# Remember the days when we'd watch an Internet site load one line at a time? **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [January 20, 2012, 2:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remember-the-days-when-wed-watch-an-internet-site-load-one-line-at-a-time/610087 "2012-01-20T02:10:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2012, 6:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remember-the-days-when-wed-watch-an-internet-site-load-one-line-at-a-time/610087/41 "2012-01-22T06:09:11Z")
Another quarter is Irish. “Came during the Famine” Irish. Grandma Jennings didn’t talk about it, having missed it by a generation or two, but she cooked like it. “Cheap” doesn’t begin to describe it. “Internet? Are you going fancy, you bastid?” Saw a job ad on Craigslist asking for an Irish tutor. Wondered why a tutor would be required so you could end every second sentence with “you bastid.” Had she married an Irishman, it would be “you fookin’ bastid.” 😃 ETA: She was a dear and substituted swatting you with a broom for swearing. The Baby Jesus can’t seem to see that. ---
**Author:** ![Ponch8](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ponch8/32/9883_2.png) [@Ponch8](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ponch8)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2012, 6:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remember-the-days-when-wed-watch-an-internet-site-load-one-line-at-a-time/610087/42 "2012-01-22T06:23:17Z")
> [@Max\_the\_Immortal](#): > > Websites have ads? > [@saje](#): > > Between AdBlock and NoScript, It’s not a problem at all 🙂 Responses like these come up every time there’s a thread about internet ads. Some of us don’t have the option of using AdBlock or whatever, because we’re forced to use whatever browser our workplaces have installed on our computers. ---
**Author:** ![Savannah](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b3f665/32.png) [@Savannah](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Savannah)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2012, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remember-the-days-when-wed-watch-an-internet-site-load-one-line-at-a-time/610087/43 "2012-01-22T17:23:32Z")
Another cry in the chorus about the tendency to break up an article into 10 pages of a “slideshow” or 12 pages of a chopped-up story. I’ve lost patience, as well, and close without reading. You used to be able to click the Print version to get a cleanly formatted page, but that choice seems to be disappearing lately. ---
**Author:** ![ZipperJJ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zipperjj/32/211_2.png) [@ZipperJJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZipperJJ)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2012, 6:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remember-the-days-when-wed-watch-an-internet-site-load-one-line-at-a-time/610087/44 "2012-01-22T18:56:59Z")
> [@Ale](#): > > Try browsing the internet, way out in the boonies, with a EDGE dongle modem. It makes me staby, specially when the inevitable snob in some forum or another, when I complain about a web site being too bloated to work properly, tells me to get a better connection. > [@curlcoat](#): > > I’d sympathise but I don’t know what that means! This is the Pit. No sympathy! Just call him a fucking backwards-ass hillbilly and move on! 😃 ---
**Author:** ![curlcoat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ea5d25/32.png) [@curlcoat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/curlcoat)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2012, 2:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remember-the-days-when-wed-watch-an-internet-site-load-one-line-at-a-time/610087/45 "2012-01-23T02:50:26Z")
> [@ZipperJJ](#): > > This is the Pit. No sympathy! Just call him a fucking backwards-ass hillbilly and move on! 😃 Oh, right! **Ale** - what he said! 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Aji\_de\_Gallina](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aji_de_gallina/32/260_2.png) [@Aji\_de\_Gallina](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aji_de_Gallina)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2012, 3:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remember-the-days-when-wed-watch-an-internet-site-load-one-line-at-a-time/610087/46 "2012-01-23T03:05:52Z")
> [@Una\_Persson](#): > > It’s not even the ads, it’s the combination of sloppy-assed web design and an almost pathological reliance on Flash/embedded shit that makes pages slow. My company intranet comes to me over a 1+GB connection, and has not one single ad - yet the home page takes nearly a minute to load due to them doing things like putting in a 35MB video in place of an animated GIF, or embedding 250MB videos of the CEO’s “message to the troops” on the page instead of having a link to “if you want to see this.” And the videos for some reason never seem to be cached. Plus people seem to be absolutely helpless with basic HTML, so a page which by all rights should only take 1kb of HTML takes 100kb of CSS and javascript crap - to basically announce a holiday party. > > Finally, it seems that no one under the age of 30 understands that 1) a BMP is many times larger than a JPG, and 2) Taking a 4000x3000 pixel picture and forcing it to fit in a 400x300 pixel space is a fucking stupid way to do things, compared to resizing the picture offline and putting it in the web page as a 400x300 pixel image. I found one intranet page which did just that - it had a 12MB 4000x3000 pixel BMP dynamically re-sized into 400x300, which on a lark I turned into a 34kb JPG. :rolleyes: > > All one has to do is read the colossally stupid spelling and grammar errors on even mainstream pages like CNN and BBC to know that in some cases the people designing these things are neither smart nor really thinking about doing a good job. 1100000% agreed. Apparently website design is mora arcane than decphering hieroglyphs without the Rosetta stone. This restaurnat I wanted to check has a flash app that make the menu appear as a “book” with turning pages and everything. I’d support SOPA, PIPA and all of them if thet would ban crappy site design. ---
**Author:** ![Covered\_In\_Bees](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/7ab992/32.png) [@Covered\_In\_Bees](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Covered_In_Bees)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2012, 6:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remember-the-days-when-wed-watch-an-internet-site-load-one-line-at-a-time/610087/47 "2012-01-23T06:10:50Z")
This reminds me of something I’ve been wanting to ask, why is AdBlock Plus performing so poorly on Chrome for me recently? It’s not blocking any of the BS that appears right here on the Straight Dope when it used to do so just fine. Now I have to switch back to Firefox, which has been having zero problems blocking the crap that appears on this site. What’s the deal? ---
**Author:** ![Anaamika](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Anaamika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anaamika)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2012, 5:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remember-the-days-when-wed-watch-an-internet-site-load-one-line-at-a-time/610087/48 "2012-01-24T17:27:41Z")
I did not use Adblock for the longest time. What drove me to it was some ads on a specific set of websites that talked to me. Nothing freaks me out more than my speakers suddenly talking when I didn’t expect it. No one should use my speakers unless I say it’s OK. Boom! I installed Adblock that day. ---
**Author:** ![Renie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ecae2f/32.png) [@Renie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Renie)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2012, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remember-the-days-when-wed-watch-an-internet-site-load-one-line-at-a-time/610087/49 "2012-01-24T18:22:56Z")
Wow…I thought we were the only onles left in the USA that can’t get DSL! I feel much better now knowing there are others out there like me! ---
**Author:** ![Cheshire\_Human](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/5f8ce5/32.png) [@Cheshire\_Human](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheshire_Human)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2012, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remember-the-days-when-wed-watch-an-internet-site-load-one-line-at-a-time/610087/50 "2012-01-25T00:25:38Z")
> [@AClockworkMelon](#): > > What kind of slow-as-shit internet do you guys have? The content of that page loads almost immediately with the ads taking a couple seconds longer. Yeah. It only took 11 seconds for me, and I only have 768kbs, and a 1.6ghz laptop. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2012, 7:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remember-the-days-when-wed-watch-an-internet-site-load-one-line-at-a-time/610087/51 "2012-01-26T19:22:51Z")
I support this pitting. My server, slowish by broadband standard at the best of times, often runs very slow and renders some website unusable. With Firefox AdBlock Plus, things improved but I still have problems. I read news via Google, and have to condition myself not to click certain sites: Washington Post, for example, loads slowly. Funny thing is: If I click Disconnect Modem, sometimes most of the page I’m waiting for will suddenly appear! I think most of the data had already loaded, but browser was waiting so it could arrange ad placement, etc. I’m not sure ads, per se, are the problem. Some pages force the loading of largely useless .css or .js files. Another problem is that clicking a link often doesn’t take you to that page, but rather a server script at the linking page to monitor your activity (mostly for future ads). I don’t mind being monitored, but don’t like the delay. Even on SDMB, I used to need to copy-paste URLs, rather than click to go through SDMB’s slow and error-prone monitor, but SDMB seems to have improved lately. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remember-the-days-when-wed-watch-an-internet-site-load-one-line-at-a-time/610087.md?page=2)