Maybe I’m just cranky but the page rendering of quite a number of web pages these days is driving me crazy. So many of them are tremendously graphics- and media-heavy. The greatest problem seems to be the latency with the ad servers.
You’ll go to a web page, read the content you went there for, and click on the “Next” or equivalent link and some unwanted ad jumps in front of your cursor and you’re spirited off to the Sears web site (or worse, assuming there is something worse).
My computer, graphics, and Internet connection are all fast. It’s either me, the web pages, or the way the pages are being rendered.
I suspect it is an intentionally “bad” design, and that it has something to do with how the sites are generating ad revenue. That is, bad for the end user, good for the bottom line of the companies owning the websites.
Or it’s just another symptom of the utter breakdown in competence in our society.
Take your pick as to which is worse, but for me it’s “six of one…” territory.
I use a HOSTS file for security and ad blocking, but it has the added benefit of eliminating a number of problems. For those not familiar with it, Windows has a system file that is a routing table. Mine has thousands of entries that point back to my computer.
I also use Google’s DNS instead of my ISP’s.
I also keep two website checkers on my Bookmark Bar to see if a site is up or down.
Chrome used to be fast, but it has become bloated and laggy. It is still faster than IE or Firefox, but it is nothing like it used to be.
One of the problems is that the website designers/programmers do not really understand how the underlying architecture works. In many cases, they are just dragging and dropping widgets onto a blank space in an IDE (Integrated Development Environment).
The only software needed to create a website is a text editor. The fancy (and expensive) development tools are designed to hide the gory details from the programmer, but they often make a total mess of the code. I suspect that the latest generation of coders have very little ability to hand code anything.
My biggest complaint these days is that the SB Nation sites (sports blogs) have essentially disabled the back button. I read an article and want to go back to the team’s home page to see if there is another article I want to read and I’m taken back to the Glittering Eye or whatever was the last site I was reading before going to SB Nation. Unless this is a Chrome specific glitch, seems like the design has preferred increasing home page clicks at the risk that once off the site, they may not return.
I, too, uses Google’s DNS.
For years I used Opera as my main browser because of its small footprint, speed of rendering, features, and standards compliance. I’ve abandoned it because it has problems with too many sites nowadays.
Now I’m in a quandary. I find I’ve got to use at least three browsers. some sites don’t work properly under IE; some don’t work under Chrome. On the computer I’m typing at right now I have IE, Chrome, Firefox, Opera, and Safari installed. No single browser will work properly with all pages.
TastyBits, take it from me. Most programmers (whether web programmers or otherwise) do what they’re used to doing or what’s fashionable. That’s always been the case. Those who understand how computers work or how Internet protocols work or both are quite rare.
BTW for those of you Windows users who are curious for recent versions of Windows the hosts file is here:
%SystemRoot%\System32\drivers\etc\hosts
where “%SystemRoot%” means the folder containing Windows. In older versions it was directly subordinate to the Windows folder. Its format is pretty simple. It’s a plain text file (can be edited with Notepad) with the format
domain-name IP-address
So, for example, the entry you’re more likely to see is
localhost 127.0.0.1
which defines “localhost” as the computer you’re running on.
If you wanted to re-direct Microsoft’s web site to your own machine it would be
[code]www.microsoft.com 127.0.0.1[/code]
I don’t recommend doing that; it’s just an example.
@PD Shaw
If they are actually blocking the Back button and the Right click, you could use Tampermonkey which is similar to Greasemonkey, but you would have to find a script to fix it.
It is possible that the Back button is bringing you to the previous page. Depending upon how the page is designed, it could be that only the content is being refreshed. In other cases, the page has received more content than it is displaying, and as you page down or go to the next page, it uses the content it already has.
TB:
My bet is that they’re displaying multiple pages of content on the same actual HTML page using jQuery or similar.
I use the MVPS Hosts file. I have used the site for years. I trust them, but YMMV. Use at your own risk. I occasionally add entries, and rarely, I have removed a few.
I just meant HTML, CSS, SQL, Javascript, MS specific, etc. Where understanding how the internet works is important is your development setup. Testing on your machine with the web server, database server, and anything else located on the same machine will be vastly different than in the real world.
(This is not just web programmers. There are thick skulled programmers everywhere, and they will not or can not write efficient code.)
With web pages, the IDE will make a mess of certain things, but maybe they have gotten better. Nested tables and css are (were) two areas of almost complete horror. The IDE will add extraneous crap it thinks is vital, and it formats the layout without any seeming rhyme or reason. The worst is that it will add the closing tags in the wrong places.
I use Chrome for almost everything, but I keep Internet Explorer for Microsoft sites or problematic sites. I have Firefox, but I stopped using it when I switched to Chrome. On an old machine, I have Opera installed, and it is not bad. I had the mobile version on my Windows Mobile phone, but this was before the iPhone or Android.
(Yes Virginia, there was a smartphone before the iPhone or Android, and it could sync with your Outlook, read/write Office documents, connect to ftp sites, and act as a thumb drive.)
Writing efficient code requires understanding, something always in short supply. I recall trying to explain to a COBOL programmer 40 years ago that the few lines of code he was using to achieve something or other generated thousands of lines of object.
Thanks TastyBits, “complaint” was probably too strong of a word. Its just that I find the design, if intentional, curios and my own behavior tends to be that once I find that i’ve been exited from the site, I am just as likely to check if there is anything new at the site I’ve been “sent,” or to be reminded of something else I’d meaning to read or research. It’s not that I’m angry about it or anything, it’s a very mild nuisance, but my attention has been diverted.
Curios = a rare, unusual, or intriguing object
Almost fits.
I’ve noticed the same thing Dave and it’s even worse on mobile devices. OTB is particularly annoying on an iphone, for instance, as are many other sites.
I use chrome exclusively at home and IE at work (because that is what is compatible with federal government internal websites, though many sites require the compatibility setting to be enabled). I also use google DNS as well as an adblocker, though I’m planning to switch back to a hosts file for filtering.
The state of Illinois’s websites are mostly written in pure HTML and Javascript. They’re very much a throwback to websites of a decade or so ago.
The state is (slowly) making a transition to SharePoint. IMO a step sideways. Maybe a little better than their present clunky old sites but probably not the best possible choice. What I’ve observed is that the state’s SharePoint sites actually render better in Chrome than in IE while some of the state’s old sites require IE.
Since W10 doesn’t ship with IE and Edge is very different from IE, I think there’s a problem looming on the horizon.
The feds, or at least the DoD is moving heavily into sharepoint. The problem is a lot of the key systems have to interface with legacy databases and sharepoint doesn’t do that. So payroll, HR, etc. are run on clunky websites linked to probably ancient backend systems. There are a lot of compatibility issues. Earlier this year standard desktop configuration finally upgraded to IE 11 from IE 8, but so many sites require you to set the compatability mode, while others won’t work with compatibility mode. It’s a PITA, particularly for people trying to access government systems from home computers.
On the other hand, we are pretty much 100% digital signature now, so the “paperless office” is 90% a reality – 30 years after it was promised (again, only from what I see in the Defense Department, other federal agencies and departments are much different).
IE came with my W10 computer I bought this year, but I think it wasn’t easy to locate. The state uses a java-based security app, which is required for online filing w/ the state, but IE likes to tell me how great Edge is.
I haven’t encountered any real rendering problems. I run OpenSuse linux and use Firefox as my browser of choice. It has a lot of nice extensions that are useful to me in my attempts to learn Spanish and Italian. I have Adblock plus on the the browser and avail myself of Fanboy’s blocking list. The list constantly updated, and I subscribe to it via Adblock. I also have Ghostery on the browser which prevents redirects.