
Ask HN: Are 300 ms considered acceptable latency for browser-internal URLs? - currysausage
In Chrome 49, the Downloads page (Ctrl+J, chrome:&#x2F;&#x2F;downloads) defaults to a new Polymer-based Material Design UI. The HTML file alone weighs 2847 lines, but what&#x27;s 2847 lines of code if it&#x27;s being loaded from my SSD, right?<p>Well, Ctrl+J feels even more sluggish now than it did before. So I check Developer Tools: 57 ms till Finish for the old UI, 306 ms for the new one [1, 2].<p>Add to that the time that Chrome apparently needs to somehow prepare the Downloads tab, and we arrive at a perceived load time of around 800 ms. I find this more than irritating if I just want to quickly open that file that I have downloaded a minute ago.<p>A few years ago, I think the rule of thumb for <i>web</i> pages was that 100 ms are acceptable latency that users typically won&#x27;t perceive as sluggish. Nowadays, we accept hundreds of milliseconds, often whole seconds, for trivial <i>local</i> UIs. Yes, yes, that button click animation is pretty sweet. But is it worth 300 ms of additional latency?<p>I&#x27;m disappointed in Chrome. Your mission used to be &quot;<i>speed</i>, simplicity, and security.&quot; (It&#x27;s still on chrome:&#x2F;&#x2F;help!) Nowadays, <i>opening a new tab</i> takes hundreds of milliseconds. Can&#x27;t you at least somehow cache this not-so-exotic action so the browser at least <i>feels</i> responsive?<p>And I&#x27;m baffled about recent industry trends. On today&#x27;s hardware, I could probably boot up Windows 2000 in 300 ms. What is my CPU even <i>doing</i> in these 300 ms while chrome:&#x2F;&#x2F;downloads is loading? Have we simply stopped caring about latency at all?<p>[1] http:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;kODF3FJ.png<p>[2] http:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;rVj4D1u.png
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detaro
No, that is pretty bad, and that specific example has been noticeably slow for
a while.

