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Mona Lisa in pure CSS

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Re: Mona Lisa in pure CSS

#36
post #16

About ten years ago I made a converter application that converted a image (jpg/png/gif) to an HTML table. The result at the time was great. Unfortunately the generated HTML was quite verbose so it took a lot of bandwidth to download. I guess a similar conversion program has been used here and it seems that CSS these days can take off quite a bit of fat of that generated code. PS: Forgot to mention. The reason I wrote…

Yeah good old times. I did exactly the same thing although not that long ago. It turned amazingly well (although yes no matter what you do the size will be higher than the original image) but the quality was identical. You can use a very small font with the ASCII square character which basically gives you pixel perfect images.

Re: Mona Lisa in pure CSS

#38
post #20
post #16

About ten years ago I made a converter application that converted a image (jpg/png/gif) to an HTML table. The result at the time was great. Unfortunately the generated HTML was quite verbose so it took a lot of bandwidth to download. I guess a similar conversion program has been used here and it seems that CSS these days can take off quite a bit of fat of that generated code. PS: Forgot to mention. The reason I wrote…

While some websites stop people from right clicking and saving (such as flickr) you can get around that by just screen printing. So why would you invest time in trying to stop one route of copying when there is a second unstoppable?

It is possible, but this creates a higher barrier. I know of users who will give up after the first attempt.

Re: Mona Lisa in pure CSS

#39

Amazing job! How long did it take and were there any tools you used to make this faster?

It's simpler than you might think. Takes less than 20-30 lines of Python. Read the pixels in the image and for each pixel print some parts of the box-shadow CSS with the right numbers... done.

Re: Mona Lisa in pure CSS

#40
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clients.

Would it not be easier to explain to them that what they're asking for is impossible to deliver?

Sometimes, yes. Frequently it's very difficult to explain to a client that the way you[1] interpret the words they[2] are using is rather different than what may be in their head.

That is, from the technical perspective it may be 'impossible' to achieve perfect DRM. But from another perspective, if the added cost of circumventing that DRM is large enough that most[3] people won't bother, it /may/ be a success. See: Steam.

In short, the language/terminology barrier between people in different fields results in a lot of client/developer miscommunication, frustration, and, frankly, poor results.

A rather complete discussion on this (w/r/t a client wanting 100% uptime): http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3056414

[1] The technical party in the relationship

[2] The party paying someone you to handle the technical side

[3] Again, we run into a problem with precise definitions using 'most' - do we mean 99.9%? Do we mean enough that the cost of implementing the DRM is larger than the $ saved. Though the lost sales due to /having/ DRM is an entirely different discussion.

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