The OS is no longer relevant to memory usage, really, not in the way it used to be. The amount of memory required for a usable desktop is peanuts compared to the amount required to run a few web-apps.

[–] manxu@piefed.social 18 points 2 days ago (2 children)

One of the many reasons why we need a new and better browser without all the bloat.

[–] 0x0@lemmy.zip 23 points 2 days ago (2 children)

That's half the problem, the sites are the other.

[–] Viking_Hippie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 2 days ago (1 children)

And the third half is bad math

[–] Hexarei@beehaw.org 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

The fourth half is caching

[–] ExperimentalGuy@programming.dev 4 points 2 days ago

The fifth is your mom.

[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

My guess is that 90% of the growth in browser bloat is to support bloated websites.

These days websites can be games, drawing applications, video players, etc. As a result, browsers have basically become operating systems. In addition, the browsers try to support even the most horribly written websites, but that means more bloat in the browser. Meanwhile faster computers mean that people developing websites are just doing more and more javascript, more and more animation, more and more mouse tracking, etc.

If you have an old device with an old browser, a lot of modern websites are completely unusable. I have an old iPad that's too old to update, and it's not actually possible to use browse Github anymore. It just ends up with javascript elements on the page that never finish loading. And Github isn't some site thrown together by someone vibe-coding their first website or something.

[–] MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Honestly, the whole model of "you can customize every detail of your page (and not the user) but you also have to implement basic accessibility and consider screen resolution/orientation, reduced-motion, prefers-color-scheme, etc., etc.), for each and every single webpage, is imho inherently broken.

The sad thing is, they could in most things (except reduced/animations) just not do that and the browser does accessibility & stuff for you and you have a lightweight site. But that's not how businesses (and developer curiosity) work. Also, progressive enhancement instead of graceful degradation most don't do.

Btw, to the Indieweb: you don't have to define a text or background color: browser does that already. And you have to care for prefers-color-scheme now. Please keep CSS to layouting.

[–] FishFace@piefed.social 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I am skeptical that the browser is the problem.

[–] altkey@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Well, no, but the amount of browser-based apps due to their convinience in development is stupid.

[–] FishFace@piefed.social 1 points 1 day ago

Yes