> Why 8s though? That’s well into “give up on loading this page, close the tab and try somewhere else” territory.
That 8s timeout is for loading the AMP JS from the CDN. You want a time limit that separates "you're on a slow connection, keep waiting" and "just give up, it's not worth it". I suspect it was set by looking at network graphs, but I don't know.
What the OP is doing, blocking JS and also ignoring <noscript>, is bizarre, and something you should expect to break sites.
> Perhaps a better option is finding ways to prevent content jumping around so much while assets are loading.
AMP does that very well, but only by taking control of the process of rendering, which requires JS.
Perhaps a better option is finding ways to prevent content jumping around so much while assets are loading.