What change did Youtube make, that causes difficulty scrolling gridlisted videos?

My best guess is the content is retrieved as you scroll down, while in the past youtube may have accessed all content at the page load, they may have chosen to switch to loading content as it is required (ie. scrolled down to).

@markyy , yeah I think you are right. It now seems to load as you scroll. But it is so horrible compared to the way it used to be. It reminds me of AOL and Excite mail, which both have this issue too now, after ditching HTML for some stupid new “internet 2.0” application. I wonder if all 3 sites use the same application?

I hope to figure out the name of their application so I can write to them and specifically complain about it with the right terminology.

Well if it is what I think it is, it’s probably not an application, but a small script running in javascript. A script asking for new content every time you reach the bottom of the scrolling window, before proceeding to add that new content to the current page (ajax). I’m sure they don’t just go and add new functionality to the site willy nilly, if it’s there, it’s there for a reason. On a site as big as Youtube it’s most likely they’re trying to save on bandwidth this way (most people won’t scroll down anyway).

@markyy , thanks. I thought it was Ajax; that was my main suspect… but I don’t even know what Ajax is. Or at least I didn’t until I read the link you gave.

I just know it slows my computer down, and more and more sites seem to use it. I’ll write to youtube and complain about the ajaxing of the upload gridlists.

I’ve noticed this Ajax destroys function in AOL, Excite, and Myspace Music playlists.

I really hate this Ajax! Look at this wiki quote from your link:
“Ajax-powered interfaces may dramatically increase the number of user-generated requests to web servers and their back-ends (databases, or other). This can lead to longer response times and/or additional hardware needs.”

That explains so much! Virtually all of Youtube’s and Myspace Music Playlists’s bugs come from their stupid Ajax! I hate hive-programmer mentality

But it doesn’t shouldn’t make your computer slower. It might feel like that because it takes a second (or two) for the request to be received by the server and for the response to reach your browser, but that’s not the same as ‘slowing your computer down’. I haven’t visited any of the sites you mention, but I don’t think it’s fair to blame their limitations on a technique you only just learned about. Personally I am of the opinion that, just like everything else in life, ajax is used best in moderation.

Fluther is a good example of not overusing ajax, but at the same time using that technique to add a new layer of functionality to the site, and thereby completely changing the dynamic and interaction.

If you really feel it slows your computer down, try turning javascript off in your browser (here are directions for firefox, and chrome). Of course Youtube won’t work without javascript turned on, but most sites should (if their developers have done a proper job). That way you can experience first hand that it’s probably not slowing down your computer that much.

@markyy , you are correct. I misspoke when I said “it slows my computer down”. What I really meant was, it slows down my browsing experience, when I’m trying to browse youtube videos. It also slows down the ability of Myspace to run its playlists smoothly… there’s oftentimes that swirling ajax symbol. This slows down the time it takes for the music to load…. which, if multitasking, can indeed slow a computer down anyway actually now that I think about it. Compared to the quick-action that youtube and myspace used to have before they implemented this stuff about 1 and a half years ago.

If it is used on Fluther, perhaps in the live editing function maybe?... then it is used with extreme moderation unlike youtube that is destroying their users’ experience with it.

I used to be able to browse 3000 videos (by going to interesting youtube users and gridlisting their uploads) in about 40 minutes on Youtube. That would now take several hours to do…. destroying the worth and usability of youtube to me significantly.

There is probably a lot more adware imbedded in YouTube [especially since Google bought it] and a lot of this adware can slow stuff down while it is running. It is almost impossible to read an online newspaper due to the adware, it keeps loading as I scroll down the story and half the time blanks out the story so I have to start over. Look in the lower left corner of your browser to see what actions are going on on the site while you scroll down. You may be unpleasantly surprised.
one such adware that shows up on youtube is doubleclick—the cookies left by all the things that you are exposed to while perusing Youtube will all show up with more or less the same timestamp.

The same problem occurs with Google images. They also have changed the format so that all images for a subject are on the same page, which means that if there are 70,000 images, they will be lined up to be viewed when you scroll the page. It’s not a good format and there should be an option to select how many to be viewed per page. It seems that those sites could be in cohorts with service providers so that credit is chewed up quicker.