
Adaptive Loading – Improving web performance on low-end devices - feross
http://addyosmani.com/blog/adaptive-loading/
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Nextgrid
Just because I have a powerful phone doesn't mean I want to waste its precious
battery on your garbage. If there's a low-end version of your product it means
the product can work just fine without the extra cruft, so just make the low-
end version the default.

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mabus
[https://pastebin.com/EWKwdwXN](https://pastebin.com/EWKwdwXN)

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fake-name
Or maybe, and this might sound crazy, just don't have giant piles of
javascript. Or require javascript for _viewing_ content at all.

In the 90's, we had links for images where you'd have a thumbnail, and then
links like [small][large][original], or similar. This still works _perfectly_
today, and frankly makes for a better user experience.

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Frankly, if your website has a "lightweight" version, I want that version even
on my giant high-powered desktop. 90% of the places people use JS are
pointless or silly anyways.

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Dunedan
> In the 90's, we had links for images where you'd have a thumbnail, and then
> links like [small][large][original], or similar. This still works perfectly
> today, and frankly makes for a better user experience.

Nowadays you can get an even better experience completely without JavaScript
by using srcsets for images [1] to show images sized appropriate for the
displaying device.

[1]:
[https://www.w3schools.com/TAgs/att_source_srcset.asp](https://www.w3schools.com/TAgs/att_source_srcset.asp)

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mark_and_sweep
I live in an ECT slow-2g area in Germany, I have Save-Data: on, and my phone
is 5 years old. If your site is using React rather than server-rendered HTML,
that's usually a bad experience already.

Also, if you decide for your users that they are only gonna see a small, poor-
quality image rather than your shiny HD video because of some heuristics that
you made up and that are not transparent to your users, I think it's good
practice to allow your users to overwrite this decision (e.g. the "Load basic
HTML" link in Gmail).

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TeMPOraL
On the one hand, I'm with the commenters saying that if you have a "low-end"
and a "high-end" version of your site, then make low-end the default and don't
waste people's resources with the garbage.

But on the other hand, if you follow this article and start aggressively
scaling down images, and then provide no way (or no easy way) to get to their
full size - like e.g. imgur does on mobile - I'm going to resent you and curse
your name.

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swiley
What happened to just linking to the full size version?

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edhelas
Yes, go for it! Then I can have an extension in my browser that fakes my
device capabilities to the lowest to disable all the crappy things and have a
decent experience.

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butz
Is there any browser extension, so I could change networkType for some
websites just to have faster experience even on modern devices? Browsing with
dev tools open is a bit inconvenient.

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dreen
The article does not mention a crucial issue - how reliable and accurate
Network Information API is. From my experience results can vary quite a lot,
but then again I haven't looked into it for a couple months at least. I'd
really like some information on this, supported by testing in a wide range of
conditions.

