I found this an interesting experiment in sustainable web design, together with light-weight and accessible design (I think it is accessible). Most of it is very related to the other topics posted...
I found this an interesting experiment in sustainable web design, together with light-weight and accessible design (I think it is accessible). Most of it is very related to the other topics posted in tildes, both in ~comp and in the docs, but I particularly liked the idea of dithering the images to keep them lightweight.
Check it out, they are asking for input and comments and I am not an expert but surely there are ways they can do better?
This is such a neat little idea, I really like this project, it brings back simple design considerations. But it is framed entirely wrong. This is wasteful web hosting, not sustainable design....
This is such a neat little idea, I really like this project, it brings back simple design considerations. But it is framed entirely wrong.
sustainable web design
This is wasteful web hosting, not sustainable design. There is no breakdown of costs for all of the equipment required to setup a solar powered web server, no cost of maintenance and part replacement over a 5, 10, 20 year period, no energy use comparison that analyzes actual watt hours against a larger hosted system that can host thousands of similar 'simple' site designs on a single full sized server. Utilizing dedicated hardware for a single site is an Achilles heel for any claim of sustainability.
I like where the author's head is at, but feel like the project was too focused around generating content for an article rather than fully exploring how to achieve a sustainable solution that is as efficient as more robust solutions built on larger infrastructure platforms. Its efficient for the sake of power during well lit daylight hours, but that's the edge of it's efficiency.
I've been a fan of low-tech magazine for a while, but this just left me feeling warm and fuzzy inside. It's one thing to talk about sustainability, but this guy is actually putting his money where...
I've been a fan of low-tech magazine for a while, but this just left me feeling warm and fuzzy inside. It's one thing to talk about sustainability, but this guy is actually putting his money where his mouth is. They are already saving a ton of energy just by using an ARM board; switching to solar just makes it even better.
This is a very cool experiment but I wouldn't call it "low-tech." Sustainable, sure. Efficient, definitely. But it's all built on top of a considerable stack of complexity, still. I'm not saying...
This is a very cool experiment but I wouldn't call it "low-tech." Sustainable, sure. Efficient, definitely. But it's all built on top of a considerable stack of complexity, still. I'm not saying they should do away with that, just that the article title is a misnomer.
Also if they're looking for optimal performance, they should add HTML minification to their build process. I was able to shave off about 4% of the article page size by running it through this tool.
If they are saying that, I think they still have few things to improve. I use low-end old hardware and their website lags when scrolling due to the filters they apply to color the images and the...
I think they're more saying that it can be viewed on lower-end hardware
If they are saying that, I think they still have few things to improve. I use low-end old hardware and their website lags when scrolling due to the filters they apply to color the images and the yellowish semi-transparent bar that is permanently visible at the bottom of the page.
This is really interesting, I have never seen anything like this. I have always tried to avoid sending unnecessary megabytes of JS and other things over the wire, but I didn't think about the...
This is really interesting, I have never seen anything like this. I have always tried to avoid sending unnecessary megabytes of JS and other things over the wire, but I didn't think about the energy impact. Very cool
Its fine, we just embedded tables inside an iframe column inside the table of a frame. Also, we coded it all in ColdFusion. It's fine, everything is fine. house burns down
Its fine, we just embedded tables inside an iframe column inside the table of a frame. Also, we coded it all in ColdFusion.
I forgot about iframes! Everyone loved those around 2004-2006. My boss sent an email the other day with the term flat file in it. I hadn't heard that term in years.
I forgot about iframes! Everyone loved those around 2004-2006. My boss sent an email the other day with the term flat file in it. I hadn't heard that term in years.
Distributed hosting, like with IPFS, could do a lot to mitigate the inconveniences from having less than 100% server uptime, which is something this blog abandoned so as to live within the...
Distributed hosting, like with IPFS, could do a lot to mitigate the inconveniences from having less than 100% server uptime, which is something this blog abandoned so as to live within the restrictions of intermittent power.
Apart from the sun level tinting the whole screen and being annoying it's a very cool website. I'm all for small and fast websites, and now I want to try their image compression for my projects,...
Apart from the sun level tinting the whole screen and being annoying it's a very cool website. I'm all for small and fast websites, and now I want to try their image compression for my projects, it looks pretty effective
I wish they'd talked more about their 'dithering plugin', I've been trying to recreate the effect, because it looks almost exactly like the kind of dithered images that would get printed in the...
I wish they'd talked more about their 'dithering plugin', I've been trying to recreate the effect, because it looks almost exactly like the kind of dithered images that would get printed in the past.
I've got a couple sets of ImageMagick commands I'm pretty happy with:
convert "$1" -dither FloydSteinberg -quantize GRAY -fill black -colors 32 "$2", this takes a png, and provides a grayscale gif, which is actually pretty good, with barely any compression artifacts. About 1/3rd the size of a pngcrush'd bruteforced image.
convert "$1" -channel RGBA -separate \( +clone -dither FloydSteinberg -remap pattern:gray50 \) +swap +delete -combine "$2", this takes a png, and provides a color gif. The quality is good enough I don't think most people would even notice. About 1/2 the size of a pngcrush'd bruteforced image.
But neither of them look remotely like the LOW<-TECH images. They've achieved a fairly nostalgic view, whereas I seem to only be able to achieve compression, even when using the CSS they're employing to tint the image.
I found this an interesting experiment in sustainable web design, together with light-weight and accessible design (I think it is accessible). Most of it is very related to the other topics posted in tildes, both in ~comp and in the docs, but I particularly liked the idea of dithering the images to keep them lightweight.
Check it out, they are asking for input and comments and I am not an expert but surely there are ways they can do better?
This is such a neat little idea, I really like this project, it brings back simple design considerations. But it is framed entirely wrong.
This is wasteful web hosting, not sustainable design. There is no breakdown of costs for all of the equipment required to setup a solar powered web server, no cost of maintenance and part replacement over a 5, 10, 20 year period, no energy use comparison that analyzes actual watt hours against a larger hosted system that can host thousands of similar 'simple' site designs on a single full sized server. Utilizing dedicated hardware for a single site is an Achilles heel for any claim of sustainability.
I like where the author's head is at, but feel like the project was too focused around generating content for an article rather than fully exploring how to achieve a sustainable solution that is as efficient as more robust solutions built on larger infrastructure platforms. Its efficient for the sake of power during well lit daylight hours, but that's the edge of it's efficiency.
Cheers.
I've been a fan of low-tech magazine for a while, but this just left me feeling warm and fuzzy inside. It's one thing to talk about sustainability, but this guy is actually putting his money where his mouth is. They are already saving a ton of energy just by using an ARM board; switching to solar just makes it even better.
The only thing I don't like is the aesthetic.
This is a very cool experiment but I wouldn't call it "low-tech." Sustainable, sure. Efficient, definitely. But it's all built on top of a considerable stack of complexity, still. I'm not saying they should do away with that, just that the article title is a misnomer.
Also if they're looking for optimal performance, they should add HTML minification to their build process. I was able to shave off about 4% of the article page size by running it through this tool.
I think they're more saying that it can be viewed on lower-end hardware, maybe decades old, and thus is better for the environment(reusability)
If they are saying that, I think they still have few things to improve. I use low-end old hardware and their website lags when scrolling due to the filters they apply to color the images and the yellowish semi-transparent bar that is permanently visible at the bottom of the page.
This is really interesting, I have never seen anything like this. I have always tried to avoid sending unnecessary megabytes of JS and other things over the wire, but I didn't think about the energy impact. Very cool
The article left out using as many tables as possible and putting all of your css in your html files in a static way for each element.
Sorry for the noob question but I wasn't sure if this is sarcasm or actual advice haha, could you expand?
It's sarcasm, he's making a reference to the (poorly done) web design of the 90s and early 2000s.
This right here.
Its fine, we just embedded tables inside an iframe column inside the table of a frame. Also, we coded it all in ColdFusion.
It's fine, everything is fine. house burns down
I forgot about iframes! Everyone loved those around 2004-2006. My boss sent an email the other day with the term flat file in it. I hadn't heard that term in years.
396 Kb and no blocked scripts. I love seeing a great website. And great article too!
Distributed hosting, like with IPFS, could do a lot to mitigate the inconveniences from having less than 100% server uptime, which is something this blog abandoned so as to live within the restrictions of intermittent power.
Apart from the sun level tinting the whole screen and being annoying it's a very cool website. I'm all for small and fast websites, and now I want to try their image compression for my projects, it looks pretty effective
I wish they'd talked more about their 'dithering plugin', I've been trying to recreate the effect, because it looks almost exactly like the kind of dithered images that would get printed in the past.
I've got a couple sets of ImageMagick commands I'm pretty happy with:
convert "$1" -dither FloydSteinberg -quantize GRAY -fill black -colors 32 "$2", this takes a png, and provides a grayscale gif, which is actually pretty good, with barely any compression artifacts. About 1/3rd the size of a pngcrush'd bruteforced image.convert "$1" -channel RGBA -separate \( +clone -dither FloydSteinberg -remap pattern:gray50 \) +swap +delete -combine "$2", this takes a png, and provides a color gif. The quality is good enough I don't think most people would even notice. About 1/2 the size of a pngcrush'd bruteforced image.But neither of them look remotely like the LOW<-TECH images. They've achieved a fairly nostalgic view, whereas I seem to only be able to achieve compression, even when using the CSS they're employing to tint the image.