From what I understand, one could cache 100 web pages (obviously, 2mb is average, but there are much smaller and much larger than that) in about 200mb. 1GB could cache literally 500 web pages.
How come web browsers use so much ram then?
In: 3000
The earlier era of “computing”, relied on large backend resources.
When PCs became ubiquitous but before the explosion of today’s Internet, PCs were not all that powerful, so companies would use webpages that would load backend programs to offload some of that horsepower needed.
Applications, what we call “fat apps” were the order of the day back then. Browsers, were still quite simple compared to today.
By todays era/time, PCs are now extremely powerful in comparison, so web designers and the platforms they build web applications upon, now rely upon the “horsepower” from your local machine.
Since most “work” or “play” is being done by web browser based websites, the horsepower is local to your browser. Also, “tabs” have allowed people to have several sites open at the same time, and multiply how much RAM is being held in stasis until you go back to that tab.
*well written code, and new “snooze” tab behavior has lessened the amount of RAM required at any given time unless you regularly hop between tabs frequently (which just negates the savings in RAM your browser and OS are controlling).
Because the Internet was originally designed as a means of communication. And then it became about selling ads
This seems like a false premise to begin with. Even just loading Google’s search page is 2.45MB. Loading msn.com is over 10MB, and that’s before ever scrolling or clicking anything (and that’s with adblock!).
Whoever determined that the average web page was 2MB likely used some seriously flawed methods to reach that conclusion.
So, the ELI5 answer is… it isn’t 2MB.
I think the real culprit here is that devs assume you have a ton of RAM anyways and don’t have to optimize everything like you used to in the dark ages of the web.
I can’t run Firefox any longer. It takes forever to load then just gets hung up, slow, and crashes all of the time. It was my go-to browser for years. I’ve uninstalled it and reinstalled it with a fresh download and it still has the same issues. I just use Chrome now.
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