50 could be "quite low" if most of the requests were for "content" images. TFA has under half a dozen images, as I've outlined in my comment most of the requests are for ancillary garbage.
> I was auditing a big uk ecommerce site at the weekend and the homepage had over 170 elements
See above, 170 is pretty high but assuming at least one image request per product[0] plus a few more for buttons & the like, having a large number of requests would be understandable for an ecommerce site.
ecommerce sites would also be a place where:
1. analytics is very, very understandable
2. the site would use a pretty generic system which could hinder specific optimisations
3. assuming the user will browse around, the site could preload various stuff, sacrificing some upfront performance for a nicer "inside" experience
All in all, I'd be much more understanding of that than 50 request on a blog post, even more so a blog post on software complexity. Incidentally, the amazon.com home page generates ~250 requests.
[0] because spriting for web pages remains a pain in the ass, doubly so for JPEG
50 could be "quite low" if most of the requests were for "content" images. TFA has under half a dozen images, as I've outlined in my comment most of the requests are for ancillary garbage.
> I was auditing a big uk ecommerce site at the weekend and the homepage had over 170 elements
See above, 170 is pretty high but assuming at least one image request per product[0] plus a few more for buttons & the like, having a large number of requests would be understandable for an ecommerce site.
ecommerce sites would also be a place where:
1. analytics is very, very understandable
2. the site would use a pretty generic system which could hinder specific optimisations
3. assuming the user will browse around, the site could preload various stuff, sacrificing some upfront performance for a nicer "inside" experience
All in all, I'd be much more understanding of that than 50 request on a blog post, even more so a blog post on software complexity. Incidentally, the amazon.com home page generates ~250 requests.
[0] because spriting for web pages remains a pain in the ass, doubly so for JPEG