Why are web browsers so resource hungry, What are they actually doing?

[gpuerrilla]

As bandwidth is aplenty these days it kind of negates some of the bloat/spyware crud.

If we take it back to the 90's said sites on dial up would just have no visitors as the pages would take too long to render. People paying for the minute did/would not tolerate it.

Its akin to games being made to fit on floppy disc, you had to code smart and think about space. Somehow this went by the wayside and this is how you end up in this mess.

 

[V F]

As bandwidth is aplenty these days it kind of negates some of the bloat/spyware crud.

If we take it back to the 90's said sites on dial up would just have no visitors as the pages would take too long to render. People paying for the minute did/would not tolerate it.

Its akin to games being made to fit on floppy disc, you had to code smart and think about space. Somehow this went by the wayside and this is how you end up in this mess.

All I ever see now is I'm not clicking that, clickbait!

 

[Puzzled]

All I ever see now is I'm not clicking that, clickbait!

Was using a friends machine the other day who doesn't have an ad blocker and made the mistake of looking at a local news site.

Good god the amount of rubbish they put on them, ads in all the borders, annoying pop ups that start playing video / sound & the last attempt pop up when you go for the close tab button.

Made the whole site crawl and this was on a pretty beefy system.

Edit: I don't know what MS has done to the outlook webmail page either, new version is incredibly slow now.

 

[asim18]

All these latest sites like Wordpress are a nightmare. They contain that much crap and that many Sedona it's getting stupid!

I'm in favour of these responsive websites as they load better than database back end stuff as there's less processing required.

Absolutely agree. Wordpress is absolutely unnecessary for half the websites that use it.

Last time I used it to layout a basic site it used about 10,000 completely unnecessary lines of code per page! and about 3,000 unnecessary CSS styles lmao. And that's before you even begin to worry about the unnecessary database connection!

 

[V F]

Was using a friends machine the other day who doesn't have an ad blocker and made the mistake of looking at a local news site.

Good god the amount of rubbish they put on them, ads in all the borders, annoying pop ups that start playing video / sound & the last attempt pop up when you go for the close tab button.

Made the whole site crawl and this was on a pretty beefy system.

Edit: I don't know what MS has done to the outlook webmail page either, new version is incredibly slow now.

I really detest the amount of sites that wont let you proceed unless you disable your ad blocker.

 

[lsg1r]

90% of website 'issues' is down to all the tracking/advertising junk in the background that any sane person uses adblocking to get rid of most of it.

I've seen sites where there's been nearly 100 items blocked, look into what it's blocking and 90% of it is a multitude of different trackers, all doing the same thing, just to find out what you're looking at etc.

 

[Columbo]

My local news site has proceeded to install a 'please complete a short survey to carry on reading' which along with all the other ads just makes the site hilariously bad.

Got Ghostery installed now which really does open your eyes with regards to the amount of stuff it blocks and seems to have made my browser run a whole load faster.

 

[Etheco]

Absolutely agree. Wordpress is absolutely unnecessary for half the websites that use it.

Last time I used it to layout a basic site it used about 10,000 completely unnecessary lines of code per page! and about 3,000 unnecessary CSS styles lmao. And that's before you even begin to worry about the unnecessary database connection!

Wordpress can be perfectly fine specially if your client requires the ability to update data easily.

The problem normally happens when people attempt to build there own site without really knowing what todo, Using a pre-built theme that are built to "sell" and not for "function" are normally the problem with most Wordpress sites.

 

[Danny75]

Make as many add-ons/plugins as you can 'click to activate'/'ask to activate'. Most importantly, Flash. Lots of pages use it for tracking you and it has to be loaded in and out very frequently (every page? not sure). Disable it and only turn it on for (the minority these days) of pages it's actually needed on.

You could try disabling javascript, might be acceptable depending on your browsing habits.

+1

After an OS reinstall weeks ago, I never installed Java, and made Flash ask to activate. Also using AdBlock Plus, with Firefox. Speaking of Firefox, also went to about:config and changed the browser.sessionstore.interval value to 3 hours, to get less writes on the SSD.

The webpage loading is so much faster.

 

[gpuerrilla]

Got Ghostery installed now

+1
Also using AdBlock Plus, with Firefox.

I use Ghostery, uBlock and privacy Badger with FF. You can also tighten ship with those plugins/addons/extensions that AV products have started to musle in with but im not entirely convinced they have the right intentions.

 

[jpaul]

for FF I'll raise you

Google Redirects Fixer & Tracking Remover
Google uses a redirection link to track your clicks. This addon simply removes that redirection and turns every search result in its original link, saving your time and giving you more security and privacy.

which sticks it to google, but I would like something more generic in FF for Bing/etc too [not sure inbuilt FF option is very comprehensive ]

About FF's browser.sessionstore.interval after using perf mon to check writes had found I was only writing 200MB per day despite default 15s setting & >200tabs. Turned out that BarTabLite add-on which unloads unused tabs + their memory reduces writes see here
Having tabs only loaded when they are selected is great when restoring sessions and reducing browser memory footprint.

 

[gpuerrilla]

Interesting. Thanks for the heads up!

 

[jpaul]

*THREAD RESURRECTION - CRAPPY WEB SITES*

problem of inefficient web sites (burning cpu cycles) seems to be increasing and I need effective counter measures ?

1. Ebay site
If you are looking at an individual item and the hover over magnified photographs - those tabs can just burn the cpu
2 Amazon
Stupid infinite, reveal as you scroll mechanism for basket, which burns resources
3. Eurocarparts
sites which have some kind of sale countdown timer - those burn resources (maybe I could zap elements with ublocko)
4. https://www.buywholefoodsonline.co.uk/advent-calendars-christmas-chocolates
web-site just takes ages to render, where I used to buy stuff
I'm assuming its a new multi-platform android/windows/ios toolkit they are using.

[ I'm using an i7 8 core 4GB]

 

[smogsy]

*THREAD RESURRECTION - CRAPPY WEB SITES*

problem of inefficient web sites (burning cpu cycles) seems to be increasing and I need effective counter measures ?

1. Ebay site
If you are looking at an individual item and the hover over magnified photographs - those tabs can just burn the cpu
2 Amazon
Stupid infinite, reveal as you scroll mechanism for basket, which burns resources
3. Eurocarparts
sites which have some kind of sale countdown timer - those burn resources (maybe I could zap elements with ublocko)
4. https://www.buywholefoodsonline.co.uk/advent-calendars-christmas-chocolates
web-site just takes ages to render, where I used to buy stuff
I'm assuming its a new multi-platform android/windows/ios toolkit they are using.

[ I'm using an i7 8 core 4GB]

its only going to get worse now Python is going to built into the web assembly engine, which means more dodgy code running on your system (possibly insecure)

with python theirs no reason somone could not spawn Mining in multithread mode or worse Delete c:/

pihole is a legend in this regard, remove so much before even hitting your computer

 

[gpuerrilla]

Yes I must set mine back up, cluster had to be repurposed but can be reinstated now.