-out to admen inferior wasteful redundant slow usermode addons)

    Less power/cpu/ram + IO use vs. DNS/routers/addons/antivirus (slows you) + less security issues/complexity.

    Compliments firewalls (blocking less used IP addys vs. hosts blocking more used domains) & DNS (lightens dns load).

    Gets data via 10 security sites.

    APK

    P.S. - Safe https://www.virustotal.com/en/... (Verified by Malwarebytes' S. Burn "seen the code & it's safe" http://forum.hosts-file.net/vi... )

  131. Javascript and SVG by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Javascript and pointless SVG drawings to indicate "please wait ... your browser is slow because it is using SVG to tell you it is slow".

  132. Are you sure? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yes, they have a plugin which promises "Ghostery is a great app. It doesn't slow you down, but it stops trackers dead in their tracks!" (Chrome link not on web site but here https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ghostery ) but also advertises to companies: GHOSTERY: "OPTIMIZE YOUR CUSTOMERS’ DIGITAL EXPERIENCE Find out what’s really happening to your customers — and to their data. Ghostery MCM helps you speed up, clean up, and lock down your site and apps so you can focus on driving growth for your business. REQUEST A DEMO. GHOSTERY TRACKERMAP Trust Trackermap to deliver site intelligence you can depend on

  133. Simple. by JustNiz · · Score: 1

    Because this is what happens when everyone repeatedly proritizes offloading more and more shit onto the CPU (e.g. languages that get parsed at runtime and requiring stuff like garbage collectors, inherently wasteful/inefficient protocols like XML, integrating massive toolsets and APIs rather than writing efficient code) all in the name of developer convenience, and to allow them to continue to get away with sloppy programming practices instead of being rigorous and addressing the root cause of the problem. i.e. themselves.

    Given that, what do you expect will happen?

  134. HTML Programmers are stupid by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Still paying for the "Learn how to program HTML" generation of "programmers" to learn enough to make js not suck. It's gonna be a looooonnnnnnggggggggg wait.

  135. Best hosts file creator by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-4 32/64-bit https://www.google.com/search?...

    Ads rob speed, security (malvertising) & privacy (tracking).

    Hosts add speed (hardcodes/adblocks), security (bad sites/poisoned dns), reliability (dns down), & anonymity (dns requestlogs/trackers) natively.

    Works vs. caps & PUSH ads.

    Avg. page = big as Doom http://www.theregister.co.uk/2... & ads = 40% of it.

    Hosts != ClarityRay blockable (vs. souled-out to admen inferior wasteful redundant slow usermode addons)

    Less power/cpu/ram + IO use vs. DNS/routers/addons/antivirus (slows you) + less security issues/complexity.

    Compliments firewalls (blocking less used IP addys vs. hosts blocking more used domains) & DNS (lightens dns load).

    Gets data via 10 security sites.

    APK

    P.S. - Safe https://www.virustotal.com/en/... (Verified by Malwarebytes' S. Burn "seen the code & it's safe" http://forum.hosts-file.net/vi... )

  136. GHOSTERY: Read the fine print!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Ghostery requires permission to read ALL OF THE WEB SITES YOU VISIT, and once you have installed it says: "Ghostery is free because some of our users anonymously and voluntarily opt-in to share data with us about the sites and trackers the extension encounters. If you choose to share tracker data with us, this is how it would work: As you visit a site, Ghostery identifies and collects data regarding the site and its trackers. Ghostery uses this data to improve our products to create a cleaner, faster, and safer web." (default is Yes), and then it tries to get you to create an account. Nope. Fuck this.

    Use EFF Privacy Badger instead. I trust the EFF. I don't trust the polo shirted dweeb on the Ghostery web site. http://www.computerworld.com/article/2490249/desktop-apps/eff-releases-chrome--firefox-plugin-to-block-third-party-tracking.html

    Also Disconnect: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/disconnect

  137. Best hosts file creator by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-4 32/64-bit https://www.google.com/search?...

    Ads rob speed, security (malvertising) & privacy (tracking).

    Hosts add speed (hardcodes/adblocks), security (bad sites/poisoned dns), reliability (dns down), & anonymity (dns requestlogs/trackers) natively.

    Works vs. caps & PUSH ads.

    Avg. page = big as Doom http://www.theregister.co.uk/2... & ads = 40% of it.

    Hosts != ClarityRay blockable (vs. souled-out to admen inferior wasteful redundant slow usermode addons)

    Less power/cpu/ram + IO use vs. DNS/routers/addons/antivirus (slows you) + less security issues/complexity.

    Compliments firewalls (blocking less used IP addys vs. hosts blocking more used domains) & DNS (lightens dns load).

    Gets data via 10 security sites.

    APK

    P.S. - Safe https://www.virustotal.com/en/... (Verified by Malwarebytes' S. Burn "seen the code & it's safe" http://forum.hosts-file.net/vi... )

  138. Best hosts file creator by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-4 32/64-bit https://www.google.com/search?...

    Ads rob speed, security (malvertising) & privacy (tracking).

    Hosts add speed (hardcodes/adblocks), security (bad sites/poisoned dns), reliability (dns down), & anonymity (dns requestlogs/trackers) natively.

    Works vs. caps & PUSH ads.

    Avg. page = big as Doom http://www.theregister.co.uk/2... & ads = 40% of it.

    Hosts != ClarityRay blockable (vs. souled-out to admen inferior wasteful redundant slow usermode addons)

    Less power/cpu/ram + IO use vs. DNS/routers/addons/antivirus (slows you) + less security issues/complexity.

    Compliments firewalls (blocking less used IP addys vs. hosts blocking more used domains) & DNS (lightens dns load).

    Gets data via 10 security sites.

    APK

    P.S. - Safe https://www.virustotal.com/en/... (Verified by Malwarebytes' S. Burn "seen the code & it's safe" http://forum.hosts-file.net/vi... )

  139. Faster to block an ad than loading and rendering by iliketrash · · Score: 1

    Surely it is faster to block an ad than it is to load it and render it.

  140. Best hosts file creator by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-4 32/64-bit https://www.google.com/search?...

    Ads rob speed, security (malvertising) & privacy (tracking).

    Hosts add speed (hardcodes/adblocks), security (bad sites/poisoned dns), reliability (dns down), & anonymity (dns requestlogs/trackers) natively.

    Works vs. caps & PUSH ads.

    Avg. page = big as Doom http://www.theregister.co.uk/2... & ads = 40% of it.

    Hosts != ClarityRay blockable (vs. souled-out to admen inferior wasteful redundant slow usermode addons)

    Less power/cpu/ram + IO use vs. DNS/routers/addons/antivirus (slows you) + less security issues/complexity.

    Compliments firewalls (blocking less used IP addys vs. hosts blocking more used domains) & DNS (lightens dns load).

    Gets data via 10 security sites.

    APK

    P.S. - Safe https://www.virustotal.com/en/... (Verified by Malwarebytes' S. Burn "seen the code & it's safe" http://forum.hosts-file.net/vi... )

  141. Best hosts file creator by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-4 32/64-bit https://www.google.com/search?...

    Ads rob speed, security (malvertising) & privacy (tracking).

    Hosts add speed (hardcodes/adblocks), security (bad sites/poisoned dns), reliability (dns down), & anonymity (dns requestlogs/trackers) natively.

    Works vs. caps & PUSH ads.

    Avg. page = big as Doom http://www.theregister.co.uk/2... & ads = 40% of it.

    Hosts != ClarityRay blockable (vs. souled-out to admen inferior wasteful redundant slow usermode addons)

    Less power/cpu/ram + IO use vs. DNS/routers/addons/antivirus (slows you) + less security issues/complexity.

    Compliments firewalls (blocking less used IP addys vs. hosts blocking more used domains) & DNS (lightens dns load).

    Gets data via 10 security sites.

    APK

    P.S. - Safe https://www.virustotal.com/en/... (Verified by Malwarebytes' S. Burn "seen the code & it's safe" http://forum.hosts-file.net/vi... )

  142. Firefox certainly is now by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The same pages loaded in older Firefox are FAR faster than in the last few releases. There's simply no question.

    Several observations:

    1. Firefox no longer honors the "stop loading" button. You can click on it and see it animate (so the GUI certainly sees the click) but then you can watch as it goes right on loading ad content, sometimes for MINUTES. This is a stupid programmer error - if the STOP button is clicked then ALL activity associated with that browser tab should be halted IMMEDIATELY.

    2.Firefox seems to be pre-caching massive amounts of ad crap. I just upgraded a machine to a clean install of Fedora and Firefox and after opening about 6 or seven tabs (NOT porn sites, just some common news and info sites) the "Web Content" task will commonly be consuming 90% of resources and after an hour of browsing it will be caching GIGABYTES of data... there's something SERIOUSLY screwed up there. That machine sometimes takes over 5 minutes to shut down as the hard drive hammers away. That machine is fine if you do not run the browser, and if re-formatted and re-installed (verifying no infections, etc) the behavior repeats.

    3. Firefox seems to load/run/play nearly everything associated with any tab, even though the tab is not the current tab. If you have a handful of tabs open and there are ads on each page (like MOST pages these days) those tabs all seem to be loading and playing content and running javascript code etc even though they are in the background. Perhaps each tab should have a "pause" button to make user intentions clear to the browser? I presume SOME people want things like audio playing in the background from one tab while browsing in another tab, but often one opens multiple tabs to line-up multiple related articles to read from links on a dynamically changing page and you do not need the new tabs to do ANYTHING before you switch to them.

    There's normally no excuse for the browser to animate any GIF or run any script on a background tab.

    Note: I'm not even using plugins.

    Here's a simple thought: Add a "blacklist" to the browser that the user can fill in. If a URL is in the blacklist, then any script code attempting to access something at the blacklisted URL will be told by the browser that a 404 error happened. If a user sees that a particular adserver is stalling his browser all the time, he just would add that URL to his personal blacklist, and SHAZAM! problem solved. For added fun, one could even add the option to blacklist and kill any script that tried accessing a URL that was blacklisted

  143. Finally by Vlijmen+Fileer · · Score: 1

    This question has been in my head for ages.
    Browsers are shamelessly slow in action that indeed, should not take more than milliseconds at best. And that is even with clean installs.
    No idea what amateurs program that stuff, but they have a distorted focus. A focus that directly leads to a deeply userunfriendly experience.

  144. How many addons does it take to = hosts? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    See subject: No single addon does as much as hosts & for less. You know this K.S. Kyosuke! You ran from validly technically disproving things hosts do vs. addons http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=7798507&cid=50264417/ before!

    (As there is no way to validly technically disprove what I put out in my lists of hosts vs. addons!)

    * QUESTION: How many addons does it take to do ALL of what hosts does (that addons don't OR that hosts do the job better)?

    ANSWER = TONS (& you burn memory, cpu + other forms of I/O like messagepassing overheads to run those SLOWER USERMODE addons - ESPECIALLY if you 'stack' them & FIREFOX, of all examples you could use, HAS ISSUES THERE MORE THAN ANY OTHER BROWSER when using multiple addons (vs. hosts in higher cpu serviced faster kernelmode)).

    APK

    P.S.=> Clue: You CAN'T WIN here - & you know it... apk

    1. Re:How many addons does it take to = hosts? by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      "No single addon does" and "addons can't" are two different statements. Also, you're now officially an OCD freak with a pitiful life not to be envied. Most people decide to do something useful with your life and you spend your life taking diligent notes on who said what on /.? You poor, wretched child...

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
  145. Retrieving one document from each site by tepples · · Score: 1

    Cache hits for subsequent HTML documents retrieved from one site are fine if the user actually views multiple documents on the same site. But someone who reaches a site through a search engine, such as DuckDuckGo or Google, or through a news aggregator, such as SoylentNews or Slashdot, is likely to connect, retrieve one document, and continue to a different document on a different site. A cache per site doesn't help with this use case; a cache shared among several sites does.

  146. "Poor imitiation = sincerest form of flattery" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    See subject: Your addons = that vs. my work & can they build a hosts file for you? My program does. They also have usermode slowness/messagepass overhead & can't protect the browser from a BAD addon trying to redirect you (hosts can).

    Do addons run in DOS (or FreeBSD)? If hosts is in their IP stack (std. BSD derived ones), hosts always work (not the case w/ addons).

    * Might as well kill your other post too: DNS is LOADED with security & efficiency issues (enumerated here in 18 categories by the 100's) + weighs more if locally installed & is slower vs. hosts resolving if a REMOTE dns is called on!

    APK

    P.S.=> Ash-Fox, guess what? LOL - you FAIL again, as usual, vs. "yours truly", as always... apk

    1. Re:"Poor imitiation = sincerest form of flattery" by Ash-Fox · · Score: 1

      Your addons = that vs. my work & can they build a hosts file for you?

      The addons mentioned modify the hosts file... Yes, an addon is capable of building a hosts file.

      They also have usermode slowness/messagepass overhead & can't protect the browser from a BAD addon trying to redirect you (hosts can).

      Again, addons can modify the hosts file too, making this point irrelevant if you want to talk about addons being able to touch hosts files.

      Do addons run in DOS (or FreeBSD)?

      Yes.

      * Might as well kill your other post too: DNS is LOADED with security & efficiency issues

      And yet, I have identified numerous areas where hosts files are in comparison, highly inefficient and wasteful.

      Agent Smith (Kowalski), there is no way around it, you have lost. No amount of dossiers will save you now.

      --
      Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
  147. It's not just browsers by fustakrakich · · Score: 1

    It's the whole damn computer. The thing should be ready to run when you turn it on, like a light bulb, not like an old TV waiting to warm up the tubes. Having to read software in and out of RAM is the dumbest thing there is. It should already be there, in ROM, waiting for power.

    --
    “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
  148. Ads and trackers by Bender+Unit+22 · · Score: 1

    try running a ad blocker and not having ads or 3rd party trackers. it doubles the page load speed.

  149. better than standard by epine · · Score: 1

    Deep dive research with 100+ open tabs is not a standard use case for web browsing, it's just not.

    I simply don't see why my expansive life needs to be filtered through your tiny mind. In my household, we bought the smallest pickup truck we could find, and then equipped my office desk with all the monitors that would fit (one landscape, two portrait). Priorities.

    Someone down the street has an F450 with duallies, and probably a single HD monitor. Wouldn't you just love to knock on his door and tell him his beloved truck is not a standard use case. Go ahead, I dare you.

    I'm running a file system on my desktop where I could easily expand the pool (modulo slightly better hardware) to a petabyte and beyond. Meanwhile, a GeForce GP106-300 packs a bandwidth of 192 GB/s at an MSRP of $199 because someone out there thinks this is definitely a standard use case. Sweet. Maybe the same guy out there who sniffs over his friend's video card with a mere 100 GT/s fill rate, gets on the internet later that day and starts writing "who the heck needs a hundred web tabs?"

    Pretty rich.

    I completely fail to see how 100 open tabs is anything special. Maybe I'm wrong. Let's see where else we can drawn a consensus line. Well, who the heck needs a clip with more than nine bullets? Or a woodshop with more than four electrical outlets. Or a kitchen with two ovens? Or more than four hobs? Or a house with bookshelves in more than one room? Or three bathrooms? Or a garage with more than three bicycles? Or more than two pairs of skates? Or four dogs?

    The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

    Worst of all, if the computer is limiting the human because we assume puny human. That wasn't the original deal and I will never accept it. Turns out some use cases are not standard, because they are better than standard. Because every human of note better than "standard" at some thing.

    1. Re:better than standard by bfpierce · · Score: 1

      When you have a budget and a timeline, you go for the use cases you can hit within the budget and timeline.

      For everything else there's some dude/gal out there in the open source community filling the void. Not any different than the specialized stuff you mentioned really, other than the fact that you get charged out your ass for it. Your browser is free last I checked.

  150. Because of javascript by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Every single website abuse the use if JavaScript. Turn it off and your loading times will be orders of magnitude faster. The catch? A rubbish experi nce due to the overuse of JS

  151. Can't overcome my points AGAIN? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    See subject: I didn't say that - partial quotes = weak. I said addons can't do (or as well) 1st of all. 2nd'ly you can't overcome the fact addons have TREMENDOUS disadvantage (especially in FF which was a poor choice for you to use) in that when you STACK ADDONS, browser performance goes DOWN (way, Way, WAY DOWN - due to messagepassing overheads & I/O associated w/ it even MORE than the cpu use or memory use inefficiencies they have vs. hosts).

    "Temper TEMPER now there K.S. Kyosuke" (spazzing out on YOUR part doesn't prove me wrong, lol!).

    (I merely stated facts you can't overcome here https://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=10024927&cid=53534393/ & you 'spazzed out' using ILLOGICAL ad hominem attacks on me (when you fail to attack my message's points you try & fail attacking me)).

    APK

    P.S.=> I'd say I was sorry for doing this to you (again, lol) but YOU BRING IT ON YOURSELF & did it to yourself... apk

    1. Re:Can't overcome my points AGAIN? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I didn't say that

      but

      What hosts do addons can't

      and

      No single addon does

      Sure you did. Yes, you have "(or as well)" in brackets, but that use of 'or' indicates two statements, reinforced by the odd use of brackets.. It's perfectly acceptable to isolate the first part, especially as it was this concept the K. S. Kyosuke went on to address. You read replies not to understand, but to argue and I think that it is telling that you mistake their pity for temper. You are so quick to rush in and win that you don't actually read (or are unable to comprehend) what people are saying, to the point where you misquote, misunderstand or demonstrate that you have, at best, skimmed what has been written.

      And did you really keep a copy/link of a comment that someone made over a year ago?

      Seriously. Look around. Does _anyone_ else act in this manner? Are you capable of recognising that your behaviour is an aberration, with respect to this forum?

      YT

  152. no js, no disk cache, no video, no audio, no anime by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I used to use Opera with javascript turned off, animated gifs turned off, videos and sounds turned off, no plugins, no disk cache and a list of blacklisted domains I copied from some ad blocker on FreeBSD until 4 years ago. I used Firefox for everything else.

    Opera was blazing fast when used in this way!

    I have the habbit of opening a lot of new tabs and my Opera started with 100+ tabs each time, though everyting was fast and it did not matter if I opened another one. I cannot say the same for the Firefox versions that I have been using all my life. They seen to struggle with more than 10 tabs, if you have video in them it might be terrible with a single one. However I have never used Firefox with similar settings as Opera.

    As for the people who mentioned javascript libraries... there was no SSL some years ago and ISPs used to cache static content on their transparent PROXY servers. I doubt anyone uses these nowadays. Some non-transparent ones are called content delivery networks today.

  153. Like asking why a 3Ghz i5 is slow... by John+Allsup · · Score: 1

    It is not the i5 that is slow, it is the amount of work it is being asked to do. If you took a webpage, stripped out all javascript and media (besides small-medium images), it would load instantaneously. If you used only basic javascript, again it would be instantaneous. If, however, every tab as to manage the mass of css, javascript and DOM modifications that modern pages like to do, then suddenly you browser has a helluva lot of work to do. Too many developers just stack 10+ frameworks on top of each other to get their desired appearance, and then care little that the result is unusably slow. Some pages include various libraries supplied by advertisers in order to serve ads. Stuff like that.

    If a webpage contained only the kind of stuff they did in the early 90s, before animated gifs and table layout started happening, they would be pretty much instantaneous on any modern browser. But instead each page is like a mini-OS having to boot up.

    --
    John_Chalisque
  154. Faster site = better SEO by tepples · · Score: 1

    If you want to serve your own copy of a script, I have absolutely no problem with it. But search engines might, as they rank slowly loading documents lower, and they weigh commonly cached scripts served from CDNs as less of a contributor to slowness.

    1. Re:Faster site = better SEO by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 1

      But search engines might, as they rank slowly loading documents lower

      This might surprise you, but unlike most site owners I don't give a shit about search engines or SEO. My clients don't come in through search engines.

      One or two of my sites might benefit from improved SEO, but only one or two. The rest of them I wouldn't spend 5 minutes optimizing for any improvement in search engine ranking or visibility or mojo or page speed or dick hardness or whatever the fuck the magic sauce is these days.

      --
      Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
  155. Does any 1 addon do all this? No by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Tell me, how do those addons UPDATE hosts WHEN YOU NEED ADMINISTRATOR PRIVELEGE TO DO SO?

    Answer that!

    (Plus there's still the fact an addon can't block another BAD addon but hosts sure can + HOSTS EVEN RUN IN DOS (with ip stack added) - addons don't).

    * See subject & https://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=10024927&cid=53533417/ & overheads addons have = inferiority (period) - when any 1 addon does all that & for less than hosts?

    THEN, you might have a valid point. Otherwise you still don't!

    APK

    P.S.=> Talk F'ing DUMB to allow THAT (CLUE: You'd HAVE TO RUN THE BROWSER AS ADMIN/ROOT & that is way, Way, WAY TOO RISKY & yes, stupid) - in my program, fine (it's not sending anything outward online, only intake of hosts data to build hosts) & my program's NOT RUNNING IN THE SAME PROCESS/MEMORY SPACE AS THE BROWSER as your "poor imitation = sincerest form of flattery" addons do (w/ overheads galore that are INESCAPABLE in usermode as addons)... apk

    1. Re:Does any 1 addon do all this? No by Ash-Fox · · Score: 1

      Does any 1 addon do all this?

      A single addon can do this, yes.

      Tell me, how do those addons UPDATE hosts WHEN YOU NEED ADMINISTRATOR PRIVELEGE TO DO SO?

      Generally they all end up calling write() in the end.

      Plus there's still the fact an addon can't block another BAD addon

      Sure it can, it can force the load order and override loading.

      You'd HAVE TO RUN THE BROWSER AS ADMIN/ROOT

      Have to -- KEK! You're not really that knowledgable on how to access hosts files, are you?

      Off the top of my head, I can think of many alternatives, such as you could change the permission on the file, you could use a helper, you could setup security context overrides for the modifying executable and the file, fusefs binds etc.

      You've lost, Agent Smith (Kowalski).

      --
      Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
  156. Debian Iceweasel became Firefox earlier this year by tepples · · Score: 1

    Debian shipped Iceweasel, a rebranded version of Firefox, starting in 2006. At the time, the Firefox logo was licensed under terms that conflicted with the Debian Free Software Guidelines, and Mozilla demanded prior approval of any patches that Debian applied, such as patches to support additional instruction sets. But in February 2016, Mozilla realized that the Debian project hadn't been doing anything that would tarnish the Firefox brand, and so Mozilla allowed Debian to use Firefox's branding.

  157. OCSP stapling by tepples · · Score: 1

    Adding certificate-revocation lookups compounds the problem and adds even more time.

    There is a bit of overhead in TLS, but OCSP lookups don't have to be much of it. Every 24 hours or so, an HTTPS server can ask the CA to sign a message stating that its certificate hasn't been revoked. Then the server can include this message signed by the CA in the TLS handshake. This is called TLS Certificate Status Request, or "stapling" for short.

  158. Website content by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I recently tested a modem with 1Mbit bandwidth to browse the net and found that loading something as simple as g-mail is painfully slow. This didn't used to be the case. Bloat on the content side is definitely a large part of the issue.

  159. Altering hosts perms = risky too (you lose) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    See subject: Do hosts manipulating addons run as Root/Admin? Browser has to then (too risky & STOO-PID) as addons run in the same process + memory space as the browser inheriting its rights (of the user).

    * IF they don't? They can't do all my program does INCLUDING SAVING HOSTS!

    They CANNOT SAVE HOSTS to WFP/SFP/DACL protected folders in the system!

    MORE QUESTIONS: Do those addons also filter off false positives + bloating hosts entries, sort & deduplicate hosts + do hardcoded favorite @ the top of hosts for both speed & protection? Most important question's above - you FAIL it! Why?

    Changing rights to hosts = STUPID - there's a reason it's protected (you can bushwhack hosts otherwise & my program adds to that protection of hosts (do those addons do that too?)

    APK

    P.S.=> You can't win - accept it... apk

    1. Re:Altering hosts perms = risky too (you lose) by Ash-Fox · · Score: 1

      They CANNOT SAVE HOSTS to WFP/SFP/DACL protected folders in the system!

      Looks like someone doesn't know how to change a security context, KEK!

      Changing rights to hosts

      So you acknowledge there is more than one way to do it, you have lost!

      You can't win

      It's too late Agent Smith (Kowalski), you have already lost. You admitted it!

      --
      Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
  160. Unusable web by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I stopped really surfing the web some years ago. I have a few sites that I still go to; but I am overtired of being slapped in the face with full-screen ads that cover the content I came for, autoplay material that intrudes into my home with audio I didn't ask for and most certainly do not want, "menus" that drop because my mouse came too near without a click to ask for them, useless pop-up garbage buried in the site content, constantly mutating malware risks, ads that track me, etc.

    I run my own little site, keep the ads down to a dull roar (they're ads for my own products, served from my server, and they sit quietly in the right hand column, making no sound, movement, or flashy-flashy, and they definitely don't track anyone.)

    Keeps me busy, anyway. Lots of good stuff going on in my life without having to randomly wander the now-mostly-intolerable web to get my jollies.

    For that matter, Slashdot's starting to suffer from some of these things, plus the new selection method for articles is, amazing as it may seem, even more pitiful than the old. I've been here for some years now... but I'm not wedded to the place.

  161. Hosts files do all that (in kernelmode) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    See subject: Hosts block ads, scripts & flash sources + trackers (disable cookies in browser does rest) via APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-4 32/64-bit https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&biw=&bih=&q=%22APK+Hosts+File+Engine%22+and+%22start64%22&btnG=Google+Search&gbv=1/

    * Does more than ANY single browser add for FAR less (even DNS uses more & worse if locally installed (security issues galore are in DNS https://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=9007355&threshold=-1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&pid=51969075/

    APK

    P.S.=> Start 'stacking up' addons (to try do all of what hosts does from 1 file only native to your OS/IP stack)? You SLOW DOWN THE WEBBROWSER. bigtime (hosts don't have that issue as they are in kernelmode that's more cpu serviced faster vs. usermode slower addons that increase messagepassing (the problem in stacking addons IS this), cpu & RAM use + other forms of I/O in a browser process)... apk

  162. Courage! by fyngyrz · · Score: 1

    No, it turns off your monitor. All that's left is to listen to the ads. That's courage, my friend.

    --
    I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
  163. Agreed & best hosts file creator bar-none by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    See subject & APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-4 32/64-bit https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&biw=&bih=&q=%22APK+Hosts+File+Engine%22+and+%22start64%22&btnG=Google+Search&gbv=1/ - it gets MVPS' data & 9 more reputable security community sites hosts data for the MOST COMPREHENSIVE PROTECTION (optionally choosing which sources you wish to use & you can change the defaults too in its APKIniFile.ini to other sources IF you like).

    It also gives you what hosts data sources don't after sorting & deduplicating them all into 1 perfect hosts file: Hardcoded favorite sites you spend MOST time @ online at TOP of hosts for fastest resolution & avoiding remote DNS slowness (or local DNS bloat) + SECURITY ISSUES dns has galore by avoiding it!

    APK

    P.S.=> FREE & SAFE https://www.virustotal.com/en/file/e01211ca36aa02e923f20adee0a3c4f5d5187dc65bdf1c997b3da3c2b0745425/analysis/1433430542/ ) ... apk

  164. What've you done better AmicusNYCL? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    See subject: Zero - price of your FAKE name online for your FAKE life, lol! I've also got commercially sold code to my credit for a certified MS partner (& published to decent acclaim MANY times here in reputable publications of many kinds - how about you?)

    Clue: I don't have to work for ANYONE anymore (my money literally works for me since 2007) IF I don't want to & occasionally consult or contract IF the job pays well + interests me (& you're still either unemployed OR a wageslave making peanuts & the best part is, you can't prove that wrong, lol).

    * LMAO - fool: You tried vainly & effetely to stop me posting & you can't even manage that either (neither can whipslash, lol).

    APK

    P.S.=> So answer the question in my subject AmicusNYCL - good luck proving a damn thing - & it's not your fake name online that prevents you from doing even a FRACTION of what I have in computing - it's your FAKE wannabe life in computing, lol... apk

    1. Re:What've you done better AmicusNYCL? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      my money literally works for me since 2007

      So, your parent/s died on 2007 and you invested your inheritance. That makes you a winner, how, exactly?

    2. Re:What've you done better AmicusNYCL? by amicusNYCL · · Score: 1

      So answer the question in my subject AmicusNYCL

      Why? I've answered that question every single time you've asked it, so why would it make a difference if I answered it yet again? You're still going to ignore it.

      & you're still either unemployed OR a wageslave making peanuts

      Yeah, you know so much about me, don't you? Keep making claims that you can't back up, because it really makes it seem like you know what you're talking about. I earn a 6 figure salary with benefits, I don't need to talk about being paid $100 for a forum post like it's some major achievement in my life. $100 won't even buy an hour of work from me.

      I've also got commercially sold code to my credit

      Oh wooooooow. What an achievement, APK. My software is going into nearly 100 departments in a state (every department), but man you've got "commercially sold code"? That's so much better than having every single employee of the state using my software. That's the latest news, stay tuned over the next several months to hear about other major contracts if you'd like to. They happen often, I don't have to go back to 2008 in order to find something to be proud of.

      Clue: I don't have to work for ANYONE anymore

      And you've decided to take all of this financial freedom and free time, and use it to spam Slashdot? That's as high as you aim? C'mon man, I'm sure you can find something better to do with your millions than professionally annoy people.

      --
      "Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
  165. Other way around creimer (you menial) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Creimer likes to tell lies & libel me saying I just got out of jail (I am not nor was I) https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=9952559&cid=53510169// so I told truth about him https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=9952559&cid=53510169/ that yes he's way, Way, WAY my junior in the art & science of computing + yes, a mere menial level grunt (nothing more) & why https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=9952559&cid=53510939/

    APK

    P.S.=> Price of your libelous lies is exposing you for them creimer, you puny menial (not that you care w/ your FAKE NAME ONLINE for your wannabe FAKE life)... apk

    1. Re:Other way around creimer (you menial) by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      Creimer likes to tell lies & libel me saying I just got out of jail (I am not nor was I)

      Not that anyone cares.

    2. Re:Other way around creimer (you menial) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You do creimer. It's obvious you don't want us seeing you lie about apk libeling him. You blow it off. I didn't. Don't speak for us all and I'm sure others will like knowing you're reprehensible.

    3. Re:Other way around creimer (you menial) by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      Don't speak for us all and I'm sure others will like knowing you're reprehensible.

      I'm reprehensible because I troll the trolls? Yes, I'm that evil.

  166. Hosts & I stop 8 botnets this week by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    See subject & Superior Hosts File efficacy vs. this threat & in action https://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=9982895&cid=53476327/ shutting you up easily + shutting down that botnet to users!

    * :)

    (In fact, hosts files use has shown me KNOCKING OUT 8 botnets in 1 week recently w/ hosts https://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=10020701&cid=53529963/ including the one you started your shit on w/ me as usual (which is all you have as you can't validly technically prove me wrong).

    APK

    P.S.=> That's HOW superior hosts files are - & me in comparison to scumbag trolls like creimer, AmicusNYCL + you UNIDENTIFIABLE little loser that you are, lol... apk

  167. Alt browsers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Has anyone thought about just using "links" or "lynx" browsers? That will solve most of these slow issues you may be facing....

  168. "YETI" time to blow you away again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    1st: ClarityRay stops ANY addon it wants (native browser methods dump ones you use) 2nd: Superuser.com find hosts = faster vs. addons that use more/do less 3rd: DynDNS botnets mean ones that USE it (& hosts stop them) 4th: 99.999% of ISP's != proof vs. kaminsky flaw redirect poisoning (why I use OpenDNS for the sub 4% times I use DNS) 5th: Trackers exist hosts stop (by avoiding DNS - transparent ISP proxies/dns requestlogs/ads) 6th: DGA trackers exist & I import the data in my hosts file 7th My hosts program doesn't TAKE BRIBES TO NOT WORK BY DEFAULT like "AlmostALLAdsBlocked" 8th: Hosts stall 8 botnets in 1 week https://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=10020701&cid=53529963 hosts do far more vs. UBlock (inferior imitation) for less & it imitated me (using hosts but NO DNS PROTECTION - Ublock's NO resolver - hosts are & ublock doesn't build hosts like my program)

    APK

    P.S.=> Keep EATING YOUR WORDS https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=9986237&cid=53480147/

    1. Re:"YETI" time to blow you away again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      1) Clarityray - example? All you are blocking is their vapourware. Failure to address point, just restating position. Boring.
      2) READ. THE. QUOTES. They say that hosts are faster. They also say that its more limited. Can't read. Fail.
      3) [incomprehensible]. English. Try it.
      4) 100% security involves turning your machine off. Everything else involves risk evaluation. So five 9s may not be 'proof' but it's good enough.

      Trackers exist

      My gods! Do they?

      5) DNS logging - and how do you avoid them logging your actual connections? Transparent proxies - HTTPS and check certs. Ads - adblocker. Exaggeration of an edge case and lumped in with other crap to obscure it. Bad form.
      6) DGA - you don't read, do you. By the time you list it, it's not very 'dynamic'.
      7)

      ... DON'T TAKE BRIBES ...

      neither does most software. Some do. Says nothing about the rest. Association Fallacy. Look it up. I linked to it for you, earlier.
      8) I want you to imaging a parrot saying "more for less, more for less" rather than "pieces of eight, pieces of eight". And no-one imitated you. You're a sad 50 year old who spams forums with his freeware.

      EATING YOUR WORDS

      You seem to think that being wrong about something (you answering a request for information) has any bearing on my criticism of your arguments. How quaint.
      You prefer bring up some irrelevant 'victory' over actually addressing the points, here. It's almost like using success from decades ago as some sort of justification for your position, now. No, wait - you do that, too. It's like a middle-aged guy bringing up his college sporting days when asked about his current activity. Hmm, no - you again. Sorry, man. Looks like a pattern to me. Care to change? It's kind of dysfunctional.

      YT

  169. When was "Back"back-to-last page(backspace)killed? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Used to be one could backspace to previous page really fast, now they all seem to reload content which is super slow.
    I'd support a top level domain where all sites are required to be simple, small, and super fast in loading and backing up to previous pages, with no auto play video and displaying content first before any junk less high priority stuff.

  170. RAM waste (not main problem) by bussdriver · · Score: 1

    Browsers have been getting too demanding of RAM causing machines with 4GB limits to put pressure on their memory. The older firefox versions have done better in my experience on these older systems because it will not waste RAM. I'm not just picking on firefox which now does the best with memory; these browsers trying to increase performance are eating gigs of RAM and their memory load on the system is causing slow down on lower RAM systems. A whole process per tab makes the 100s of tabs I'm used to managing a nightmare on Chrome etc. Firefox appears to slowly approaching this better... but we'll see. I don't know why somebody hasn't tried a Flyweight kind of design pattern... it's like they made a word processor and put every character into it's own full blown object!

    Heavy use of closures in javascript there are a lot of memory leaks going on; due to a flaw in the language which needs to be better addressed. (I'm not saying it's the biggest problem - I'd put that on the websites stacking and depending upon slow frameworks like jQuery... which should be put out to pasture BTW.)

    I just remember when my whole system only had 48k of RAM or multimedia apps like hypercard which did a lot with so little... So now I have a browser storing an uncompressed image of the tab so it can refresh quickly except when it pushes the system too far and ends up slower than a re-render would cost. They really should check system RAM and set up a soft boundary on usage. Just because VM systems are so great doesn't mean that we should act like RAM is unlimited.

  171. 2nd time I blow you away here "YETI" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    1st: Addons can't block all botnet parts. Hosts do - addons block ads (all infestations != ads) 2nd: Fastflux = hosts blockable (IP change NOT hostname) 3rd: DynDNS != fastflux 4th: Everything w/ a std. BSD ip stack has hosts (even DOS can) - untrue of addons 5th: Addons can't block trackers like transparent ISP proxies &/or DNS requestlogs - 6th: Spam/phish payloads OUTSIDE HTML BROWSERS != addon stoppable (e.g. EUDORA) - hosts do 7th: Hosts = ez 2 edit vs. addon regex 8th: Ublock's no resolver: It can't block DNS threats (hosts do) & can't build hosts (mine does) & it's in slow usermode (hosts = kernelmode NATIVE faster) + does LESS/uses MORE (Not 'better' it's worse) 10th: ANYONE understands hosts edits (length = immaterial: Edit menu, Find submenu notepad.exe) - untrue for regex!

    APK

    P.S.=> I broke you in 2 here & here https://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=10024927&cid=53535385/

    1. Re:2nd time I blow you away here "YETI" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      1) Add-ons |= adblocker. Try again.
      2) Hostfile blocks name, addons block ads, script, trackers etc. regardless of name or IP. Next.
      3) DynDNS points name to changing IP. So does fastflux. Different mechansims, same result. Fail.
      4) You're claiming extensions aren't multiplatform because they don't run on DOS? Seriously? Exaggeration of a trivial point. Pathetic. Move on.
      5) Can't block tracking from sites you want to visit. 'HTTPS Everywhere' (and confirming certs) stops transparent proxies, and no-one cars about DNS requests - if they want to track your usage, they'll log your actual connections. Edge case.
      6) Known bad sites = blacklisting = reactive. Configuring email properly stops payloads in email; configuring security on your machine stops random shit from executing. Edge cases, exaggeration. Next.
      7) Tens of thousands of entries are not easy to edit, even if the format is. That's why you made your tool. To sort; to deduplicate; to assist. I don't need a 3rd party tool to help me write a quick regex rule. Either hosts is easy enough to use with a text editor, and your tool is useless, or the massive file you generate is complex enough to need your tool in which case your point is false. Trying to have it both ways. Shifting goalposts. Fail.
      8) [blahblahblah] DNS threats - edge case. [blahblah] slow - imperceptible. [noise] "less with more" - less is trivial, different |= more.
      10) Repeating 7 to pad list. Argument ad nauseum. Fail.

      2nd time I blow you away

      You just keep repeating yourself. You don't actually address the problems, criticisms or arguments. You just chant the same phrases over and over. This is not an argument or a discussion. Perhaps this is 'winning' to you. If so, you have a pitiably low threshold for what constitutes a 'win'.

      Please, take a moment to read. Try to understand what it is you are reading and then try to address the points that are raised rather than just restating the point.

      YT

  172. Just handed you UR ass 2x "YETI" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    See subject: Take your own poor advice & look around https://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=10024927&cid=53535385/ & https://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=10024927&cid=53535559/ vs. partial quotes of my words nitpicking bs you are WRONG on:

    I specifically said "hosts do addons can't (or as well)" - VERBATIM here https://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=10024927&cid=53533277/

    You nitpicking little BLOWHARD talker!

    So - you say you have a Comp. Sci. degree - Why don't U build a better program vs. mine blowhard?

    * You're ALL cheap 'talk' - I'm a doer (& BIG diff. in this life between them) & IF how I post + mechanics I use pisses you off? Tough!

    (You merit me tossing fails back @ "your kind" - unidentifiable anonymous weasels which is WHY you post ac - I've done it to YOU before under 1 of many "registered 'luser'" accounts you have on /.)

    APK

    P.S.=> Keep "EATING YOUR WORDS" https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=9986237&cid=53480147/ ... apk

    1. Re:Just handed you UR ass 2x "YETI" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I asked you to look around to see if anyone else posts links to years old conversations. You've chosen to interpret that to demand I read other things you've posted. Way to miss the point.

      I specifically said "hosts do addons can't (or as well)"

      Yes, and then got upset when someone took the first clause, linked it to something else you said and addressed both. I'm not sure what the problem is. Perhaps you meant something else. Would you care to explain?

      Clauses, separated by words like 'or' or brackets are separate statements. You claim to be logical - A or B is true if either A is true, or B is true. "hosts do addons can't" is a statement that is independent of the "(or as well)" and can and should be evaluated as such. If that's not what you meant, then you've not been clear and no-one is nitpicking - this is basic english comprehension. This is why I keep bugging you about your use of language. It's a mess. Unclear and imprecise.

      You nitpicking little BLOWHARD talker!

      *laugh*
      "Temper TEMPER now there ..."

      IF how I post + mechanics I use pisses you off

      You don't piss me off. I'm sympathetic to your issues. You post, here, again and again. You obviously want something. From the looks of it, you want and need validation, respect and connection. We all do. We are, after all, social animals. The problem is that, at best, people ignore you. You've been banned from forums and sites; you are mocked, treated as a crank or seen as a problem to be worked around - and you think that's because people are trolling you.

      You seem to be completely unable to link your behaviour to the way people treat you.

      I'm sorry for you. I really am.

      You merit me tossing fails back @ "your kind"

      Do I? Only you links back to places where you have 'won', or try to re-start debates with people who have clearly stopped talking to you in disgust.
      Maybe it's you.

      unidentifiable

      I'm identifiable enough to have a conversation on this board. You behave very badly once you know someone's username, I'll avoid that for as long as I can, thank you. So, I am identifiable, but anonymous. In fact, when I first started signing these posts, at your request, rather than thanking me, you attacked and mocked me. I'll be blunt, your social skills are appalling. You are an abusive, argumentative asshole. That's why you can't use an account, here. It's why your accounts on other boards are banned or blocked.

      Only you can't see that.

      I've done it to YOU before

      You've done nothing to me. Mostly you just rant and repeat yourself.

      "EATING YOUR WORDS"

      Hooray! You are a winner! Gold star for you! Quick, save the link so you can post it again, and again so that everyone will know that this one time, someone said something that was wrong. Booyah! Victory dance! Ticker tape parade! Red letter day! Mark this in the calendar! Call friends and boast about how you really made someone 'eat their words'.

      Happy Christmas APK, and a pleasant New Yar. I sincerely hope you have a happy season.
      Be well.

      YT

  173. Because they are free by iamacat · · Score: 1

    Webpages and browsers are slow because they are free, simple as that. Ads and analytics are the only things that make money, so every page loads tons.

    If every page cost a cent, publisher would optimize a heck out of them to make you see 5% more in a typical news reading session. If you bought browsers, creators would feel pressured to justify a purchase. Simple as that.

    We got stuck in a local maximum by prioritizing free over still extremely affordable and much better quality.

  174. "Rinse, Lather & Repeat" Ash-Fox troll by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    See subject & this link (you suggest a stupid thing removing security on hosts) https://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=10024927&cid=53534823/ + your addons don't do a fraction of what my program does https://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=10024927&cid=53534449/ & https://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=10024927&cid=53534607/

    * ROTFLMAO: You NEVER, ever FAIL to fail Ash-Fox!

    APK

    P.S.=> Using partial quotes of my words too, lol - you're just like CNN bogusly attacking Alex E. Jones using same bs... it's weak & why Trump won! apk

    1. Re:"Rinse, Lather & Repeat" Ash-Fox troll by Ash-Fox · · Score: 1

      you suggest a stupid thing removing security on hosts

      I like how you ignored my suggestion of a "helper", which doesn't remove security. But that's APK for you, always ignoring inconvient truths!

      You have failed Agent Smith (Kowalski)!

      --
      Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
  175. UBlock = inferior + inefficient vs. hosts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    UBlock can't do these as well as (or @ all) hosts do 4 speed, security, & reliability:

    1.) Protect vs. bad sites (past ads)
    2.) Protect vs. fastflux botnet C&C's
    3.) Protect vs. dyndns botnet C&C's
    4.) Protect vs. DGA botnet C&C's
    5.) Protect vs. downed DNS (reliability)
    6.) Protect vs. DNS poisoned dns
    7.) Protect vs. trackers
    8.) Protect vs. spam payloads
    9.) Protect vs. phish payloads
    10.) Protect vs. caps
    11.) Get past dns blocks
    12.) Keep off dns request logs
    13.) Speed up 2 ways (adblocks/hardcodes)
    14.) Work on anything webbound multiplatform.
    15.) Ez data edit
    16.) Block ads more efficiently in cpu/ram/I-O use
    17.) UBlock now uses hosts (no DNS benefits vs. dns issues) - poor imitation = "sincerest form of flattery"

    Hosts = native vs. illogically "Bolting on 'MoAr'" & not ClarityRay blockable like addons.

    APK

    P.S.=> Hosts (1st resolver) do MORE w/ less in fast kernelmode & before slow usermode addons

    Hosts ~3mb vs. UBlock = 64MB -> http://cdn.ghacks.net/wp-conte...

  176. Hosts = OS agnostic (work on most all) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    See subject: U don't need a Linux/MacOS X etc. version - copying hosts over (doesn't need translation to Linux) works & yes, I can port my program to Linux (FreeBSD/Lazarus) easily OR MacOS X (Delphi does it - used to do Linux in Kylix but for some reason, they killed it off).

    * Sorry but some FACTS/TRUTHS you may not like:

    By comparison to Windows, especially for end-users (not scripting techs/admins or coders)? Nobody uses Linux on the desktop & it's about a 50/50 split across Fortune 100-500 corporate america + top US educational institution servers (only 1 reason Linux does ok is ZERO COST, same on smartphones (holds handset cost down))

    APK

    P.S.=> What makes Windows more used (& yes, abused - more surface area to attack in users which Linux is getting a taste of in ANDROID (a linux) + so has MacOS X - they're only getting the START of it & Windows has weathered more here & is solidifying in security due to it) - APPLICATIONS for PURPOSE & I don't help the competition... apk

    1. Re:Hosts = OS agnostic (work on most all) by EETech1 · · Score: 1

      Linux version of your program...

      I don't have a Windows computer to run it on.

      "& yes, I can port my program to Linux (FreeBSD/Lazarus) easily"
      If Delphi makes it so easy, please do it. Until then...

      Remember most of us here don't use Windows.

      Cheers

  177. Literally a copy and paste of my post from today by AbRASiON · · Score: 1

    Firefox, 64bit nightly user here.

    It's still atrociously slow, atrociously. Infact there's a either a bug with one of my plugins or something but I've deliberately endured it for nearly 8 weeks, hoping my feedback data is going in the bloody logs somewhere to help.

    I run about 6 or 7 plugins which are all fairly common and I have run the same ones for 3 to 5 years. They worked fine on my last profile rebuild but this most recent one was broken /out of the gate/

    It's so bad i'm using chrome primarily. Firefox performance frustrates me absoloutely no end and I've been running e10s, 64bit nightlys now for over 6 months.
    Infact, except for the last 4 weeks, the ironic (?) / odd thing is, nightly has been RIDICULOUSLY stable for a piece of nightly code. It's just plain stable. It's just slow as heck.
    I don't know what idiot legacy code is in Firefox but they seriously need a scrum or party or a bonus or something and the whole fucking team *STOPS* for 3 weeks solid and focuses on NOTHING but performance, performance, performance.
    If you check my slashdot post history, I've been whining about Firefox performance for over 3 years.

    It's ridiculous, stop adding features, just stop. Make the damn thing fast. Because Chrome destroys firefox and I'm now running a HEAP of Chrome addons (which I never knew existed) to replicate my Firefox functionality and I'm very, very close to full replication now (Firefox: Tab Mix Plus is bloody hard to replicate, requires multiple poor addons to be configured right)

    Seriously, just stop whatever is going on Mozilla devs and bring in "The Carmack" or the equivalent at coding. Scrap something old, I don't care but something is fundamentally wrong when a 24GB memory, quad core machine can run so poorly with a browser.

  178. Ash-Fox = pissed I can show his bs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    See my subject line & 21 proofs of Ash-Fox always trolling me https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=9986237&cid=53480231/

    * I handed you UR ASS again today for it (starting up like usual & thanks for yet another evidence of it for me) https://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=10024927&cid=53534823/

    APK

    P.S.=> Are you a butthurt PSYCHO or what? Give up (or is it you LIKE being humiliated publicly by "yours truly" for starting trouble w/ me 1st every single time we interact?)... apk

  179. Government survalance by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Because it takes time to transmit your cache to the NSA/FBI/CIA/DHS and the Clinton foundation.

  180. Web technology could use a redo. by Qbertino · · Score: 1

    To me it is quite obvious: HTML/CSS/JS is a convoluted historically grown mess. It is an open, widely used mess, which makes it attractive as a platform, but it's a mess none-the-less. I guess that comes with the nature of its success, because the web and its stakeholders adopted at every corner.
    The web is way far of from where it began, and this shows everywhere in its technology stack.

    Imagine a cleanroom design of a protocols and services and markup and logic to serve up what we are used to and expect today, with some neat features added in, such as encryption, default compression, binary logic and namecoin or some other distributed naming service. Add in native vector GFX technology and multimedia stuff and you have yourself an awesome fast platform.

    But as a developer, I know this won't happen and wouldn't be practical. Once it would be finished, the world would have moved on to some other stuff and the new implementation would be a huge monolithic unmaintainable unextendable block.

    I suspect once modern HTML/CSS and native gfx rendering have reached widespread use, the browsers will start to optimise and things will fall into place. We see this happening in chrome and safari and we see niche browsers like opera, brave and vivaldi speeding up things by simply filtering out the junk.

    --
    We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
  181. Improper use by sjbe · · Score: 1

    And yet in some use cases that's the desired behavior.

    That doesn't mean you design the family sedan to rev to 16000rpm like an F1 car and actually use it that way. Someone opening 100+ tabs is a clear corner case. Very few people do this and it's pretty easy to argue that it isn't a work flow common enough to worry about supporting even if we ignore the fact that it's clearly kind of a bonkers way of working.

    Because you don't use your tools the way others do doesn't mean that either case is wrong. It means that some tools are poorly designed for some use cases.

    Actually it very much can mean that one of the use cases is an improper use of the technology. To use another car analogy, you don't keep your car at redline driving around town. Yes you CAN do it but that doesn't make it a good idea. Running a browser with hundreds of tabs open is similar. It's an inefficient work flow than very few people use and most people would find actually rather difficult to manage. Browsers aren't designed to manage hundreds of tabs. If you want to use it that way it is your choice but that doesn't mean the rest of us are under any obligation to think that it is a good or sensible choice.

  182. Remember: MOST of a WORLD runs Windows by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    See subject It's where users mostly are + I don't help competition that's inferior on many levels vs. windows where I get most users so I wrote for it 1st (just like seen w/ games & all other wares) - It's WHERE more wares are!

    Hosts = multi-platform easily copied platform to platform though.

    "WINE" proves it (my prog runs on 2000/XP/7/Server2003/Server2008 just fine - doesn't wine emulate those on Linux? Apparently not perfectly!)

    APK

    P.S.=> I considered "OpenSORE'sing" it (or porting Object Pascal to Linux/MacOS X - ez enough, drive letters vs. mounted devices, some WinSock2 to *NIX socket & Win32 API specifics translates) but Chrome EFast "put the kibosh" on it (Google found out hard way what happens letting out code others turn 2 malware) had threats here that IF I did they'd turn it to malware... apk

  183. Complex products != lots of tabs by sjbe · · Score: 1

    I design machines with (tens of) thousands of individual electrical parts. When you have to be sure that this will fit that, and that will fit this other thing, that has to be compatible with something else that needs to fit yet another thing...

    I'm an engineer too. I design assembly lines and wire harnesses for a living, some with considerable complexity. My day job is running a company that manufactures wire harnesses so I work in pretty much the same field. Some of our more complex products have many hundreds to thousands of components.

    How would anyone ever properly invent such an animal without hundreds of tabs open?

    Seriously? We've been making products that complicated without hundreds of tabs literally for centuries. I very much doubt you can show me a use case where you actually need to have hundreds of tabs open and are making effective use of them for engineering. I've designed products and assembly lines of comparable complexity to what you are talking about. I've worked in the auto industry for a few decades and a typical car has around 30,000 parts. I can assure you that most cars are designed without a browser open with hundreds of tabs. My father was an engineer for the phone company and he designed networks of cabling of huge complexity. For most of his career he didn't even have a computer to work with. I work with a very similar set of data for every product I deal with as you and I think your argument is bonkers. It sounds to me like you just haven't figured out an efficient work flow.

  184. You're a reprehensible troll liar creimer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    See subject & link where you told libelous lies about me https://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=9952559&cid=53510169/ + u admit ura 'troll' https://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=9952559&cid=53421391

    * Grow up - you're being a punk weasel, nothing more & that's what those links show anyone you are!

    APK

    P.S.=> Unlike you I don't tell lies about others & merely state facts... apk

    1. Re:You're a reprehensible troll liar creimer by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      u admit ura 'troll'

      I admitted that I love trolling the trolls (that would be you) to keep myself amused while waiting for a script to finish at work. Thank you for your participation!

  185. Modern coding practices by Feadin · · Score: 1

    OOP and fragmented code

  186. Took me 3 minutes to load this page... by jetten · · Score: 1

    Why? Chrome was waiting for cache... This issue has been around for forever and has never been fixed. Before you comment, I completely wiped my computer 2 weeks ago and have minimal apps installed. Chrome is running on an SSD drive and my computer is only a couple of years old. So why in the blazes would it take 3 minutes for chrome to wait for it's cache? I agree with the rest of the sentiments though.. Too many ads, too many scripts, too many videos on sites these days.. Now I have to have an ad blocker and and anti-adblocker blocker to add to the overhead.

  187. Web Page Quality Indication in the browser GUI by bussdriver · · Score: 1

    Browser tabs or the URL where the padlock goes could indicate a poor quality web page. Browsers would then be helping improve compliance as their users see that something is wrong with the website they are visiting. It would create bad impressions which would motivate management.... this would greatly annoy web developers as debatable techniques differ between browsers and trying to explain to their boss 1 work around backward compatible hack for IE is causing all the modern browsers to flag the site's quality.

    Perhaps the price is worth it? It would be nice to quickly see when quirks mode is on.

  188. HTTPS and caching by bussdriver · · Score: 1

    Increased use of HTTPS probably due to google saying they'd prioritize encrypted websites has made my local proxy server useless. The top sites in the proxy cache are all now https so they no longer get cached. Nobody wants to be partially encrypted so images are https too.... we should have some way to not scare users with safe content that is not encrypted... I'm going to go test and see if the browser cache is smart enough to migrate cached content from http to https URLS...

    I just pulled up my netscape in a VM and loaded a simple large page. It was hardly slower than IE 8 in the same VM. The complex page broke but netscape beat IE 8 (probably in minor ways IE 8 broke some stuff on the page too.)

  189. Ah, more "moving parts" complexity! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    See subject: More moving parts for exploit/breakdown - It's up there w/ trolling me starting it constantly https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=9986237&cid=53480231/

    APK

    P.S.=> No escaping THAT link above either, is there? You did it to yourself trolling myself (& probably others too)... apk

  190. I actually don't care if the page is slow. by Script+Cat · · Score: 1

    The real problem is that the browser's interface freezes up based on the content of the page. This is a design failure. If we lived in happyland where these programs were designed for the user, the tabs would have preemptable time slices and a processor butget. The user interface should never freeze. A back page should drop the processing of any scripts and closing a tab should free the memory of the tab without additional processor time juggling the content. Misbehaving pages would just go the way of the Dodo.

    1. Re:I actually don't care if the page is slow. by Script+Cat · · Score: 1

      Also, I'm sure pages are mining bitcoin with the bloatware that is Javascript.

  191. Creimer admits he's a troll - ok by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    See subject: Why omit that you're a libelous lying piece of shit too telling lies about me https://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=9952559&cid=53510169/

    * I'm no troll you libelous little fuck - no more than I am in JAIL like you lied about me on.

    APK

    P.S.=> You disgusting fuck - you had better HOPE I never get ahold of you in the real world... apk

    1. Re:Creimer admits he's a troll - ok by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      P.S.=> You disgusting fuck - you had better HOPE I never get ahold of you in the real world... apk

      This is Slashdot. You must be new around here.

  192. and critically by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Browsers are freeware. So, uh, no one gives a shit.

  193. Wrong both parents still alive by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    See subject & I'm written OUT of their living wills @ my request (same w/ my sister too) - all that's left is for grandkids.

    APK

    P.S.=> Being a winner? I'm just happy making ends meet & paying bills on time - I never said I was 'wealthy'. I am just your average guy (whose money works for him, not Bill Gates)... apk

  194. An alternative theory by MooseMiester · · Score: 1

    Big commercial Web sites are not built using waterfall development; they have a very short shelf life; and are driven by marketing, not I.T. The visual presentation is more important than the internal elegance. They are built assembly line style where one person does the creative, another person slices the creative into HTML/CSS/JS, another person marries the HTML/CSS/JS to a framework, or CMS system, and another person manages the copy and SEO tagging.

    The creative directors are in charge, not the developers. The marketing folks are in the drivers seat, not the engineers. Marketing cares about cost per conversion and cost per acquisition. In this world the A/B test that picks the color of the submit button is much more important than how the form submit actually works.

    Web Sites only have to be good enough to work, as most will be redone in less than two years. That beautiful website written in Yii with Smarty Templates can't be easily upgraded to the latest PHP, so you throw it out and rewrite in Laravel. Those HTML3 tables that achieved responsive design through specifying dimensional attributes as percentages in tables has to be thrown out for bootstrap responsive/adaptive, because analytics determined you could get a higher conversion rate serving different content/navigation to each of the three snap points.

    One either accepts this new reality, or goes back to I.T. to work on old legacy batch mode payroll systems and other such boring crap. Learn how to speak marketing's language, and live in the perpetual firefighting mode that is marketing, or consider a career change.

    I spent the first half of my career in traditional I.T., saw the writing on the wall, and joined the dark side of digital interactive. You get used to it, and come to the realization that it only has to be good enough to work, and not any better.

    Browsers are the new operating system, and yes, they suck beyond sucking. The whole ecosystem is horrible compared to the elegant world that I.T. created in the pre-web days. But I.T. lost the drivers seat, because it couldn't move at marketing speed. The engineers lost. Sorry!

    --
    Murphy was an optimist
  195. No more tech arguments? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    See subject: Of course not - I've blown you away on the puny ones you used & I've overcome each easily LONG BEFORE YOU tried them.

    APK

    P.S.=> You're sick in the head, troll - but you DO make ME look GOOD everytime you do it... apk

  196. Creimer you're lying scum by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    See subject: As I said - IF I ever got ahold of you in the REAL world I'd like to see you say lies about me face to face - We'd see "what's-what" then you lying little scumbag...

    APK

    P.S.=> Menial worm... apk

    1. Re:Creimer you're lying scum by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      IF I ever got ahold of you in the REAL world I'd like to see you say lies about me face to face - We'd see "what's-what" then you lying little scumbag...

      Bring five more guys with you, and a stepladder, to make it fair fight.

      P.S., Bonus if you can name the two movies I made reference to.

  197. "YeTi" destroyed point by point by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Detecting browser addons/plugins = easy https://webdevwonders.com/detecting-firefox-add-ons/ that's how ClarityRay works too.

    UBlock & other addons = no DNS benefits (it's no resolver & can't bypass dns block lists, or stop dns request logs OR transparent ISP proxies (hosts get by both by not using DNS @ all for your fav. sites hardcoded)).

    Addons only work on browser HTML email clients. Hosts work for ANYTHING webbound.

    Addons can't do hardcoded local resolution speed (better).

    Addons can't stop ALL botnet's parts. Hosts do.

    Addons use more (taking bribes in AdBlock to NOT do the 1 job it had by default) doing less. You lose.

    DGA lists are LIVE - I do imports every 5 seconds (doing it as I write this).

    APK

    P.S.=> Everytime I put up my points on how hosts do more FASTER nobody proves them wrong https://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=10024927&cid=53533621/ apk

  198. "YeTi" BLOWN AWAY... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Addons don't block dns block lists, dns request logs, or ISP transparent proxies. Addons get past them by avoiding DNS
    Hosts block far more & are guaranteed multiplatform (anything w/ a std. BSD derived IP stack has hosts - even DOS when added, untrue for addons).
    DynamicDNS bots have their OWN rogue DNS servers (that's the difference stupid).
    Reactive? So is antivirus & addons - hosts react FASTER (they are faster, superuser.com saw that as fact)
    Easy to use format in hosts is something anyone understands. Try that w/ regex!

    * What? No ClarityRay?? LOL - it dumps addons used easily & can block ANY it wishes via tricks like https://webdevwonders.com/detecting-firefox-add-ons/ but you can't do that to hosts - it's no addon (hosts do far more for far less & faster).

    APK

    P.S.=> You've been DUSTED again, lol - thank you! apk

  199. UBlock = inferior + inefficient vs. hosts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    See subject: All fact & all right here enumerated as to how &why https://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=10024927&cid=53535701/

    APK

  200. So Much Missing The Point by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    There are dozens or hundreds of comments here that read like this: "I don't see the problem here. I just replace IE with Firefox/Chrome/Safari/Opera/Lynx, install Ad-Block Plus, run SE-Linux, turn off JavaScript, refuse all cookies, run Tor, use a VPN for everything, edit my Hosts file, and replace my firewall. Also, never use Facebook, Twitter, SnapChat, LinkedIn, or any other of a thousand popular websites. Oh and web advertising is the devil and web advertisers need to die. Do anything else and you are just ASKING for slow performance and hacker attacks. Easy peasy!"

    Then the arguments begin about which ad blocker plug-in is best.

    All crap. I mean, if you want to take extra protective steps, good luck and god bless. But a decent web browser experience needs to be the default experience! This nonsense of needing to take two dozen techie steps, none of which are obvious to newcomers, is a broken idea. It is so broken that it is Not Even Wrong. The OP is saying something important.

  201. You're trash creimer, plain & simple by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You've trolled me for DAYS now (I never start w/ you) saying shit about me - wtf! Grow up...

    APK

    P.S.=> Want to say shit about me that's lies (I am in jail etc.)? Were I face to face w/ you, I promise you'd go to a hospital afterwards - I do SHIT YOU NOT... apk

  202. Because of Javascript by thisisauniqueid · · Score: 1

    Javascript is single-threaded by design, and hitting a script tag stops all partially-completed layout and rendering until the script has been parsed, compiled and run. Hopefully things will get faster once a big chunk of the web has been rewritten in a language that compiles to WebAssembly -- but this will take at least a decade or more.

  203. Probably because you're using AdBlock Plus by thisisauniqueid · · Score: 1

    If you're using AdBlock Plus, every single page load will block until AdBlock Plus has finished running expensive regexps against the DOM. (That said, the browser really is bloated and slow, but invasive extensions like ad blockers will slow down the entire experience.) Just disabling AdBlock Plus won't necessarily speed up the browser though, because ad bloatware may slow down the browser even more than AdBlock Plus. Instead, try uBlock Origin -- it is much, much faster than AdBlock Plus, and supports all the AdBlock Plus blacklists. Your web experience will fly again.

  204. Addons = inferior & inefficient vs. hosts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What hosts do addons can't (or as well):

    PROTECT vs.:

    1.) bad sites (past ads)
    2.) fastflux C&C
    3.) dynDNS C&C
    4.) DGA C&C
    5.) DNS down
    6.) poisoned dns
    7.) trackers (dnsrequestlogs/ads/transparent ISP proxy)
    8.) spam/phish payload
    9.) dns blocks
    10.) slowdown 2 ways: adblocks & hardcodes

    11.) Multiplatform
    12.) Ez data edit
    13.) Efficiency (cpu/ram/I-O)

    14.) UBlock no DNS bennys = poor imitation = "sincerest form of flattery"
    15.) NoScript tag parses. Hosts block adservers before it cheaper

    APK

    P.S.=> AB+ 151mb http://cdn.ghacks.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/adblocker-memory-consumption.jpg/

    UBlock 64MB http://cdn.ghacks.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/adblocker-memory-consumption.jpg/

    (hosts ~6mb)

    ClarityRay defeatable

    Don't work http://www.businessinsider.com/google-microsoft-amazon-taboola-pay-adblock-plus-to-stop-blocking-their-ads-2015-2/

    SLOWER: http://superuser.com/questions/686041/which-leads-to-faster-browsing-an-ad-blocker-or-an-edited-hosts-file/

  205. Best hosts file creator by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-4 32/64-bit https://www.google.com/search?...

    Ads rob speed, security (malvertising) & privacy (tracking).

    Hosts add speed (hardcodes/adblocks), security (bad sites/poisoned dns), reliability (dns down), & anonymity (dns requestlogs/trackers) natively.

    Works vs. caps & PUSH ads.

    Avg. page = big as Doom http://www.theregister.co.uk/2... & ads = 40% of it.

    Hosts != ClarityRay blockable (vs. souled-out to admen inferior wasteful redundant slow usermode addons)

    Less power/cpu/ram + IO use vs. DNS/routers/addons/antivirus (slows you) + less security issues/complexity.

    Compliments firewalls (blocking less used IP addys vs. hosts blocking more used domains) & DNS (lightens dns load).

    Gets data via 10 security sites.

    APK

    P.S. - Safe https://www.virustotal.com/en/... (Verified by Malwarebytes' S. Burn "seen the code & it's safe" http://forum.hosts-file.net/vi... )

  206. Bullshit - PROVE it you lying fuck by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What have you done better than I have? ZERO motherfucker & you know it you lying little loser.

    * PROVE IT MOTHERFUCKER!

    ($100/hr. my ASS for your time you little fuckwad liar...)

    APK

    P.S.=> Little trolling piece of shit that you are that's helpless to stop me too (that always makes me laugh) - & you'll RUN from this like you can't show you've done better than I in computing too you lying punk bitch... apk

    1. Re:Bullshit - PROVE it you lying fuck by amicusNYCL · · Score: 1

      You seriously think that $100/hr isn't realistic for custom development? That's sad, APK. If you call up my company and ask for custom development quotes or mods for our application, you're going to get quoted at over $100/hr. There's some overhead for testing and project management, but that's my time you're paying for. The fact that you seem to think that's unrealistic is a sad statement about you. Even when I was working for myself I would quote projects at $100/hr. It's really not that big of a deal, but I guess that's why you're reaching back to $100 forum payments in 2008 to scrape the barrel for your own achievements.

      And, what's with you and the phrase "in computing"? Why do you always say that? Are you trying to suggest that if I'm writing software to actually help people do their job, instead of little cheesy text-file management utilities that a first-year CS student would be happy with in order to help people use a computer, then somehow my contribution is less than yours? Otherwise, why do you always qualify your lame statements of perceived superiority with "in computing"? I help people do their jobs, man. I'm not here to help you manage a text file or defrag a hard drive like it's 1998, I'm actually helping people make their own money. Weird that I get paid a lot to do that, isn't it?

      --
      "Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
  207. STFU you lying little bitch by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    See subject: Why're you RUNNING from proving your words here Forrest https://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=10024927&cid=53576953/ coming in days later thinking I wouldn't catch your LYING bitch ass?

    PUSSY liar!

    APK

    P.S.=> You're a pitiful LYING little worthless motherfucker that can't back up your lies can you bitch? Absolutely - & your evasive bullshit proves it punk... apk

    1. Re:STFU you lying little bitch by amicusNYCL · · Score: 1

      Why so angry, APK? Are you still butthurt from last August when I tore apart all of your worthless "achievements"?

      coming in days later thinking I wouldn't catch your LYING bitch ass?

      You self-important twat, I was out of town for the holidays and believe it or not, I don't spent my off time thinking about you.

      But look at you, you sure found my message and showed up to shit all over the site again, didn't you? You're still stalking everyone like some weird pervy creeper old guy hanging around a high school trying to talk to the girls. Sorry you've got nothing better to do than try to wave around your micro-peen and assert your imagined dominance, but you don't need to be angry at me about it. That's a "you" issue, not a "me" issue. It's not my problem that I state matter-of-fact things which happen every day and you think they're so unbelievable. Nothing I'm saying is even remotely unbelievable, and it's sad that you think it is. You're a sad, angry guy APK.

      --
      "Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
  208. 1st prove you even code professionally by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    See subject: Kind of tough to do behind a FAKE NAME for your FAKE life (especially your fantasy you're a coder, let alone making $100/hr.)!

    * It's VERY easy to just 'talk' - quite another to validly back it up, now isn't it? For you it's impossible imo.

    I can prove it easily (but then, I don't HIDE ONLINE behind a FAKE NAME for a FAKE LIFE like you) - how come you can't BIG talker?

    Try belittle my program ALL YOU LIKE - many 1,000's use it & even dozens of /.'ers like & use it - you're outnumbered, talker - & since you're ALLEGEDLY still working you CAN'T be doing all that well being a wageslave (I'm not & haven't had to be one in a decade++).

    My guess, that IF you're a 'coder', you're just another 'webdouche' (that imo isn't coding - it's the province of losers in the art & science of computing calling themselves "programmers"...)

    APK

    P.S.=> As to your 'skills'? LOL - your crusade to stop me posting didn't even work out too well, now did it? apk

    1. Re:1st prove you even code professionally by amicusNYCL · · Score: 1

      how come you can't BIG talker?

      I'd like to test a theory, I hope you'll indulge me.

      Every time I've answered that question, I've answered it exactly the same way.

      So, to test my theory: do you know what my answer is and always has been? You're either ignorant or stupid, and I'm betting on one of those. So, what has always been my answer to that question, APK?

      many 1,000's use it & even dozens of /.'ers like & use it

      Wow. That's impressive. No, seriously, "many 1,000's". It's so impressive that you don't even bother to spell out "thousands". That's serious business. How do you know that's the case, though? Do you track your users, does your software phone home? How do you know that "many 1,000's" use it, exactly? Are you tracking your users? Or are you not tracking them, and you're just pulling that number straight out of your ass? Which one is it? You're tracking your users, aren't you?

      In the meantime, "many 1,000,000's" use my software to actually help them do their jobs instead of manage a single text file on their computer. But, hey man, I don't want you to feel insecure or anything, so good job on getting that $100 8 years ago.

      since you're ALLEGEDLY still working you CAN'T be doing all that well being a wageslave (I'm not & haven't had to be one in a decade++).

      I'll tell you what, APK. Since I'm 37 and have been making a 6 figure salary for years, let's check back in 15 years when I'll be as old as you are now, and let's compare bank accounts and personal achievements. Stay tuned for whether or not I decide to pull out an 8 year old $100 award and wave that around like it's a big deal.

      As to your 'skills'? LOL - your crusade to stop me posting didn't even work out too well, now did it?

      Are you trying to equate programming ability with stopping your spam? I never tried to get you to stop posting. Only to get you to stop spamming. I note that now you link to search engine results pages for a search of your software. You've changed your behavior and it's been considerably less annoying over the past several months. I'll call that a win.

      My guess, that IF you're a 'coder', you're just another 'webdouche'

      Who cares about your guesses? You guess everything under the sun, and the vast majority of things are wrong. You've proven that over and over. Your word is not worth any more than your text file management utility. You work so hard to try and call me a blowhard, why do you think that is, Prof. Freud? You're the one trying so hard to prove various assertions, make yourself seem superior, and make baseless guesses without the first shred of evidence. You do that because of how insecure you are about yourself. It's sad. It's pathetic. So are you. Have a great rest of the year.

      --
      "Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
  209. Achievements I have you don't? LMAO! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    See subject: Prove you even code professionally talker! Kind of tough to do behind a FAKE NAME for your FAKE life (especially your fantasy you're a coder, let alone making $100/hr.)!

    * It's VERY easy to just 'talk' - quite another to validly back it up, now isn't it? For you it's impossible imo.

    I can prove it easily (but then, I don't HIDE ONLINE behind a FAKE NAME for a FAKE LIFE like you) - how come you can't BIG talker?

    Try belittle my program (or achievements I have you never ever will) ALL YOU LIKE - many 1,000's use it & even dozens of /.'ers like & use it - you're outnumbered, talker - & since you're ALLEGEDLY still working you CAN'T be doing all that well being a wageslave (I'm not & haven't had to be one in a decade++).

    My guess, that IF you're a 'coder', you're just another 'webdouche' (that imo isn't coding - it's the province of losers in the art & science of computing calling themselves "programmers"...)

    APK

    P.S.=> As to your 'skills'? LOL - your crusade to stop me posting didn't even work out too well, now did it? apk

  210. LMAO - you have to avoid the question by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    See subject & PROVE YOU CODE PROFESSIONALLY - your name on it + SOLELY YOUR WORK too!

    * You can try "belittle" things I do that DO WELL & I can prove I did them, solely my work - you can't even prove you work, let alone code professionally while being what I haven't had to be in 10++ yrs. - a wageslave.

    APK

    P.S.=> "Run, Forrest - RUN!!!", lmao @ U... apk

    1. Re:LMAO - you have to avoid the question by amicusNYCL · · Score: 1

      I've never avoided the question, you just ignore my answer. You're avoiding me, though:

      So, to test my theory: do you know what my answer is and always has been? You're either ignorant or stupid

      The answer is apparently both. I wasn't expecting that, I thought you were just ignorant.

      I am, and will remain, anonymous because I have always meant this account to be anonymous. I have said things under the cover of anonymity which I did not intend to be traced to me personally, in fact that's probably the biggest benefit of anonymity. I'm not going to throw away that protection just for your little pissing contest. I don't have any other accounts here, this is the account where I have posted 100% of my posts. Many of those included information that I do not want to be traced to me, so therefore you're going to have to keep pissing and acting like you're winning some contest. I CAN prove anything I want to you, but I WON'T prove anything. My anonymity is more valuable to me than any stupid contest with you. And it always will be. But, why stop now APK? Go ahead and continue to prove that you are both ignorant as well as stupid and try to get me to prove who I am again, like I ever will. If I would have engaged with you using a different account than my own, then I would have no problem telling you who I am. I don't want various things that I've said to be identified with me though, so that's not going to happen.

      your name on it + SOLELY YOUR WORK too!

      Oh, really? You mean you don't want me to list an "achievement" where I suggested a few Win32 API calls to someone else's project, but they ended up rejecting my suggestions? Or if I make some efficiency improvements to someone else's project, which then almost wins an award but doesn't, I shouldn't list that either? Because it's not solely my own work, right?

      As for all of your other shit, it's ridiculous that you don't think I earn what I earn. Literally ridiculous, as in worthy of ridicule. You are worthy of ridicule. If I showed you what my house or car looked like, you would probably also not believe they're mine. Face it man, I have an education in computer science and I've used it to bring in a steady 6-figure income with full benefits by my mid 30s. I've been contributing to a 401k since my early 20s, you want to guess where that is now? I wrote the software which literally runs the company that I work for (and that was as an intern for them 14 years ago, but it's still running the company today). After the original programmer left I redesigned and rewrote the core customer-facing application from scratch, by myself, and worked on it by myself for at least 3 or 4 years before I got another programmer to help me (this is a completely separate application from the one running the company; this is the one we sell). At this point, as the CTO, that situation is better but my stamp is still on that application and I still work on it, I just have a team to help me now. And there you are approaching your mid 50s, not believing that anything that I have actually done is possible, crowing about all of these stupid little achievements like suggesting Win32 API calls and earning $100 for a forum post like you're some big shot. It's ridiculous. Worthy of ridicule. You are ridiculous. Stop being ridiculous. It's gotten very old and tiresome. I'm sorry if you're not happy with your life, but that isn't going to change by claiming that all of these little stupid things are somehow major meaningful accomplishments. Focus on doing things that will actually make you happy instead of trying to pull up some bullshit list of stupid crap and act like it's made of gold. Make yourself happy, man. I have, that's why I decided to get a degree in computer science and then program for a living, I knew that would make me happy because of how much I enjoyed it and how much it was worth. You apparently once played lacrosse, which is great and all, but don't sit there and act like I can't have possibly done all of the things that I have in fact done. My anonymity on this site is worth too much for the ridiculous likes of you and your insatiable egotistical greed for self-congratulation.

      --
      "Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
  211. Moron, changing hosts protection = stupid by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    See subject: There is a reason Microsoft applied ACL level rights protection to hosts via WFP/SFP stupid. Your idea ruins it!

    APK

    P.S.=> You pitiful dumbass stooge - plus your 'browser addons for hosts' CANNOT build a hosts file! (OR UPDATE IT without ruining OS level protection on hosts) You fail... apk

    1. Re:Moron, changing hosts protection = stupid by Ash-Fox · · Score: 1

      There is a reason Microsoft applied ACL level rights protection to hosts via WFP/SFP stupid. Your idea ruins it!

      Then use a helper.

      --
      Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
    2. Re:Moron, changing hosts protection = stupid by Ash-Fox · · Score: 1

      plus your 'browser addons for hosts' CANNOT build a hosts file! (OR UPDATE IT without ruining OS level protection on hosts) You fail...

      Sure you can, using a helper.

      Silly Agent Smith (Kowalski).

      --
      Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
  212. You owe readers nothing nor vice versa by tepples · · Score: 1

    If you make a claim in a public forum, and another user presents problems with the facts underlying your claim, I agree that you owe readers nothing. Nor do readers owe you recognition that you have adequately proved your claim.

    1. Re:You owe readers nothing nor vice versa by holophrastic · · Score: 1

      This other user did not present problems with any facts of my claim. First, the user asked me if I'd done more work. Then the user stated some things. Then the user asked me for some information.

      My "claim", as is your prefered vocabulary, was a statement of my experience. I said that I did it, I said how it turned out. I described my experience, in great detail. The only way for you, or anyone, to present a problem is to argue my memory of events. My experience is nothing more than that.

      Do your own benchmarking, do you own work, and do your own experiments. Then, you're welcome to come back to me and present your experience as differing from mine. Then we can, together, figure out why. You want to come with nothing of your own, and get more from me. Contribute nothing, and you simply won't get enough of my respect to provide you with anything more.

      I did what I set-out to do. I presented you with an account of my experience. I didn't give you data. I didn't give you experimental procedures. I didn't give you observations. I merely gave you conclusions.

      Now, if someone else's conclusions are sufficient for your use, then, by all means, develop your own, or hire them to give you additional details. You're trying to refute conclusions with hypotheses. That's not science. That's not valid logic. That's not rational. Test your hypotheses, and then you can battle conclusions with other conclusions.

      Until then, my apple trumps your orange.

    2. Re:You owe readers nothing nor vice versa by tepples · · Score: 1

      Thank you for clarifying what you meant. I'll post numbers based on my own observations, and I look forward to seeing others' benchmarks the next time this issue comes up.

  213. Results with Expires: and lighter AV by tepples · · Score: 1

    I agree with your point that in a high-latency environment, the overhead of a HEAD request makes the cache somewhat less useful. But if a resource has an explicit Expires date, the browser can skip the HEAD request.

    And I disagree with antivirus taking 1000 ms to scan every single file. I use MSE on a Windows 7 PC and its successor Windows Defender on a Windows 10 PC, and real-time scans have never taken that long.

    So here's a what-if scenario with a slightly modified set of assumptions:

    1. A 100 kB resource takes more time to transfer than a 50 kB resource.
    2. A lighter weight antivirus takes 100 ms to check a resource instead of 1000 ms.
    3. The browser stores a list of all currently cached resources from each origin.
    4. The server is serving Expires: headers on resources intended to be cached.

    Thus the cradle to grave times for the five situations you mention change as follows:

    1. Resource embedded in document
    connect: 125 ms
    load that origin's list of cached resources from disk: 0 ms (parallel)
    download and parse HTML document including one resource: 1500 s
    total: 1625 ms

    2. Resource on same origin
    connect and load cache list: 125 ms
    download and parse HTML document: 1000 ms
    keep alive: 0 ms
    download one resource: 1000 ms
    total: 2125 ms

    3. Resource on same origin, cached with Expires:
    connect and load cache list: 125 ms
    download and parse HTML document: 1000 ms
    determine that the resource has not expired: <1 ms
    seek to resource on disk: 15 ms
    load resource from cache: 100 ms
    total: 1240 ms

    4. Resource on different origin
    connect and load cache list: 125 ms
    download and parse HTML document: 1000 ms
    connect to other origin and load cache list: 125 ms
    download one resource: 1000 ms
    total: 2250 ms

    5. Resource on different origin, cached with Expires:
    connect and load cache list: 125 ms
    download and parse HTML document: 1000 ms
    load other origin's cache list without connecting: 100 ms
    determine that the resource has not expired: <1 ms
    seek to resource on disk: 15 ms
    load resource from cache: 100 ms
    total: 1340 ms

    Though each hit in scenario 4 and 5 takes longer than scenarios 2 and 3, the idea of putting common script libraries on a shared CDN is that clients will hit scenario 5 in many situations where they would have otherwise hit scenario 2. This is especially true of users who arrive at a site through an inbound link, such as from web search, social media, or an aggregator such as Slashdot, and view only one page, rather than following links from other documents in the same origin.

    Perhaps I should write a program to do more thorough benchmarks of fopen() to see exactly what impact Windows Defender has.

    1. Re:Results with Expires: and lighter AV by holophrastic · · Score: 1

      All good. But you're missing the one very vital part: consistency. I'd like you to do two things.

      First, run your same thought-experiment, but vary the internet speed a few times. See the significance variation between 100 kb/s and 1'000 kb/s, et cetera.

      Second, vary the disk activity, the processor activity, and the network activity. "connect" can take a very long time, just suddenly at random. "disk" can be busy doing other things -- especially if the workstation is actually being used in the background, say converting a video, or downloading a few things. That antivirus has lots of stuff to do, not just that one download. Similarly, the firewall is working away continuously.

      And finally, please realize that you've got multiple tabs open, and many of them have iframes. So it's very likely that a typical consumer user has twenty or thirty internet streams running -- god help you if they have a few items getting "updated" in the background: maybe a game on steam, maybe the entire operating system, and maybe the virus scanner itself.

      And, of course, cache control smache control, sometimes the expires: has expired.

      So, it's time to leave the lab, and actually run some real-world, numbers. Consumer reports couldn't get a laptop to have consistent battery life. See if you can get a typical in-use computer to access the same content, at the same speed, a hundred times over the course of a week.

      Here's what I think you'll find.

      All the caching in the world will make the fastest time much faster. It will also make the slower time more slower. I actually think that often it'll make the average time faster, but it will always make the typical time slower.

      And, in the end, you'll have that much more complexity to deal with. Which means that once all of the numbers are in, the complexity of the system will fail you at some future rare scenario, and that'll just kill all of the averages. You'll say: it was completely unexpected. I'll say: yeah, it I know; it always is.

      All I can say, is that I've got three decades of trials and errors. I'm telling you that caching has never won over-all. It's great in narrowly defined situations -- which is why large companies can benefit from such things in general, often by crafting and bounding their abilities. But it just totally sucks as a general rule, and it's just so much more to deal with. It only needs to fail once to cause you 100 man-hours of debugging and fixing. You'll be cursing for months.

  214. Altering rights of a browser to admin = stupid by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    See subject: It's asking to be pwned! I don't need a 'helper': My program does the job already & addons can't build hosts either & for them to change/alter hosts means what's in my subject line fool

    APK

    P.S.=> You're a blatant unskilled untalented imbecile not only "Bolting on 'MoAr'" illogically but also altering a browser's rights for addons that can't do what my program by ITSELF does... apk

  215. Best hosts file creator there is bar-none by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    See subject & this (it needs no 'helper' OR browser addons) APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-5 32/64-bit https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&biw=&bih=&q=%22APK+Hosts+File+Engine%22+and+%22start64%22&btnG=Google+Search&gbv=1/

    APK

    1. Re:Best hosts file creator there is bar-none by Ash-Fox · · Score: 1

      I really don't care about what other goal posts you try to create. You said addons couldn't do it and I told you what alternate methods you could use. You have lost this one, Agent Smith.

      --
      Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
  216. LOL, U "moved goalposts" chump by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    U moved goalposts w/ your 'helper' WHEN I POINT OUT BROWSER ADDONS CAN'T BUILD HOSTS (my prog can) & minus altering user rights or browser perms (risky & dumb) they can't https://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=10024927&cid=53534823/ So you brought up "helper" programs MORE MOVING PARTS COMPLEXITY!

    APK

    P.S.=> You're SUCH a pitiful liar... apk

    1. Re:LOL, U "moved goalposts" chump by Ash-Fox · · Score: 1

      U moved goalposts w/ your 'helper'

      After you moved the goal posts by crying about asking for alternatives to making it administrator, of which I provided numerous. Including changing the security context, which you keep ignoring because you think it's file permissions, like a dumbass.

      You have lost, Agent Smith.

      --
      Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
  217. I DIDN'T ASK THAT LIAR by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I pointed out your browser addons CANNOT MANIPULATE HOSTS BY THEMSELVES (or build hosts) due to OS security on hosts. You'd have to alter browser perms/user perms (extremely DUMB on browsers, like you). So you brought up 'helpers' moving goalposts liar. Anyone can read this all above & see your lies, loser.

    APK

    P.S.=> Don't wonder WHY you languish in anonymity using FAKE NAMES online for your FAKE LIFE - you're totally bogus & the above PROVES it easily... apk

    1. Re:I DIDN'T ASK THAT LIAR by Ash-Fox · · Score: 1

      I pointed out your browser addons CANNOT MANIPULATE HOSTS BY THEMSELVES (or build hosts) due to OS security on hosts.

      Sure they can, they can request a security context from the operating system (it's addressable via WS_SECURITY_CONTEXT_MESSAGE_SECURITY_BINDING), they can use a helper, they can even in your favourite scenario, relaunch the browser requesting administrative rights - which is not unlike what your application requires to run properly.

      You have lost Agent Smith.

      --
      Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
  218. Impersonation = unsafe too stupid by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    See subject: If addons do impersonation it's thru a browser they run on which makes it UNSAFE stupid (same thing as before)!

    * Your addons can't build hosts either (let alone sort/deduplicate & filter vs. false positives & SAVE a new hosts file).

    APK

    P.S.=> Shit you are DUMB... apk

  219. Dismissing economic or sociological aspects by tepples · · Score: 1

    In the context of applications that run on graphical computing devices and communicate through the Internet, I must respectfully disagree with your dismissal of "the economic or sociological aspects of the problem." If one considers only technical metrics, such as runtime and memory efficiency, an assembly language program can theoretically beat a C++ "native compiled desktop application" because practical compilers miss some opportunities for optimization. For example, my assembly code for the 8-bit 6502 processor routinely outperforms the output of the most popular C compiler for that processor.

    It's just that assembly language doesn't see a lot of use for mass-market applications because end users demand rapid iteration of features and compatibility with existing hardware more than runtime and memory efficiency. The widespread use of C++ rather than assembly language for native application is thus caused by "economic or sociological aspects". And when rapid iteration and compatibility pressures are even more intense, said aspects drive developers to cross-platform compromises, such as the Java virtual machine, the Common Language Runtime, and the JavaScript virtual machine.

    1. Re:Dismissing economic or sociological aspects by Marxist+Hacker+42 · · Score: 1

      Absolutely true. Well tuned assembly will always beat C++; just as C++ will always beat virtual machines and runtimes.

      And lusers will only ever see the features they care about and the user interface, which is why virtual machines and runtimes exist.

      --
      SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.