Unity Asset Store is wholly dependent on JavaScript and too slow

Unity Engine
1

Hello,

I know this change came a few months ago, but ever since the Asset Store started rendering everything client-side in JS, a couple of things happened:

  • No JavaScript: white screen. So any bookmarking service that tries to take a screenshot of a page on the Asset Store, gets a white screen. Screen-readers: there’s nothing to read without JS. Etc.
  • Browsing the Asset Store on mobile devices has become dead-slow. Everything gets loaded in through AJAX requests, and then has to be rendered to HTML in JS, and consequently pasted into the DOM. DOM-manipulations are generally very slow, especially if several have to take place at the same time. The old method that sent the basic page layout HTML first, was much faster.
  • If you’re signed in, on every request your purchase history gets loaded through an AJAX request. If you have a lot of assets, that means it’s trying to load 1MB+ (in my case) of JSON on every page load. Even if this gets cached correctly. Every single page load it gets interpreted in case you want to open up your purchase history and see what packages are new. This is, of course, backwards. It should start loading and interpreting if I open up my purchase history, not before, because 99/100 I just want to browse the store, not see my purchase history.

Please, please, modify some of this behaviour to make page loads acceptable on mobile platforms, and in general everything much faster. (All of these things go for the Asset Store browser in Unity as well.) Don’t load and process the purchase history every page load, and send at least a skeleton of HTML on initial page loads. Thanks.

1 Like
2

ok I agree about loading the purchase history every time been a bad point , but speaking about the thread title … blah blah when no javascript is enabled…

who the heck surfs the web in 2014 without javascript enabled , I would think 80% or more of all websites wont work properly without it. Sure you can build sites that can regress properly when it is disabled … but that is twice if not three times more work and for what … just for the one in a million people who disable javascript? never

In fact Im fully convinced that javascript support should be made mandatory and there should be no user exposed means to ever disable it…

Without javascript we are left at the mercy of pure css… HELL No! The state of css after the web has been around for 20 years+ is an embarrassment of the human race

3

I had to pick a title that was short and to the point. Anyway, like I said, any bot/agent/whatever that does not use JavaScript, gets an empty page returned. So if you use a visual bookmarking service that saves a thumbnail of the page, you’re going to get a blank thumbnail for every Asset Store page you bookmark. I’m not advocating for NOT using JavaScript, I’m advocating for sending a semblance of a page with some info in the initial HTML that gets requested. Exactly like it was before this change. So that non-browsers can render something resembling a page.

And as for 2014, accessibility is also an issue here.

I’m glad you agree with the purchase history loading.

4

I was so tired of the slowness of the Asset Store, I made a simple site that loads any Asset Store item page MUCH quicker and in one go. Here’s an example: http://assets-1px.rhcloud.com/content/6599

There’s a link at the top left of the page called “Asset Quickview”, simply drag that to your bookmark toolbar and click it when you’re on an Asset Store item page, it will load the faster one. It simply changes the URL from Unity Asset Store - The Best Assets for Game Making to http://assets-1px.rhcloud.com/content/6599.

Hope this helps.

Note: I might change the URL later, and/or add more functionality like search/related items.

1 Like
5

I’d love to know how you did that!