I get most of my news from the Google News page. I’m much more likely to click on a link to Foxnews or Forbes, than I am to click on a link to WashingtonPost :smack: Can you believe that?
When I do click on WashingtonPost I don’t attempt to wait for the page content to present itself. (How long does that take anyway? Minutes? Hours?) I just do control-U, control-S and run a tool to extract the actual text content hidden in all the Javascript garbage, etc.
Just now I read an interesting (though inconclusive) article about the evolution of monogamy. It read it at L.A. Times, but Google gave priority to the defective site – Washington Post – and I accidentally clicked there first. Is there a way to tell Google to never present me with pages from specific sites?
In that example, the Washington Post page has 179 kbytes, but only about 750 words for the actual article. The problem is not that 98% of the load is wasted on Html tags and Javascripts – I’ve a fastish Internet and the page loads quickly. The problem is that it doesn’t present the content until it’s loaded every Tom, Dick and Harry Javascript or other “malware” commanded by its Html. How long does that take for others? I’m not sure how long it takes on my machine: I never wait for it anymore.
Perhaps disabling Javascript would render washingtonpost.com usable. But many sites I use require Javascript, and I’ve got plenty of other, more useful, ways to inconvenience myself.
So Fuck You, Washington Post. Once upon a time you were one of the better newspapers. I’ve no idea if that’s still true: your site is effectively inaccessible to me. Hire yourself a web programmer or Fuck off.
I’m not sure I’ve been to the Washington Post site specifically, but I can certainly get on board with a general rant against news sites that clutter up their pages with so much bloat and crap and they take forever to load (if they don’t lock up your computer).
It loads pretty slowly for me. Not “dial-up Internet” slow, but more like “WTF is wrong with my DSL?” slow. Crappy page design and/or overloaded servers, I assume.
ETA: and actually, that LA Times link in your OP loaded kind of slowly too. (Other pages don’t, so I don’t think it’s my connection.)
Data point: I have no idea what you’re talking about. WaPo has been my go-to online newspaper for years and I haven’t noticed any delays or hiccups. Most PCs I use have AdBlock and NoScript, but I haven’t noticed a problem with the ones that don’t.
I’m running Firefox 22.0 with the add-ons Adblock Plus, Adblock Plus Pop-upAddon, BetterPrivacy, Element Hiding Helper for Adblock, Ghostery, google-no-tracking, Self-Destructing Cookies and Prefbar with cookies, send referrer, Java, JavaScript and Flash turned off, and every cache Firefox has turned off.
Wow, this is a new low for Fox. I knew they were evil but to actively go out and make it too hard for people to access other news sites so they are forced to go to Fox is a shame.
WaPo works fine for me, but they’ve just gone paywall (20 free articles /month), requiring me to Google the URL rather than clicking links directly from the main page. Still, not slow at all with Firefox.
In my rant, I mentioned why I don’t want to be bothered to turn off JavaScript.
I live in Thailand and use a weird ISP. Is it possible that some distance- or geographic-specific problem, or invisible proxy-server, or even the Thai government censorship is causing the delay?
Another reason I use Firefox with the Prefbar add-on. I can turn JavaScript and everything else you see in this screenshot on and off with a click. I clicked it on and turned on cookies to post this. (There are a ton of other controls that can be added to Prefbar.)
The NoScript add-on can turn scripts off and on too, but NoScript’s a supreme pain in the ass.
Edited to add: I don’t know much about the Thai government, so I can’t comment on that.
