mastodon
Mastodon v4.0.0 web UI loads several MB in resources
Steps to reproduce the problem
- Open any user profile like https://mastodon.online/@pkrugman while logged out ...
Expected behaviour
The page should finish loading within a reasonable time
Actual behaviour
The page is busy downloading resources for multiple seconds
Detailed description
Loading a simple profile, almost empty, takes about 6 MB of download on Mastodon v4.0.0., while performance for the same profile on Nitter is vastly better at just 1 MB of data needed.
Compare:
At least on mastodon.online, this seems to be partly due to a single 4 MB image, https://mastodon.online/emoji/sheet_13.png
The same issue is observed on other instances like mas.to. nitter.it Firefox...urt, Germany - EC2 - WebPageTest Result.pdf.gz mastodon.online F...urt, Germany - EC2 - WebPageTest Result.pdf.gz mas.to Firefox -...furt, Germany - EC2 - WebPageTest Result.pdf.gz
Specifications
Mastodon 4.0.0.rc2 Firefox 106
https://mastodon.online/emoji/sheet_13.png shouldn't be loaded if logged out. I noticed some weirdness when I was testing the same thing earlier tonight, where the emoji sheet was loading while logged out, if I was using Chrome that had been logged in, but only sometimes (possibly only when I ran Lighthouse, it was hard to be sure).
The fact you're getting remote tests showing the file means it's not some weird local issue with service workers like I suspected. Very odd.
After some investigation, the file is added to the manifest in config/webpack/production.js and preloaded by the service worker, so that the emoji sheet is loaded by the time the user clicks on the emoji picker.
However, when logged out, the emoji picker would never show up, and loading that file is useless. I also wonder if it makes sense to install the service worker at all when logged out.
Things got a bit better, with the FCT (first contentful paint) now at about 1.7 seconds instead of 2, and 2.4 MB downloaded instead of 6. mastodon.online F...urt, Germany - EC2 - WebPageTest Result.json.gz mastodon.online F...urt, Germany - EC2 - WebPageTest Result.pdf.gz
Still a long way to go before we can match Nitter.