Mobile Websites are getting way to Slow
Have you ever noticed how mobile sites are taking longer and longer to load? When I want read the news on the LA Times, they first load all the fancy animations (while I’m staring at a white page), and then finally the article appears. I understand why it takes so long for them to load, as there is CSS, animating sidebars, customized ads, facebook share buttons, etc.
It is especially annoying when I’m traveling around in the rural parts of Texas and only get 3G/4G service. All these pages take forever to load. All I wanted is just to see the content, but since the scripts are loaded synchronously (which means the scripts have to load before actual webpage is shown), I just get frustrated and give up.
I understand from the developer’s point of perspective that in the age of fast internet, page load times aren’t the first of their priorities and it’s much easier to just load a bunch of javascript to make the website fancy and beautiful. Heck this blog has so much unnecessary javascript on it that it also takes quite a bit of time to load (but that’s not my fault, I just use wordpress…). Honestly, most webpages I see have more data in the import statements than the actual page itself.
Maybe I’m just a millennial that is used to quick load times and easy access to information. Or maybe someone should create an app that simplifies webpage loading by pre-caching/removing all those pesky javascript imports. Or I’m just impatient.