perez.patricia•1mo agoProlific Poster

Showerthought: I compared building a simple landing page with a drag-and-drop site builder versus just writing the HTML and CSS myself for a client project last month. The difference in load speed was crazy.

3 comments

3 Comments

So what's the actual weight difference in the code? @the_nina, when you saw the shopping cart effect, was it mostly extra javascript files or just really bloated, repetitive CSS? I'm trying to figure out if the slowdown is from ten thousand divs or from fifty external scripts that load tracking and font icons. My last builder page had like six different style sheets for one button.

julia_carter701mo ago

Yeah, it's usually both scripts and markup bloat together. Those builders love to wrap every single element in three more divs for positioning. You end up shipping a whole unused framework just to center some text.

the_nina1mo ago

Tried the same thing with a client's portfolio site last year. The drag and-drop builder added so much extra code it felt like pushing a shopping cart with a stuck wheel. Ended up rewriting it from scratch with basic HTML and CSS, and the page loaded almost instantly. That experience totally changed my mind about when to use those visual tools. Sometimes the simple way is just faster for everyone.