Explainer ·
The Page You Never Opened Has Already Loaded
Two hundred milliseconds of hover can be enough for the destination to load in full, run all of its JavaScript, and count you as a visitor.
How the web actually works underneath the page
Most explanations of the web stop at the surface. These are notes on the layer below: how a page is assembled and delivered, what it can observe about you while it does, and where the cost is hidden.
Latest articles
Explainer ·
The Codec Your Browser Picked, and Why It Was Not Your Choice
The same video page can hand two people two different encodes of the same file. What decides is a negotiation the page runs before playback, and the browser's answers to it are deliberately non-committal.
Explainer ·
Not All Bytes Cost the Same
Page weight is measured in kilobytes as though a kilobyte were a fixed unit of harm. It is not. A kilobyte of JavaScript and a kilobyte of image do different amounts of damage, and the metric hides which one you have.
Explainer ·
What a Page Knows About You Before You Click Anything
Loading a page is not a neutral act. A set of identifying details arrives with the request itself, before any script runs and before you interact with anything on the screen.
Explainer ·
What Actually Happens to a Video Before You See It
A video on the web is not a file you are sent. It is a few hundred short pieces, published at several qualities at once, and a guess your player keeps making about which one to fetch next.