We rendered the top 1 million pages on the web, tracking every conceivable performance metric, logging every error, noting every requested URL. To our knowledge this produces the first dataset that connects performance, errors, and library use on the web. In this article we analyze what the data can tell us about creating high performance web sites.
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ugh, what a sad list of top linked resources! All advertising/tracking crap!
A common sentiment these days is that the web is somehow slower and buggier than it was 15 years ago. Because of an ever-growing pile of JavaScript and frameworks and webfonts and polyfills, we’ve eaten up all the gains that faster computers, networks and protocols have given us. Or so the argument goes
Yep, it’s slow, because there’s more crap in every page! Not too hard to figure out.
My advice is get rid of everything but your text content, then add in just what is critical for accessibility/usability. Don’t serve any ads. Don’t track anyone directly or indirectly by using any fonts/widgets by Google, FB, etc. And of course, serve it statically, from the edge closest to your user.
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@openletter sorry, some of my anti-modern-web vitriol likely came as directed at you - please don’t think that!
If you want to come down the oft depressing rabbit-hole of ultra-minimal web design with me, this article is a nice oldie: The Website Obesity Crisis
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Thanks for the resources, always useful to learn. I second the idea that things got worse on the Web, and am in favor or using much less resources now and build an ecologically-responsible Web !
Not linked to this subject so sorry to piggyback this thread, but for anybody interested in such things may I suggest Pi Hole, a great blocker project built on Rapsberry Pi that prevents you from loading crap from such services, and which by cutting them short even before they are called proves really useful in making the Internet faster for you, and helps consume less resources.
Have a nice day !
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Great to hear, always nice to feel we’re not alone in trying to clean up the bloat!
@frans also a big fan of Pi Hole 
I’m traveling around, just one laptop, so probably need to setup some VM and routing to get system wide decent blocking. Am trying out a system-wide one on iOS at the moment, if it can work through tethering, that may help. In macOS at the moment, else, I saw some unbound-adblock thing for OpenBSD that looks interesting if I can get back to a BSD-only laptop
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