Website Performance

[enixon]

Is the performance of this website absolute trash compared to others for anyone else?

On the mobile version, I keep getting these "scroll advertisements" that make the website completely useless because they never go away. On the desktop version, my CPU usage is almost always at 100% because of JavaScript ads. Once I installed AdBlocker (not a fan of doing), I can actually use this website properly. I can type without my text disappearing or glitching out, and it doesn't take me 5 minutes to scroll through forum posts.

I'm just curious if this is happening to anyone else. I'm a Surface 3, but it shouldn't matter.

 

[Guytronic]

Moved to feedback.

Yes there have been complaints about this previously.

 

[enixon]

Moved to feedback.

Yes there have been complaints about this previously.

My bad, I didn't scroll all the way to the bottom to see this forum.

I am using IE11 too, it seems to be much worse with this browser than Firefox or Google Chrome. However, I just like using IE11 since it syncs with my Windows Phone...obviously. hehe

 

[nedarata]

is there mobile version of mobile version?
because at this stage it is not usable on windows phone

 

[hotphil]

is there mobile version of mobile version?
because at this stage it is not usable on windows phone

There's an app for that.

 

[michail71]

After the redesign I'm finding IE, Spartan and chrome to render the same. The key is UI responsiveness. In IE all the ads had to finish loading before scrolling could start, which could take sometimes 5-10 seconds or more. 10 seconds doesn't sound like much but if you have ever worked in e-commerce, 2 seconds is a death sentence. Your user is already on the competitor's site by then. Now IE seems to scroll as soon as chrome.

 

[James Falconer]

After the redesign I'm finding IE, Spartan and chrome to render the same. The key is UI responsiveness. In IE all the ads had to finish loading before scrolling could start, which could take sometimes 5-10 seconds or more. 10 seconds doesn't sound like much but if you have ever worked in e-commerce, 2 seconds is a death sentence. Your user is already on the competitor's site by then. Now IE seems to scroll as soon as chrome.

That's excellent to hear. The new layout does seem to pack a lot of performance gains, especially in IE.

 

[mary beth hale]

That's excellent to hear. The new layout does seem to pack a lot of performance gains, especially in IE.

Yes. Noticeable difference

 

[Ryan Spooner]

The new layout does seem to have improved page load performance in IE and Spartan somewhat. A shame the new layout is a horrible mess. Article titles all in different horizontal positions, forum links and store promotions squirted inbetween articles, and varying sizes of article images. Not impressed to be honest

 

[Daniel Rubino]

Yes. Noticeable difference

Officially speaking, it is a 40% increase in performance from the previous layout.

 

[shamrock1988]

Hey Guys

Just my personal opinion here but I can't say I like the new frontpage.

In my opinion it seems very messy, everything looks thrown together from ads, to forum discussion to actual stories.

Maybe it's been this way for a while as I normally only used my Windows Phone app but since it broke I've been using the mobile version on an iphone and the website itself.

Again, only my personal opinion.

 

[michail71]

It doesn't bother me too much but I do see what you are saying. There is a little of a slapped together look.

Some people seem to think it's the end of the world and a disaster but I think some little tweaks to the existing design would help. Often times there are a couple revisions that take place after a redesign such as this. No one can nail it all at once and with agile development you can always refine things.

People get a knee jerk reaction to change, which is that it must go back to the way it was, instead of thinking about refining the change.

I do like the direction though - better performance, infinite scrolling and forum content which ties in the two main aspects of this site.

 

[pallentx]

I don't think what I'm experiencing is rendering performance, but I get serious lag on this site. I click a link and the browser will just sit there like the site is not responding. I hit refresh and might get a blank page that just sits there. Then up to a full minute later, the page loads. It doesn't matter if I'm on my beast workstation at work, my Surface2 or home desktop. Its like the site just doesn't have the bandwidth.

Its getting so bad that I find myself not coming here because I don't want to deal with it, which is a bummer, because I really like this site.

 

[michail71]

Odd, occasionally I get a sluggish load but nowhere near as often now. For me everything will render right away but sometimes take a while before it can be scrolled.

 

[pallentx]

Been busy with work and haven't been around the last couple of days, but this morning things are loading normally.

 

[buddler]

Officially speaking, it is a 40% increase in performance from the previous layout.

On ie11 (Desktop) your site is a cluttered mess. Even on new i5/i7 Hardware, you won't get a decent performance, since loading takes forever and cpu load is almost always 100%.
Who needs all those animated (slightly size-changing) images and "colourfull whitespace"?
Even on large screens, you only see 2 topics at once on your landing page, the rest is adverts or unused space.

I strongly dislike the messy way of mixing ads, forum topics and news.

Browsing on your phone makes everything worse: loading takes for ages and full page ads destroy usability.
Go back to mid 2000s, where websites had small fonts and looked well organized. A flat modern, but messy design is crap. And keep Java ads out.

 

[leciphitet]

Please dont delete my comment.

The website in general is noticeable better, on desktop/laptops/tablets, but what about mobile ??. Yesterday I was trying to vote on a poll, it was unusable on ie windows phone 8.1, the site was slow, the elements on the layout where jumping up and down.
My comment is towards to is considered a optimization of the mobile website.

 

[pallentx]

Today has been terrible. I don't know if anything has changed on your end, or if its traffic volume or what. I gave up a few times this afternoon - all I could get was white pages, nothing would load. I keep thinking its my work internet, but I go to other sites and everything is fine.

 

[Daniel Rubino]

Today has been terrible. I don't know if anything has changed on your end, or if its traffic volume or what. I gave up a few times this afternoon - all I could get was white pages, nothing would load. I keep thinking its my work internet, but I go to other sites and everything is fine.

Yup, don't disagree there. Talking to tech about seeing what can be done as I agree, IE11 performance has been bad on mobile lately.

 

[pallentx]

Yup, don't disagree there. Talking to tech about seeing what can be done as I agree, IE11 performance has been bad on mobile lately.

Is it an IE11 only thing? I'll check it in chrome if it has issues again and see...