[hackerman_fi]

The article has IMO two flawed arguments:

1. There is math for how long it takes to send even one packet over satellite connection (~1600ms). Its a weak argument for the 14kb rule since there is no comparison with a larger website. 10 packets wont necessarily take 16 seconds.

2. There is a mention that images on webpage are included in this 14kb rule. In what case are images inlined to a page’s initial load? If this is a special case and 99.9% of images don’t follow it, it should be mentioned at very least.

[throwup238]

> In what case are images inlined to a page’s initial load?

Low resolution thumbnails that are blurred via CSS filters over which the real images fade in once downloaded. Done properly it usually only adds a few hundred bytes per image for above the fold images.

I don’t know if many bloggers do that, though. I do on my blog and it’s probably a feature on most blogging platforms (like Wordpress or Medium) but it’s more of a commercial frontend hyperoptimization that nudges conversions half a percentage point or so.

[hinkley]

Inlined svg as well. It’s a mess.

[hsbauauvhabzb]

Also the assumption that my userbase uses low latency satellite connections, and are somehow unable to put up with my website, when every other website in current existence is multiple megabytes.

[ricardobeat]

There was no such assumption, that was just the first example after which he mentions normal roundtrip latencies are usually in the 100-300ms range.

Just because everything else is bad, doesn't invalidate the idea that you should do better. Today's internet can feel painfully slow even on a 1Gbps connection because of this; websites were actually faster in the early 2000s, during the transition to ADSL, as they still had to cater to dial-up users and were very light as a result.