‘Waiting for ad.doubleclick.net…..’
‘Transferring to chicago.newspix.com…..’
‘Performing TLS handshake to secure.webpage.net…..’
‘Resolving address site.goodurl.com…’
‘Sending data to analytics.google.com….’
and so on, and so on. This is just a tiny sampling of the ‘stuff’ that today’s internet user is constantly subjected to. Not that the typical internet user is trying to do anything generally accepted to be technically complex. All these messages, and many more, result from what should be (and used to be) the straightforward act of trying to access a web page.
This is not an idle rant. [warning: old guy rant follows, but it’s not idle]. I composed web pages in my day, and it just seems that it was a lot simpler, faster and more responsive to user requests than today’s modern web page. If you read the source for a typical web page now, locating the code that places a particular bit of information on the screen is an exercise in locating the mythical needle in the haystack, although now it’s more cleverly hidden. The page code is teeming with links to piles of different services, widgets, applets, ad sites, graphics servers, analytical gatherers, and the like. It doesn’t resemble anything that anyone actually, you know, wrote.
Given the nature of today’s web authoring tools, and companies’ unending efforts to outsource/outplace everything, this come as no surprise. When presenting a user a form to fill out, why code the different months as possibilities, when you can just link to someone else’s little widget that will do that for you? Same with state codes, surely there is a little app out there that you can link to to retrieve the valid state codes. Lather, rinse, repeat, until your web page now links out to a couple dozen other places.
And the more of these referenced, the greater the likelihood that one, two or many of these services may not be available, their web provider may be slow, they may have closed up shop, etc. That’s when we hapless users are confronted with the march of messages across the bottom of the screen, instead of the content we requested.
Complaints to the company you originally wanted to connect to are often met with comments blaming the 3rd party in question. Personally, I call the company on that. I am an aggrieved customer, and the original company, as I see it, owns the experience I have on their site. Regrettably, I explain back, their issues with a mysterious 3rd party are little concern of mine, and how do they plan to resolve my issue? Predictably, this is rarely a successful approach, but I would love to see everyone refuse to accept mediocrity and poor service; perhaps, this would serve to raise the bar that everyone must clear.
I have convinced myself. Only a few billion folks to go.
In no particular order 