But it isn’t huge. I just checked how much data my local pc store fetches for the first page of RAM, 18 items total. It does too much ajax-in-json bs to estimate, but let’s assume each product uses 500 bytes, which is more than reasonable. It’s roughly 9kb total. The first RAM image on that page is 8kb. So the pictures on that page alone are roughly 18x bigger than that json. That means if there’s 18 pages of RAM, and there was 35 actually, the whole json is as big as one-two pages. Iow, unless a user changes just one filter and then buys immediately, it’s more effective.
As a consumer, this all feels like being between two fires. One side creates the stupidest UX possible, where one change can fix that, while the other side claims it’s all bs anyway and we must go medieval. Can’t we just listen to a user for once?
> sending the full dataset (*which could be fine if it's small*)
In the specific case of search/filter pages, I prefer the server-side rendered experience as a user. If I want to just check the box for RAM and search instantly, I can do that. But if I want to build a more complex query I don't need it to keep updating over and over.
I don't necessarily hate the auto-updating pages if they are implemented well. I just don't think they're any better, so why waste dev hours on it? It costs money to maintain that code, and the more of these pointless little JS applications you bake into your website the more expensive it is to build and maintain.
As a consumer, this all feels like being between two fires. One side creates the stupidest UX possible, where one change can fix that, while the other side claims it’s all bs anyway and we must go medieval. Can’t we just listen to a user for once?