

Loading ... - yread
http://www.prettyloaded.com/

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ThomPete
Lighten up guys :)

This is an old site and is pretty popular in the creative industry.

Not because of the technical accomplishments but because of the ideas. It
should judged as that.

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nevinera
>Not because of the technical accomplishments but because of the ideas. It
should judged as that.

It should be judged by whatever criteria the judge deems important, just like
everything else.

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ThomPete
That's up to you. All I am saying is that you are missing out on something if
all you judge it on is how much CPU is being used.

Kind of like judging code on what typography the editor uses to display it.

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kunley
When a loader itself takes about 80-90% of cpu time, i kill it and don't visit
the page again.

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bombarolo
i386sx?

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kunley
Nope, T3400 - generations younger & faster.

Btw I remember browsing the web with early versions of Netscape on X console
of an i386sx server which at the same time had dozens of irc-and-whatever-
doing users. The browsing experience was smoother than now.

Of course there were no flash, js and other pile of technologies. But face the
facts, most of these novelties are used today to deliver the content of
questionable value in a way which will make it better memes, nothing more.

If you look at it from a distance it's quite stupid use for such advancved
technologies. I still believe in an idea that computers are here to free us
from a boring repetitive work - to _compute_ things for us. The outcome of it
would be that average user spent _less_ time by the computers, enjoying what
he likes in a life instead. But today's situation is that the software
industry is making users sitting _more_ by the computers, because this
industry is all about trading the information, memes and advertisements,
luring the users into false comfort zones like social networks, ad target
groups via portals and stuff like that.

It's just stupid. Flash loaders are just part of this counter-productive
culture. Usually the more CPU they eat the less interesting the content showed
afterwards is. It's like that because CPU-eating intro shows something about
the state of mind of people who created it (or hired the creators) and most
likely such people will not have anything interesting to show as a real
content.

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mambodog
Watching this induces acid-flashback type remembrances of all the times I've
waited for unnecessary Flash sites to load... mainly movie websites.

Thinking back, the only person I have to blame is myself.

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seltzered
I was having issues with flash today, and ended up at neverloaded!
<http://www.prettyloaded.com/noflash.html>

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mirkules
Some of these look a lot like iPhone game loaders. It's really interesting how
limitations in hardware spur creativity.

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Groxx
Some of the loaders I've seen (Coke's sites in particular, in my experience)
have _ridiculous_ system requirements to appear smooth. Add in that they're
using Flash, which pretty much allows you to do _anything_... and they're
examples of what the _removal_ of limitations has spurred. Google's pacman is
a good example of creativity within limitations, given that it's a bunch of
divs and even works on IE6, instead of something more capable like <canvas>.

Not that I'm denying limitations spur creativity. There are some _awesome_
things in the Demoscene, and older hardware, and more power can often result
in less focus.

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ugh
The Pacman loading bar [1] is actually very interesting. I think it’s just a
static image – doomed to be stuck at 60% forever. Since load times are low
that doesn’t really matter. It’s instantly recognized for what it is and that
might be all that’s needed (and it fits the theme better than those newfangled
spinning indicators).

[1] Empty your cache (if you visited before), load and quickly click “Insert
Coin”, you might see it for a fraction of a second: <http://google.com/pacman>

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abp
Yeah, there we can watch loading screens for hours, without ever getting
anything at the end.

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jared314
Art is nice, but why isn't the browser loading bar accessible in js?

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lubos
It took me a few minutes to figure out what was going on... silly me

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sesqu
Here's the alternate content, which I saw before allowing scripts:

Once upon a time, in a land of sputtering dial-up connections, websites took
ages to load. Folks yearned for the 100% mark. But as soon as that figure
arrived, the beloved (or bemoaned) preloader disappeared, never to be seen or
heard from again. Until now.

Pretty Loaded is an archive of preloaders that preload other preloaders…which
in turn reveal yet more preloaders. Copy that? It’s a tribute to a vanishing
art form amid a constantly changing digital landscape.

This infinite loader is being put together with help from friends across the
interactive community. We’ll continue to add to it over time, so keep on
coming back.

Pretty Loaded is created and curated by Big Spaceship. Kindly direct your
observations and inquiries right this way: info |at symbol| prettyloaded |dot|
com.

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upinsmoke
Only thing to miss when HTML5 take over. No more loaders.

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bd
Don't worry, there will be loaders with HTML5.

When your application uses a lot of assets, it's pretty much unavoidable,
independently of underlying technology.

In fact, it's probably going to be worse, at least at the beginning, as JS
currently lacks a good way to handle packs of binary resources.

Just check Google IO presentation from team that ported Quake 2 to JS [1].
Resource loading was a big pain point, they had to resort to pack data in UTF
strings.

[http://code.google.com/events/io/2010/sessions/gwt-
html5.htm...](http://code.google.com/events/io/2010/sessions/gwt-html5.html)

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zefhous
One thing though, is that browsers cache the data with HTML.

Cappuccino uses UTF strings for data, but I wouldn't say "has to resort," it's
actually a great experience for both the developer and the user.

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confuzatron
Silverlight also uses the browser cache. I'm surprised that Flash doesn't make
use of it (if I had to guess I'd say it does, or rather at least it can).

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seanalltogether
Flash has used the browser cache since the inception of the plugin. In fact it
routes all http requests through the browser itself, it has no built-in stack
of it's own. (unless you're on the desktop)

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confuzatron
SL uses the browser stack by default, but also lets you use its own HTTP
client stack.

