Comments on Comfort of Bloated Web

Daniel said:

Just wanted to see how fast it is.

Daniel said:

It's fast!

John Nagle said:

You're on Hacker News today.

Dave said:

That's an interesting problem. I should try commenting to see how fast it is.

Dave said:

Wow that was pleasant!

Kaappo Raivio said:

Well now I just have to test how quick the comment form is. :D

Kaappo Raivio said:

Wow! It's fast!

Anonymous said:

I do apologize, but I wished to see if your form is really as fast as the article claims! :-) I enjoyed your post!

A commenter said:

I had to test this of course. :)

Same commenter said:

I think you could improve the UX by putting the success message on top and pushing the content down. Also disable the submit button to avoid double submission.

karmanyaahm said:

These fast comments are really cool.

Ahmet said:

I am testing how fast the comment submission actually is!

Ahmet said:

That was really fast!

Tomasz said:

You are unfortunately probably going to get many comments testing the speed of your comment submission form. This is one of those.

TeMPOraL said:

Maybe add a note to the success message, along the lines of "Yes, the comment was actually received by the server. Feels too fast to be true? You may have become used to poorly engineered websites being really slow." With the last sentence being a link to this article.

TeMPOraL said:

Additionally, I'd suggest modifying the form so that the submit button goes away after successful submission, because it's so tempting to hit it again. (I may be habituated to the bloated web too. It's startling to see it not even blink!)

Max Kim Tobiasen said:

You should simply append an "Yes, this website is really that fast" to the text.

Tom Cooks said:

Sorry to be that guy, but your excellent article made me want to try.

Just said:

Cool article! Just testing the speed!

Anonymous said:

Just testing the said comment form to see how fast is fast. :)

Ironically, I was just having a similar conversation with a friend earlier that no matter how much our processors are getting faster, better GPUs etc., the web and software feels like it keeps getting slower. It's almost as if people are just writing worse and non-performant code. Some websites turn my laptop into a rocket ship because WebGL!

Zeljko Nesic said:

I think that bloated web is like TV - unhealthy junk that is given to us to accept it as normal.

I praise websites like yours. This void-of-meaning comment is just to check how fast actually does it.

Zeljko Nesic said:

Magnificent! Perfect!

My UX tip would be to empty and hide the form altogether when you are showing this green success box.

Sorry for the spamming you,
All Best

Matt Lee said:

Redirect the user to a dedicated "success" page?

Joko Maxino said:

Wow so fast commenting!

Hady said:

Forgive me my intrusion. I just sincerely wanted to experience a bloat free comment box. Thank you for not adding an artificial delay.

Bill Dietrich said:

Maybe in addition to the success message, display their comment in a read-only block on the page. That way they can see that their comment has been saved.

ElFitz said:

The most hilarious part? You would not be the first one ^^'.

See Curious snippet of code from the official macOS chess app and The UX Secret That Will Ruin Apps For You.

ElFitz said:

Wow. Blazing fast.

Seeing is believing said:

Is this really so blazing fast to be incredible?

Seeing is believing said:

Wow it really is. Good grief!

Josh said:

Okay I'm sorry but I need to know if this comment form is as instant as proclaimed.

Josh said:

That was pretty quick.

Timothy Stebbing said:

Terribly sorry for this rather boring comment, bit I simply had to experience your speedy form submit. ;)

eyelidlessness said:

This is a UX phenomenon that comes up from time to time, and sometimes adding an artificial delay does in fact feels better for at least some portion of users. Another solution that might help is a *very* small bit of JS which receives a 204 response (browsers won’t navigate on 204), then clears the form/shows success in situ. Sure, it's a *little more* dynamic, and I'm sensitive to adding JS unnecessarily (my site currently has none after build), but it would be a lot less likely to feel like a false positive. You could even add an artificial delay to *displaying* that, as an A/B test just to see if it yields fewer duplicates.

Both those suggestions are partly sincere and partly in jest. I doubt either of them line up with your goals, mostly posting them in case they might benefit other readers. But a fully sincere suggestion which I think might be more suitable: display the received comment or some truncated portion of it as pending in the success response. It's unlikely to add noticeable delay or bloat, but it would confirm that the contents of the comment were actually received. This isn't a substantial difference in the perceived performance, but people have become accustomed to seeing that their action had an *effect* (specifically a side-effect).

Feel free, of course, to totally ignore any and all of this advice. Thanks for having a site that's fast and lightweight!

Anonymous said:

Very interesting and inspiring article. Want to test responsiveness of submitting a comment.

Josh Sisto said:

You could circumvent this issue by replying with something unique to the user such as IP address. For example, "Comment accepted from IP:xxx.xxx.xxx".

Timothy Stebbing said:

Ahh I see the problem now. You also have an interaction design issue that makes submitting twice too easy, you leave the form content filled.

In a traditional POST form scenario you're moving the user to a new page that captures the data and says something like "Comment submitted successfully", perhaps with the comment displayed as text. In a bloated javascript website it's typical to hide the form after submission to remove the temptation. (Don't forget oldbies with a propensity to double-click a submit button!)

eyelidlessness said:

Oh my. Adding to my last comment: I wasn’t expecting to see the content of my comment still populated in the form after submitting! Whether people are aware of it or not, they may be confused by this. Despite the success message (people don’t read), this may feel more like the experience of getting validation errors before a submission request goes through. Even just making the fields readonly on success would probably help with the confusion.

Will said:

This is a great article.

Hector said:

Nice post. I would advice adding a link to this post after posting a comment.

Maybe something like "You don't believe me, do you? Read this!"

Simon said:

This is indeed a tiny comment form.

Somebody1 said:

Is the comment form really that fast? Let me try it.

Somebody1 said:

Wow, that is fast. I don't think it is just the JavaScript bloated web that is confusing people. It is also faster than the animations in desktop applications. It makes me wonder, why do OS deliberately add so much latency with their animations?

Somebody1 said:

Another thing. When I clicked submit again, the comment didn't disappear from the comment box. Text usually disappears when you click submit, so that is also probably confusing people.

Bravery said:

If this was a trick to get me to post a comment, it worked. :P

Cute story and beautiful blog!

Dave said:

I just wanted to try the comment form.

Dave said:

Update, it is extremely fast. However, it doesn't clear input which is a bit of a confusing UX when submitted successfully.

Nick said:

Don't mind me, just testing out this supposedly disconcertingly fast comment form.

Matthew said:

You should make it so that if the same client submits the same comment twice in a short period of time with the same message, it will disregard it. Or you can say "yes, it was actually submitted the first time, don't worry," on multiple attempts?

AD said:

Maybe place a note for skeptics? In the success message say something like "Yes, it was fast, it's not broken!"

AD said:

And clear the form after submission! This may be another reason people think your form is broken.

Shon said:

Seems to be an interesting, disappointing, and illustrative case of "worse is better". We get so conditioned to things working sub-optimally, we feel uncomfortable in improved circumstance.

I mainly just wanted to see the swiftness for myself. :)

Shon said:

Sorry for the double posts!

I found the return time on the form was not as fast as I expected. I have a suspicion your duplicates may be partially due to the UI of the form. True: it shows a message saying "comment was submitted successfully", but it also leaves the exact same form up, with all the content. This is both unusual, in my experience, and I think a bit confusing. Why would all content still be available and live for editing if the form was really submitted?

I think people probably hit the "Submit Comment" button multiple times because they are used to the comment content either disappearing after it has been sent, or at least changing appearance, so that it is not longer an input form, but now displays the un-editable content (thus reflecting that the content has been submitted).

I suspect that if you fix this "UI bug", then you'll no longer see those duplicates.

Russell Heimlich said:

Just here to see how fast this comment form submits. Cheers!

Reader said:

Just needed to see how fast it was and if I could do better! Thanks for the article, gave me something to think about.

Stephen said:

Could you show a different message on resubmit, informing them that yes, it actually was that fast?

Nab said:

UI is clean.

Daniel said:

I'm sorry for bothering you, as I know you will review this. My point is not to waste your time, but I want to see the comment working, after reading the blog post.

A common talking point among my friends is how we are trained into accepting crappy software, and the most common examples are, of course, bloated websites.

Keep up the good work, I love reading your posts! Looking forward to pressing the button. Sorry again for making you take the time to read this.

Deja said:

Testing how fast comments go. Nice website!

Chris Grimmett said:

Nice! I like simple!

humanize said:

Nice article and beautiful website! It's quite funny because I'm working on this kind of CSS and architecture that is somewhere between the 90s and the overbloated web we got nowadays !

Keep up the good vibe! <3

Sonam said:

Let's check if this is fast.

Sonam said:

Damn, this is fast!

Fast Commenter said:

Is this actually that fast? The page does take a while to load here in ap-southeast-2.

How Fast said:

How fast can it be!

How Fast said:

Quite fast apparently!

"I am surprised to see how much I have written; with stories even a page can take me hours, but the truth seems to flow out as fast as I can get it down." - Dodie Smith

Dan said:

Like the others, I just want to see how fast it is. Sorry for the spam. Great article!

Sa'ad said:

Nice and simple, I like it.

Alexandre B. L. said:

Great post!

KeithB said:

Yes, of course, I had to leave a comment to try the form.

KeithB said:

And the improved feedback message in green above the submitted form in green tells me exactly what has happened. Best of luck with it all.

KSP Atlas said:

Nice, Common Lisp! We should really bring back Common Lisp in the world of web design.

Josh Doakes said:

I too wanted to test how fast the form is. :)

Josh Doakes said:

Wow, it is extremely fast!

Also I've recently started learning Common Lisp. It's really nice to stumble upon it organically. You invalidated my fears about CL being useful or reasonable only in large applications and it's really great seeing it in action as a static site generator and comment form provider.

Ninad Pathak said:

Alright, I need to try out to see! Your website is already super quick, even as I browse through it on my mobile network while traveling through some remote areas. Need to now see how quick this thing is!

Anonymous said:

I just visited your website for the first time and this motivates me to make stuff this simple (because I'm also a minimalism geek). :)

Dusan said:

Interesting observation, more websites should adapt such techniques, given how much more energy efficient and faster your approach is.

Zooo-oo-oom said:

Thanks for your article. I really enjoyed it! I, like many, am trying out your comment system.

Zooo-oo-oom said:

Well it really was fast. I like that you're sticking to your principles. We should encourage users to read output messages and show them that computers don't have to be slow despite having blisteringly powerful hardware.

Dan said:

I appreciate your commitment to simplicity.

Person said:

I had to test this! :)

Max said:

Hmm. Comments on a separate page. Interesting! :)

David said:

Obligatory comment test!

Aleth said:

Checking the fastness. Just for fun.

Aleth said:

That was fast! :D

Bert said:

I enjoyed reading this post and wanted to see how fast the form is.

Anonymous said:

I love minimal, well formatted websites like this! Want to make my own soon. Let us make the web a better place. Also finally some good pure website with dark mode by default!

Alex said:

I am sorry but you brought it upon yourself. We all want to see how blazingly fast it is! :)

Corentin said:

Just wanted to see how fast it is! :D

Anonymous said:

Can you please write a tutorial on how you made this website from beginning to end? I know the code is available but a tutorial with explanations would be useful. Students can learn from it. Your website is one of the best coded websites I have ever come across. Hope you can write a how-to guide about it, maybe you could even publish it as an ebook or something. I would gladly purchase it to learn. Thank you!

Bader said:

Thank you for this insightful essay!

Evo said:

Keep up the lean web, mate. Simple is always better.

I like your writing style.

Richard Green said:

Enjoyed the article. Now I want to test the comment speed! :D

Richard Green said:

It's fast!

Joseph Carragher said:

I wonder how fast this is?