As a dev, I want to use tree shaking to make my bundles small and optimize to make my website lighthouse score 100 across the board.
What happens? Marketing needs tag manager installed and then proceeds to async load 50 tracking scripts in the background.
Design wants the large hero images because on the high Res devices they use it looks slightly pixelated and when you push back, a quick screenshot to the PM will guarantee the ticket is added to the backlog.
Point being I'm not sure claiming that Devs hold the power is particularly constructive as there is a large portion on non-techies who have their own priorities to push.
When I say these folks get upset over slight pixelization, I'm not even talking about pixelization where everyone can tell it's a low quality image. I'm talking about situations where people are upset they can't read an iPhone screen someone is holding in the background when they are viewing it on their 4K display (note: that particular phone isn't the focal point of the shot, nor does it have anything to add to it; it's just someone staged back there to make the shot feel more alive, mind you!).
It's disheartening because I do want to deliver the best experience possible and try to do everything in my power to accomplish it, but sometimes I lose out and folks force their megabyte imagery.
Explaining them how much worse the bloat makes the site's experience for the user, showing how many pages are left partially loaded because the user did not have the patience and navigated away, how the competitor's site loads faster, may help convince them to keep the experience reasonably slim.
Asking for web sites that don't have 27 trackers, enormous hero images, a full copy of framework of the week, etc. is like asking for native games under Linux: the money isn't there to justify the added hassle and support costs.
The only thing I take a stand on is when the product is actively harmful and immoral. Just being shit or slow is not my problem.
Users of the features we develop are the ones that produce bad websites.
There’s also mystery JS that slows down everything and breaks random parts of our app - that’s your Chrome extensions :)
This attitude seems common, that websites are just going to be fat and get fatter. That's a lie.
Not if you, as a web developer, stop the bloat. The power is in your hands, you just need to use it.
No, you don't need that 8 MB hero image. No, you don't need that bloated framework. No, you don't need those 37 tracking libraries. No, you don't need a "Read More" button hiding most of the content. No, you don't need dynamically loaded clickbait at the bottom of the page. No, you don't need an autoplaying video. No, you don't need load a script to inject text into a copy operation. No, you don't need 87 cookies. No you don't need to load random unvetted code from a third party advertiser. No, you don't need the page text to fade in on scroll. No, you don't need any of that.
In case you forgot, https://idlewords.com/talks/website_obesity.htm