Is the web dying? The state of affairs in 2016
- Ads only take up 9% of the surface of the average webpage in the US
- But the time needed to load ads represents over 50% of the total load time of page
- On average, 53 third-parties are involved behind the scenes of a page, syncing data, cookies, etc.
.. On the mobile web if we add this up to slow connections, latency and slower cpu’s, a full page refresh on each click, it’s just not going to work.
.. Our performance measurement models need to get updated, many companies are still too focused on total page load time as the main performance metric. We need to look at first meaningful paint and time to interactive as our main metrics. These are the ones that have the most impact on user experience.
Also runtime performance is still mostly ignored, the fluidity of animations and scroll is of major importance.
- .. Focus on the user; the end goal isn’t to make your site perform fast on any specific device, it’s to ultimately make users happy.
- Respond to users immediately; acknowledge user input in under 100ms.
- Render each frame in under 16ms and aim for consistency; users notice ‘jank’.
.. In the launch of instant articles, Facebook stated that, on average, a link to an external website on your newsfeed, takes 8s to load.
Is this a statement saying that we as developers can’t do web performance right? Is the future of publishing in this platforms?
.. And universal links are a way to link directly to a web app without going through the web.