[rob86]

Yahoo Answers Sucks! Facebook sucks!

When I say that, I don't mean the concept of the sites are that bad. (I'm just making a controversial title ) I mean their code must be horrible! Each page is like 1 to 1.5mb in size, and on dial-up it takes me 7-10 minutes just to load one page (with images disabled!!). Answers! is bearable , but Facebook is so bulky I can't even use it, it loads and loads and eventually it stops loading and I'm stuck with a half loaded blank page 90% of the time.

I've noticed this on a lot of big sites, sites like the big News sites, and most of the social networking sites. Microsoft's site also I think. They take an insane amount of time to load. It's like they pre-load a ton of useless stuff. Maybe this isn't a problem for most people with broadband, but aren't these massive collective file sizes (for websites) inefficient in general? Cost more to host? I don't know. It always seems to be like this with big well known sites (google excluded..it loads results fast).

I just don't understand what it is on these webpages that warrants such long download times. For example it takes me atleast 7 minutes to download answers.yahoo.com the main page, while it takes a website such as trap17's main forum page relatively no time at all (for my connection anyway:P), maybe a minute or less and there's more information to be seen!

[varalu]

Yeah... agreed that these sites are some of these sites you have mentioned are heavy. But when you start looking at the features... Do you really think you can avoid such growth of file sizes? I am sure companies like Facebook, Yahoo would have given a serious thought about the file sizes, load times etc. But there has to be a trade off between features etc and a site becoming heavy. The best example of a very simple and fast loading site is Google's search home page... but as you know it does not have much to showcase in its home page - Mostly text, text boxes and some buttons. Same applies to the search results also... Mostly it is only text. Whereas in case of other sites like Facebook, Gmail, Yahoo Mail etc... so much of information, has to be loaded. The UI itself takes up lot of bandwidth and then comes the data which takes time to load...

Now with the AJAX and other related technologies the applications are pre-fetching a lot of data which means it also downloads data which you might or might not use... but if you us it is going to be faster. Say in case of Gmail, the initial load time might be a little longer, but the usage later is completely efficient and user friendly.

Basically this is how the web is evolved... and the scapegoats are the ones who do not upgrade their hardware and internet connectivity.

May be what companies can do is to have a light version of all the applications they develop. If you have seen, Gmail and Orkut have a light/ simples version where lots of UI has been scraped and loads only the important stuff. May be other web companies can learn this from Google. I have not used MySPace and other social networks... So.. cannot comment on that.

[SpiderVV]

I do agree both suck, though Yahoo Answers have some lulzy topics. I once saw one that a girl asked if she could get pregnant just by sitting in a public toilet, and many others. lol
And I never liked Facebook. As Bart Simpson writes, "It's Facebook, not Assbook", I disagree completely.

This post has been edited by SpiderVV: 15 July 2009 - 07:00 PM

[Indou]

oioi, i've used them both xD Yahoo has its comical uses ^^; facebook is just for people with no lives >> and yet I don't use it... Anyway. Twitter. That's the next big thing. Lets hate on that :/ I will start. WHAT IS THE POINT OF IT? >> Just people making stupidly pointless comments. "I drank some Tea today. Don't like it." >> << >> Why?

[Gazeekoo]

I don't use yahoo answers, but yes, facebook definitely takes a loooooot of time while loading.
And on top of that, I keep getting stupid requests and when I get exasperated and confirm something, it takes me to a whole new page and asks me to invite other friends.
It is rather frustrating.
Or maybe I just have idiot friends.

Or, even more likely, I am the idiot for not seeing the point of all this.
:|

[rob86]

Google's lightweight approach to searching is probably the reason I became such a frequent user of it in it's early days. If I remember correctly, the other big search engines were bloated portals to stuff I never clicked on, then Google came around with just the results I wanted -- not to mention it actually found accurate results.

I don't use Facebook or anything like that, but I do have it and a friend added me and not wanting to be rude I signed on and spent an hour trying to load the accept/confirm and then an hour trying (unsuccessfully in the end) to send a quick message to the person. I was so frustrated, it ended the friendship. No I'm just kidding, but it did annoy the heck out of me.

I don't know if Facebook has the features to warrant such huge download times, as i don't really use it, but they should atleast make it accessible to everyone, there's no reason for it to keep timing out all the time!

Even Google mail gained weight, I used to use the normal version of it and it worked fine, it seemed to cache everything or something because it loaded fast, then they upgraded and I've never been able to load it since (takes forever and finally says error or something) and have had to stick with the basic version of gmail .

I don't know why anyone in a continent like North America should still be limited to dial up anyway, it's outrageous our government is so cheap / poor. We don't even have the proper phone lines for maximum dialup speed. They think that $499/mo for 200mb download limit per day for satellite internet slower than $25 broadband is an option. Yeah, okay then....

[TheDisturbedOne]

You can use the mobile version of Facebook on your computer by goingbto http://m.facebook.com. I use it on the computer sometimes when things are loading slow. The only thing is that there are far less features in mobile versions.

Yahoo Answers loads fine on my computer, buy if I open Yahoo Answers in 5 or more tabs, things start to freeze. Most of the things on there can just be answered by looking on Google, so you aren't missing much.

I was actually a little mad when I saw that the iPhone app for yahoo didn't include a mobile version of yahoo answers.

[onscreen]

Nothing sucks, you will just have to look for their alternative, say, their mobile version which is small-scale friendly for dialups. I never liked Yahoo Answers, its just so unfiltered where kids just simply reply to your serious questions.

[SpiderVV]

I'm on Wireless and find that the internet is increasingly slow. I think due to how fast normal internet can go, webmasters don't think alot about the speeds of slower internet services. And since wireless is increasingly popular (for some reason), I think websites should be reconsidering the loading speed of their websites. I'd like to have faster, but for now I'm stuck with my rubbish wireless

[TheDisturbedOne]

Ironically, I can actually load most pages faster on my mobile browser than on my computer.

[rob86]

Using the mobile version of a page is something I never thought of. I don't think I'd ever use Facebook (not my thing) but it's a good tip. I shouldn't have to do that though -- it still sucks! I don't think a page should be that bloated but that's just my opinion on the matter Times change though, I guess.. the internet is only getting faster all the time so I guess I should get used to the bloated webpages.

I've had some good answers in Yahoo Answers actually, it must depend on the section you're asking in. Most of the answers I've read are intelligent and maturely written but I've seen some (not my) questions completed loaded with rude comments.

[SaraInWasteland]

I don't really have a lot of problems loading big sites, as far as speed of loading goes, but if I'm running too many tabs or applications on my computer, my RAM goes downhill and a lot of times, my browser ends up freezing (which just annoys me to no end). Both sites are quite large though, I've definitely noticed that. I guess it's because so much stuff loads up on the page at once.

I also think that Web 2.0 could be a culprit. Many people have faster connections now than they did, say, ten years ago. Also, the possibilities while creating a website were more limited. Ten years ago, high-speed was much more expensive and didn't have a broad area of coverage, so websites catered to those with slower connections such as dial-up, plus they didn't have as many options for creating more dynamic sites. Now though, they again cater to the masses by making sites designed to load on high-speed connections, and it seems that they forget that there are still a lot of people out there who don't have high-speed Internet. Hell, it seems like sometimes they even forget that while one might have a high-speed connection, even residential high-speed can only go so fast. Combine the "cater to the masses" attitude of the Internet, along with all the advances that website coding has made within the past decade, and you have a recipe for sites loading slowly sometimes.

I'm not defending the sites in question, although I like both of them and use them frequently. There are plenty of things they could do (such as, like mentioned before, creating lite versions of the sites - in fact, MySpace, another site that can be slow to load, implemented a lite option for viewing profiles) - it's all a matter of actually getting them to do it. Of course though, seeing as how Facebook and MySpace compete on a consumer level, it probably won't be long before Facebook will come up with a lite option aside from the mobile site.

This was just my two cents.

[rayzoredge]

rob86, on Jul 16 2009, 02:17 PM, said:

Google's lightweight approach to searching is probably the reason I became such a frequent user of it in it's early days. If I remember correctly, the other big search engines were bloated portals to stuff I never clicked on, then Google came around with just the results I wanted -- not to mention it actually found accurate results.

That's actually how they garnered the audience that they did, because it was an easy name to remember, you went to Google JUST to search (whereas Yahoo is more laden with content to distract you from searching, plus they did it to try for a one-stop site where you could have access to everything), and it was very fast since there was nothing to load.

Nowadays, everyone is crazy for dynamics, interactivity, and on-the-fly work... which probably makes Facebook laden with code and "weight" because it calls from a million sources to update your news feeds, highlights, recommended friends, tracked requests and invites, etc. Yahoo is still Yahoo: the one-stop site that gives you access to your Yahoo Mail, your Yahoo Chat, Yahoo Groups, blah blah blah...

It's not the best way to go, but think about how some websites still garner an audience and sustained customer base despite an overload of information and/or data on one page (Amazon, anyone?). The ideal website is light to load and full of relevant content, but the balance is hard to strike, especially when you have a lot to share. We all know that not everyone has a high-speed connection to the Internet, but then again, we don't always design web sites for each and every potential client.

FYI, Facebook is working on a "lite" version of their social networking site. CNet provided the goods in a brief article about Facebook's Twitter-like site, which should be moreso focused on the hard goods and less on apps and other bandwidth-hungry data.

[chrismiller3404]

For one of many reasons that Yahoo Answers is... not so great... just google "How is Babby Formed"

[SaraInWasteland]

Ironically, I actually read about Facebook working on a lite version not long after I posted about MySpace having recently implemented a lite version. I don't think I'll become a big user of Facebook's lite version because I can load Facebook pretty quickly with my connection but I am sure it will come in handy for those who don't have high-speed connections.