The bullshit web

Turn off javascript and page colors. There are extensions for Firefox 47 that add small icons to the url line that toggles these functions. There is also an extension that kills CSS for pages that go nuts.

These are the three most valuable features for browsing the web.

On the left side of the page here I got a list of newsgroups I haunt. I can drag the names of those newsgroups out of place.

Why ?

Exactly. People should learn to write basic html. I have a backup web server running on a raspberry pi it uses simple hand written html, and is very very fast.

On the receiving end it seems browsers are also written at least partly in Java that reduces speed by an other factor 10 or so.

The plot? Selling more hardware? More adds?

My add blocker works fine.

Sometimes sites complain, then I go elsewhere. For downloads I often use wget that skips the browser complexity completely.

Indeed.

Nonsense.

Nonsense.

Yes indeed.

It is amusing to see people realise how fast the web can be if there are no adverts, no spurious scripts, and no spurious cookies.

One of the worst issues is where a site:

- tries to determine "who you are"

- then has a "real time" auction for what "valuable messages from trusted partners" you "want" to see

- then delivers the advert (provided you are looking at the page and don't use multiple tabs to mitigate slow page loading

- finally delivers the page

All those fools are using web design software systems, they don't program a nything from scratch. And it's the design software that's packing all that garbage in there, probably collecting a commission from clickbait entities too, all the user is doing is looking at the pretty page display.

Web page Javascript bloat expands to fill available bandwidth.

Another annoying thing is that with so many scripts running on each page it's only a matter of time before one of them runs off the reservation and starts consuming all available resources, leaving numerous tabs up into pages like that while doing Real Work is a bad idea and asking for a crash (well on Windows, at least.)

Not since Win98, say.

I'd make a few remarks about the nature of modern PCs (and other platforms), OSs and browsers, but I realize I'm posting to a location where such information is irrelevant, for self-evident reasons...

Tim

--
Seven Transistor Labs, LLC 
Electrical Engineering Consultation and Design 
Website: https://www.seventransistorlabs.com/

Tom Gardner opiniated:

google: 'web browser written in java'

And from:

Written in C++, XUL, XBL, JavaScript

Oh yes it does.

I tried one written in java once, removed it from my sytsem really fast.

Java is a crime against humanity, as is C++

:-)

+1. Someone had to say it! Gimme K&R C or nuthin'.

-- This message may be freely reproduced without limit or charge only via the Usenet protocol. Reproduction in whole or part through other protocols, whether for profit or not, is conditional upon a charge of GBP10.00 per reproduction. Publication in this manner via non-Usenet protocols constitutes acceptance of this condition.

Windows 10 performance is poor on anything but the latest hardware with a solid state drive, it's sort of usable with a 7200 spinning rust, 5400 (like is included in many budget laptops, and even mid-tier laptops) is painful. Long-running scripts that lock up the browser aren't uncommon, and while the whole OS slowing down to a crawl or locking up as it thrashes away at the poor drive, requiring a reboot is less common it does happen from time to time on lower spec systems.

JavaScript != Java.

Again, fundamentally misunderstanding the problem (or, more succintly: "nonsense").

Also, such baseless namecalling belies a complete lack of understanding about the heroic lengths that modern JS engines go to, to maintain extremely high performance.

Also, not understanding that shit code is shit code in any language. No language can change that. It's the developers' responsibility to not write shit code. Alas, as they say: shit happens.

If you look at the profile of a typical JS app, you'll see it's about half housekeeping activities: garbage collection, browser calls and profiling.

Yes, profiling. The compilers are so smart, nowadays, that not only is the script JIT compiled into native machine code, but it is heavily optimized, and that optimization is /checked/ with /real live testing/, and actively improved as the code runs again and again.

I invite you to check this out some time -- all it takes is a tap of the F12 key in any "modern" (post-2009ish?) browser. No lengthy process connecting up the debugger, no code listings, no stepping through instructions -- it's all right there, all the dev tools you need, all the code view and profiling and debugging you could want!

Even back in the friggin' 90s when Java was the wave of the future and Java Applets were all over the web, Sun boasted execution speed >70% of C++ compiled to native code (or something around there, IIRC). That was annoying on your Pentium, but most CPU time was still spent calculating graphics, and almost everything was still light weight, so no one much cared.

Jump ahead a few decades, and there is really very little overhead remaining, to VM languages. The main downside is, the first few times a function runs, it does so fairly slowly. Optimizing the compiler and optimizer themselves will be a long standing challenge, I'm sure; still, they're more than beating the pants off of, say, running GCC every time you want to run an application (can you imagine?).

In JS specifically, there will always be the unavoidable overhead of object descriptors -- it's an untyped language, so objects have to know what they are, and link to what they contain. That's an extra header and pointer for every object, which isn't necessary in a typed language. Still, that overhead is pretty small, especially when everyone walks around with supercomputers in their pockets.

Tim

--
Seven Transistor Labs, LLC 
Electrical Engineering Consultation and Design 
Website: https://www.seventransistorlabs.com/

It helps to not have 512MB of RAM...

Where do you even buy "lower spec systems"? A 5 year old used PC can do all of those things for pennies on the dollar.

Tim

--
Seven Transistor Labs, LLC 
Electrical Engineering Consultation and Design 
Website: https://www.seventransistorlabs.com/

For every increase in hardware performance, there will inevitably be a corresponding decrease in software performance resulting in a net gain of zero. (I forgot where I stole that from).

From my warped perspective, the problem is the various CMS (content management system) web design software. These are quite popular because a non-programmist (such as myself) can instantly create a rather artistic web page with minimal knowledge, effort, and talent at the expense of performance, bloat, and occasional security issues. My first web pile equivalent of "Hello World" resulted in a multi-megabloat monster (I forgot the exact size). I made all the usual beginners mistakes and did just about everything wrong. It worked, it looked good, but ran like the proverbial snail.

However, the programmists that are creating monster web piles are not beginners. They are probably seasoned professionals that are very familiar with the performance problems. However, they are at the convergence of all the forces conspiring to carve up the web pile into private fiefdoms, each with their own agenda. Sales wants lots of advertising, marketing wants to know the life history of every visitor, engineering wants quick access to mountains of support documentation, legal wants disclaimers on every page, advertising wants to count eyeballs, corporate wants demographics, statistics, and big numbers, etc. The problem is that none of these want performance. Well, maybe the customer, but they don't usually have a say in the matter. So, the web designers try to make everyone happy, with predictable results. I call these "web piles".

Fortunately, the computer industry has invented the smartphone and tablet. Both are marginal or useless for any manner of productive work and are more of an entertainment device than a device suitable for useful work. However, they have one redeeming value. They lack the local storage and download performance needed to support CMS bloat and complexicated web piles. Many companies recognize the problem and have mobile only web sites suitable for these devices. For example: However, there's a problem in this web browser paradise. Some web piles detect the browser being used and deliver the bloatified normal web pages, instead of the speedy mobile pages. Fortunately, there are plugins that trick the web server into thinking you're using a phone instead of a big screen. For example:

As for the future, I suggest you resign yourself to a lifetime of more of the same. When the day comes, when we are all using quantum computers that run at light speed, and display output inside 3D tanks, the next evolutionary development after the web pile (probably augmented reality) will be just as slow to load as todays nightmares.

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com 
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

I don't know that I car a lot about the implementation of web sites. I care about the functionality and if that suffers, I expect the site owners will feel the repercussions.

What I find to me more of an annoyance is the trendy use of grey lettering on a grey background. I guess it is an "image" thing making them look understated and refined... or something. I find it hard to read and some sites are very hard to read.

Rick C.

Tim Williams wrote

That is true, knew you were gonna say that.

Oh, crap man. crap.

I have tried it, and that is what I found. And that was much later than the nineties.

Well, you are the one who just replied with 'no point elaborating about it in this group' or something.

Long time ago early 2000, I decided to add a html parser to the Usenet newsreader I wrote. Much of a moving target, you could do that if you had it as full time payed job, the specs changed while I was coding. So I stopped at some point. A basic html parser was code you could download from CERN actually. Luckily html did not make it into Usenet, so that was a good decision to stop with that code.

What came later keeps surprising me as bloat.

The idea that 'everybody has a super computer' is a silly statement. It is true that many of those pads or whatever have a quad core, seem to need that to do the simplest things...

I have done and still do a lot of coding, embedded too, had a go at writing an Android app, out of there really quick.

Too many layers of crap.

I use seamonkey as browser on a 32 bit 1 core x86 system (32 bit for compatibility) and a 64 bit version on my coreI5 laptop, both run Linux.

If I need to really browse the web on this 1 core PC, then I set seamonkey to nice -n 19. Then it grabs all resources, and is still slow. There are a zillion things running at the same time on this PC, no it is no super computer, most applications I wrote myself, some with really advanced graphics, radio links 2 RTL_SDR sticks running now, video processing, security cameras Usenet of course, satellite recording now Star wars III revenge of the Sith from ITV2, lots of remote ssh connections to various raspies here, data logging temperature humidity, Apache log, GPS, camera control GUIs, all written in C using libc by me. Video players, some I wrote, others I contributed code to, what 'super computer'???

On that point you are right, there is crap code and efficient coding, and Java and C++ is in the first category.

My opinion. Show me your code.

Basically I think the big mistake is pushing 'object oriented programming', Computers work sequential, and a strong typed language has the advantage that

1) you know what you are doing 2) it prevents 'misunderstandings' (say bugs)

There is a REASON that the largest and most spread coding project in the known Universe LINUX is written in C. And Linus made it very clear: No Cplusplus code in the kernel!

Many many Cplush plush projects have died with a cost of millions of dollars... Sometimes cost to the taxpayer, like happened over here.

But... higher and higher level languages will appear, to the point where the CEO has a microphone and all he has to say is 'I want' and the software will do the rest. Bit like the current US president, no knowledge required, his devotees run when he says something. The wall he promised is not there, the infrastructure is not fixed, the debt has increased, the standing of the US in the world has decreased, and the world unites against the US. That is the same US that pushes C++ and Java.

My opinion. Here you are still allowed to have one.

The CNN hating is undeserved. They have a lightweight version at:

The Register has a mobile version: It still has a lot of pics but is more usable than their main presence.

Some of the internet comics have gotten really bad. especially Completely locks my box up for several minutes.

There are lots of readons to hate, or at least ignore, CNN. Like the

40 cookies that I just deleted.

That's some really bad content, but it came up on my PC (win7, firefox) in about 1 second. I think Malwarebytes slowed it down a bit, too.

The Register is instant.

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics

A bit of TDS ?

Please explain the relevance of your quote to Java!

The only connection between Java and JavaScript is the four letters "Java"; other than that they are

*completely* different.

Start by considering the very different object lifecycle model, then move onto other less fundamental things like GCs.

One what? I've removed C/C++ things from my system really fast - that doesn't make C/C++

If C++ is the answer, then you've asked the wrong question.