Did most of the web suck when we were on 28k or 56k modems? I'd argue that it didn't, and yet even with the light weight of pages back then, it was incredibly slower than today's pages (even heavy ones) load over our much-faster connections.
So really, I think what the author is observing is that having experienced high-speed reliable connections, it is very disappointing to move to a much slower connection. For the emerging tech markets, I can imagine the experience would not be great if the load was long enough to cause timeouts and connection failures, but at the same time, the 99% experience, as it probably was when the web was born, is "holy crap look at everything I have access to now!"
Yes, there are some really terribly optimized and redirect-happy sites out there and yes, you should do everything you can to make your page speedy. Everybody benefits when you do. I think, though, that this is more of a case of "let's be thankful for and aware of what we have," and "if you suddenly have a slower connection you might find yourself annoyed" more than "most sites suck on slow connections."
> Did most of the web suck when we were on 28k or 56k modems?
I'd argue that it did, just like having 32MB of RAM and Windows 95 did. But almost everyone was in the same place, including the people making content for websites we went to, so page load times were as good for their minimal experience as the technology would let them be. Even in 2002, my family was still on dial-up, and it sucked because I knew how much was out there that just wasn't feasible for me to access.
While waiting for some JS-laden crapfest to load earlier, it occurred to me that I haven't heard the term "World Wide Wait" in many years. But here I am experiencing it all over again.
I think average number of requests per site, and average page size in megabytes went up over time. It is much higher now and content we browse is actually very similar - people read news like they did 20 years ago, but now their news site requires 2mb of data when it required 100kb 20 years ago.
I think you've missed my point. Yes, that was slow, but if it was literally the best, then it was awesome. The same thing goes today for everybody out there with access to gigabit. There's no reason to complain about it even if downloading takes some time still, because it's not like there's anything better.
So really, I think what the author is observing is that having experienced high-speed reliable connections, it is very disappointing to move to a much slower connection. For the emerging tech markets, I can imagine the experience would not be great if the load was long enough to cause timeouts and connection failures, but at the same time, the 99% experience, as it probably was when the web was born, is "holy crap look at everything I have access to now!"
Yes, there are some really terribly optimized and redirect-happy sites out there and yes, you should do everything you can to make your page speedy. Everybody benefits when you do. I think, though, that this is more of a case of "let's be thankful for and aware of what we have," and "if you suddenly have a slower connection you might find yourself annoyed" more than "most sites suck on slow connections."