Sustainable Web Interest Group Is Formed

Sustainable Web Interest Group Is Formed
w3.org

I also had to do a X icon to replace the Twitter bird. So I went to get the official one and make it into my lean SVG. Again, you would not believe how much bloat was in what should have been a very simple file.

This is no rant about Twitter, the web in general is 99% bloat. I don't believe Google have 'stewarded' the web well enough to keep it lean.

If we go with the icon example, an icon has to be simple or else it is not an icon. Yet we have huge icon sets as fonts with excessive bloat. This is why I end up having to hand-carve SVG assets on the regular.

This aspect of simplicity applies to web pages too. Style sheets should not be thousands of lines. Content does not need to be nested in a billion divs, particularly since no div elements are needed now we have content sectioning elements and CSS grid layout.

The leanness of a website should be important as an expression of brand values for companies. For example, if your business is making cars, your website should be the fastest loading one to reflect your 0-60 times.

Hopefully we will get metrics for efficiency as one of things like accessibility that people strive for in varying degrees, with this efficiency being good for SEO. As it is, Google prefer data to be poorly structured as wading through rubbish is what their business depends on. If all content was well organised without the bloat then others would be able to do search to compete with Google. Hence we have a sea of divs on every web page, even though MDN docs says the div element is the element of last resort.

"Our new update means we reach WGAC 2 Level AA to > 90% and WSG to 60%, next release we aim to reach WSG to >70%" might be something we hear next year.