8 seconds? I thought it was 3.
That being said, this is most likely the culprit. If OP is blocking AMP CDN, the inlined CSS code will hide the content until the CSS animation completes after whatever the timeout is nowadays.
That being said, this is most likely the culprit. If OP is blocking AMP CDN, the inlined CSS code will hide the content until the CSS animation completes after whatever the timeout is nowadays.
Lots of documents (amp or not) use the same "hide the screen until layout is done" trick to avoid multiple relayouts as the initial javascript is running and CSS is being fetched. More often than ideal, they don't have a fallback if the javascript doesn't load at all. AMP mandates it with this CSS animation, which is far better than nothing.
Also when served from the AMP Cache (https://www-ehow-co-uk.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.ehow.co.uk... for the example shown), the layout algorithm that javascript runs is applied by the AMP Cache instead and the 8-second timeout code is removed completely (view source and take a look). This doesn't work on all pages - there are some features that require a client-side context, but it does work on this one. Websites can run the same server-side layout algorithm on their origin using a node library (https://www.npmjs.com/package/amp-toolbox-optimizer). There is also work being done to improve all of this (server side layout on more documents, and making the system easier to run on your own site).
The 3s observation from the original post is interesting. It may just have been an estimation of the 8s, or it could have something to do with how the document is configured. Looking at this document, there are some <amp-font> tags that the document author has added with a 3000ms timeout. These are tags that instruct the AMP javascript to change the document CSS class depending on the success of failure of loading of a particular font. By default (not amp specific), if a document loads a webfont for a particular text, the browser will not display the text until the font is loaded. <amp-font> provides a CSS hook by which the author can do stuff like "hide the text for up to 3s, or when the font has loaded, whichever comes first". This page has some <amp-font> tags with a 3s timeout referencing fonts that have not been added to the document, which seems like a mistake from the document author, unsure. I was not able to reproduce the 3s experience though, so this may be incorrect speculation as to what happened.
Perhaps luck, but I have never encountered one that is so hostile about it with nearly 10s wait outside of AMP. I've rarely encountered a second or so's delay, but two or three sites including a large one that have the massively excessive AMP delay.
So to call it the same trick seems like a stretch from a user annoyance point of view.
It annoyed me as well before, though I realized as I stopped going there that this is for the best... for both my sanity and the websites bottom line.
On the other hand an ad blocking user is not necessarily producing no value for the site. I've had subs to newspaper sites, all of which I viewed with blocking on, and Independent will never now be one of them. If Guardian did likewise, and added AMP, I'd cancel my current sub and look elsewhere, which would be a definite loss of value for them.
I'm not so wedded to the views of any one outlet that I'd subscribe with this in place, or turn off blocking to subscribe, or feel I must subscribe to the same one indefinitely.
If it's a site I wouldn't have considered a sub or donation to, you're right, nothing is lost.
The content is there, it's just hidden through css. If anything, a screen reader has access to the content earlier than the unimpaired people.
I agree with the spirit of your message though, but that's not what the grandparent post claimed.
> Accessibility is the design of products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities.[1] The concept of accessible design and practice of accessible development ensures both "direct access" (i.e. unassisted) and "indirect access" meaning compatibility with a person's assistive technology[2] (for example, computer screen readers).
For example, I'm autistic and use a "normal" browsers, but garish websites (for example those displaying animated ads) are less accessible to me, because those lead me to becoming overstimulated, making me less likely to absorb and remember information presented on the page as well as being physically and mentally exhausting.
I am perfectly willing to pay for content (and am, through Spotify, Netflix and Patreon), but much of the web is actively hostile to many disabled people. My physical disabilities don't prevent me from using my computer in the standard way but every time I misplace my mouse and try to navigate the web solely using keyboard (which isn't that far from how I usually use my computer, so it's not like I don't know the shortcuts) I am reminded how it must be for people who are unable to use a mouse and have to rely on other input methods. Many websites couldn't have worse UI when it comes to accessibility if they tried.
A mandatory 8s lag for a careful users doesn't sound graceful to me :-/
For HNers who weren't creating web back in 2009: we used to have another term as well, "progressive enhancement" that meant more or less "after we got a baseline working on all supported browsers we can add nifty stuff that doesn't work in IE.
Modern browsers let the page author control this with the "font-display" CSS property [1].
[1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/@font-face/...