ALA about Angulars shortcoming: it’s the server, stupid!

In “Let links be links” at A List Apart Ross Penman discusses some of the dangers of building single-page-apps that entirely rely on client-side JavaScript (using e.g. AngularJS or Ember) and more importantly proposes a solution;

When dynamic web page content is rendered by a server, rendering code only has to be able to run on that one server. When it’s rendered on a client, the code now has to work with every client that could possibly visit the website. […] If framework developers could put in the effort (which, admittedly, seems large) to get apps running in Node just as they run in the browser, initial page rendering could be handled by the server, with all subsequent activity handled by the browser. […] If this effort could be made at the outset by a framework maintainer, then every developer using that framework could immediately transform an app that only worked on the latest web browsers into a progressively enhanced experience compatible with virtually any web client—past, present, or future. […]

QuirksMode: “The problem with Angular”

I’ve previously already expressed my doubts about the how well-suited AngularJS is for mobile web development (in Dutch, though, as I was discussing the merits of the mobile news-site of the Flemish broadcaster VRT).
QuirksMode’s PPK dove in a lot deeper in his “The problem with Angular“, stating amongst other things;

Angular is aimed at corporate IT departments rather than front-enders, many of whom are turned off by its peculiar coding style, its emulation of an HTML templating system that belongs on the server instead of in the browser, and its serious and fundamental performance issues. I’d say Angular is mostly being used by people from a Java background because its coding style is aimed at them. Unfortunately they aren’t trained to recognize Angular’s performance problems.

The performance problems PPK mentions are not the initial download of angular.js in the browser (which is one of the reasons why I dislike it), but the fact that angular.js does a huge amount of DOM-manipulations, which are costly, especially on mobile. This quote says it all;

Although templating is the correct solution, doing it in the browser is fundamentally wrong. The cost of application maintenance should not be offloaded onto all their users’s browsers — especially not the mobile ones. This job belongs on the server.

But do read PPK’s article for more insights on Angular and the road it is heading down with AngularJS 2.0!

Nieuwe m.deredactie.be niet meer mobiel!

(Update December 2014: ik bouwde zelf een alternatieve versie die sneller en toegankelijker is op http://futtta.be/redactie/)


m.deredactie.be homepageIk ❤ mobiele websites, zelfs op de desktop. Bij het refreshen van m.deredactie.be vandaag (12 mei) kwam ik op de nieuwe versie uit. De developers hebben zich ongetwijfeld goed geamuseerd om niet alleen de nieuwe look & feel te implementeren, maar ook om de achterliggende technologie grondig te herbouwen naar een JavaScript-based UI volgens de “single page application“-filosofie (iemand heeft zich wel héél erg in angular.js verdiept, daar aan de Reyerslaan).
Maar ik, eenvoudige gebruiker, ben minder enthousiast. De site ziet er misschien moderner uit, maar is minder bruikbaar; zonder javascript is er niets te zien (neem een voorbeeld aan “cut the mustard“, progressive enhancement zoals de BBC die predikt), “above the fold” staan er enkel afbeeldingen en vooral; alles is plots trager!
Want over snelheid kun je niet discussiëren; sneller is beter, trager is slechter, zeker mobiel. De voorgaande versie van m.deredactie.be “woog” pakweg 150KB en laadde volledig in minder dan 2 seconden, maar de nieuwe versie tikt af op 2560KB in 6 seconden (gemeten op webpagetest.org met “cable” bandbreedte-profiel, met “fast mobile” wordt dat 17s).
Is m.deredactie.be een mobiele site? 2 megabyte aan data zeggen van niet.