Anyone else think this client-side app trend has gotten in the way of recognizing a great case for a server-side render (or even a cached page)?
10 - 15 seconds to load a page is the result of poor code rather than 'because it's a client-side app'. Consequently you need to compare a poorly built client-side app with a poorly coded server-side app, or a poorly configured cache, for it to be a fair comparison. And, sadly for us all, there's every chance it'll be just as slow if was rendered somewhere else.
The answer to slow pages is to build them better no matter what tech is being used to drive them.
In the case of this page specifically, loading 17.3Mb of gifs is the main problem.
The really fun thing is that it requires work to break this.
By default, pages on the web progressively load gifs and images. You have to put in more work just to make your user experience worse.
It's the same thing I see on some sites that use `div`s as links instead of normal `a` tags. Someone had to go to all of the trouble of adding click handlers, tab indexes, extra styling and classes, just so the page would be less semantic for screen readers.
10 - 15 seconds to load a page is the result of poor code rather than 'because it's a client-side app'. Consequently you need to compare a poorly built client-side app with a poorly coded server-side app, or a poorly configured cache, for it to be a fair comparison. And, sadly for us all, there's every chance it'll be just as slow if was rendered somewhere else.
The answer to slow pages is to build them better no matter what tech is being used to drive them.
In the case of this page specifically, loading 17.3Mb of gifs is the main problem.