12
votes
Posting AMP links in new topics?
I have a question about AMP links in new topics.
I posted this with the AMP link as an experiment. After a few days of life at 2G data speeds I have begun to appreciate the benefits of AMP. Also, fast load times seem to be in line with light and quick philosophy of Tildes.net.
One downside of AMP is that it is a mobile layout which is not ideal layout on desktop with high resolution.
What do you all think of using AMP links in topics?
Perhaps there could be some tag based solution to it once empowered users can audit the tags.
A clickable tag for the mobile version, AMP version, that "article reader" ebook mode, anchor points to sub headings, translated articles, or accessibility stuff like transcriptions of videos and whatnot could pretty neat
I like that. In the future, if I have an AMP URL, I will edit it for the topic link and add the AMP link in the comments.
I think AMP links are rude - on Google's part, not yours.
Why does Google want to hijack my click and prevent me from getting to the website I'm trying to view? What's the benefit to them of hosting a copy of someone else's webpage? I feel like it's a way of Google keeping my eyeball's on Google's own ads, rather than me seeing the ads on the real website - so that the real website is therefore denied the advertising revenue they should have received.
Google is trying to be the gatekeeper of all the content I want to see. I have to view it on Google's servers, to see Google's advertisements, not be able to navigate to any non-Google websites. It's like what Apple does when it ties all its devices to iTunes so you have to buy all your content through them - but for webpages instead.
If I'm searching for something on my phone, I will go out of my way to scroll past all those AMP links until I can find a real webpage. Fuck Google trying to hijack my web viewing. It already invades too much of my life.
The link I posted was directly to the publisher, on their site. It was simply to their AMP version. I am not advocating the google link at all. Does that allay your concerns?
edit: grammar
Slightly.
I still won't click on an AMP link because I don't know where it's going, and I usually find myself trapped at the destination page with nowhere to go except back to the Google search page (I can never seem to navigate out of AMP pages).
That shouldn't stop you using them as you want, though. It's purely my choice not to click on them. Just like some people refuse to go to certain websites because they don't want to give them any traffic. That's on me, not you. You provide whatever links you want to, and I'll decide for myself whether to use them or not (like I'll avoid using PDF links if I'm on my phone).
That would be the first AMP link I've seen which doesn't trap me and doesn't divert me away from the real website.
However, I made it very clear that this was my personal preference, and that @Adams should post whatever links they feel like posting.
I believe I understand the difference in our experience with my AMP link vs the normal way one gets to an AMPage.
Normally, one gets to an AMPage from google news or search on mobile. This leads to google serving it from their own cache. The content creator gets screwed in this arrangement imho.
However, the content creator does have a source AMPage on their site, and this does not mess with their business model for the most part. When you open an AMPage directly to the source site, you are not stuck in google cache which I also find frustrating.
In summary, I believe that links to the source AMPage give a mobile user the best of both worlds, a fast loading website, and no screwing the content provider.
edit: fixed bad mobile typing
I noticed that it made me connect to ampproject.org before displaying the content, which is odd.
It looks like it is loading a bunch of common js libs for the AMP standard components.
Ideally, I'd like submissions to point to the "canonical" source of the article. This should be handled automatically, and if someone submits a mobile or AMP link, Tildes should be able to scrape the destination and replace the link with its canonical one.
However, as part of that scraping process, it should also be able to collect "alternate links" like the AMP one and make those available. Potentially they could just be included on the topic's comments page (as alternate links below the main one or something similar), but it could even be feasible to have a user option like "prefer AMP links" where Tildes would always make link topics point to an AMP version if it knows about one.
I think that link-aggregator-type sites do way too little with collecting metadata and "deeper info" about the linked sites like this, and I'd like to try and do a lot more of that kind of stuff on Tildes. There are all sorts of interesting possibilities for info we can collect/display/use about the various sites that get linked to.
Wow, it's great to hear that your are thinking about automating that. It looks like AMP has a standard for this.
Yeah, most of the more prominent sites seem to have the connections set up properly. For your example link, the AMP page includes:
So that's the way to get the "real" url out of it, and then that page includes:
So that's the opposite direction.
Regarding implementation, to build off of your thoughts, maybe you could detect if the user is on mobile using one of these methods and the settings page could show:
Mobile Optimized Link Options
Some content providers offer mobile optimized pages. Select how you would like to handle these pages.
tildes.tld/settings/mobile_page_options
A bigger explanation of mobile optimized pages, they load faster and can be good for low bandwidth situations, etc..
Select UI (single select)
edit: Just throwing this out here to get feedback on how much people love or hate it. And a note on mobile detection, if large tablets could default to non-mobile then I would be for that.
I would prefer to avoid any mobile-specific link when posting a link topic, including AMP links. Posting m.website instead of just website forces desktop users to the mobile site in many cases. Posting the "desktop" site allows the site itself to redirect to a mobile-specific page on a case-by-case basis, which I think is better for both types of users.
I have no problem with AMP links. I quite often find myself in places with bad to zero coverage, and AMP links are a lifesaver. I find it astonishing that no one complains about how bad internet access/useage becomes on slow connections. It's a source of immense frustration at times.
I'm not sure where the idea came from that nobody is complaining. Lots of us long for the days when thought and care was put into crafting the html on a page.
The Website Obesity Crisis is a good read: http://idlewords.com/talks/website_obesity.htm
The problem has only gotten worse since that was published.
But, and it's a big but, that doesn't mean AMP is a positive thing for the web as a whole.
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/05/19/open_source_insider_google_amp_bad_bad_bad/
https://danielmiessler.com/blog/google-amp-not-good-thing/
Wow. Thank you for those links about AMP. Even in my ignorance, I had a feeling there was something dodgy about Google using AMP links in my search results. Those blogs tell me what I was blindly groping for: Google is trying to become the gatekeeper and owner of content I view. Thank you!
The average internet user doesn't give it a thought though.
First time I had seen one, after looking into it seems like a good idea, it just speeds up loading times, looking at the link on a desktop it's not so bad, it's just got wider margins which for text heavy pages isn't really a issue. I suppose if you link to a gallery of images it would be a pain. Aside from that I think it's a good thing to do.
I'm in favor of links going to improved/decluttered versions of articles, be they are AMP-compliant or print views or whatever else is available.
I'm against links going to re-hosted articles served by unrelated, Internet-eating third parties. But that doesn't seem to be a problem here.