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How to Build a Low-Tech Website

solar.lowtechmagazine.com

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Re: How to Build a Low-Tech Website

#41

Post by uneekname »

tw1010 wrote: post #33

Small sub-cultures, like this one, do experiments all the time in their little corner of the web. Some of the cultures die after a while, and some grow into something else, something bigger, something that starts to percolate on the mainstream surface, albeit possibly only tangental to how it started. I'm not sure I'd predict this movement will grow into something that reaches mainstream tech, but let's say I'm wrong…

While unlikely, I could see more wide-spread adoption of this concept if a large online company began using the approach. If Twitter for example decided to cut out all their bloat, simplify served graphics and assets, and invest in sustainable energy, I could see other high-profile internet companies following their lead.

Just my 2¢

Re: How to Build a Low-Tech Website

#42

Post by bitsquirrel »

juliangoldsmith wrote: post #3
powellzer wrote: post #2

From clicking around this site, it looks like their image dithering technique has taken away the color quality required to properly view the graphs on this article: https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2015/10/the-4g-mobile-inte...

I'm not convinced it saves much in the way of bandwidth, either. If you take this[0] image, it's 43 KB for a 800x533 image. I'd expect a JPEG to be able to do that without too much in the way of artifacts. It does give the page a kind of neat newspapery vibe, though. [0]: https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/dithers/sps_wide.png

This[0] is also a 43kB 800x533 image, saved at 30% JPEG quality from the GIMP. The whole dithering thing seems to be the wrong approach.

[0]: https://bitsquirrel.co.uk/800x533.jpg

Re: How to Build a Low-Tech Website

#43

Post by driverdan »

Cool experiment!

My suggestion is to get a larger solar panel. Solar is cheap now, less than US$1 per watt. Why not get a 100W or a 200W panel? It will put out enough power to supply the server and router on a rainy day. The battery will only be necessary overnight.

The price of 18650's is low enough that building your own pack to handle 30W continuous overnight is not costly. To help with the environmental impact and cost you can get used batteries that are being recycled or thrown away.

Re: How to Build a Low-Tech Website

#45

Post by TeMPOraL »

> The size of the average web page (defined as the average page size of the 500,000 most popular domains) increased from 0.45 megabytes (MB) in 2010 to 1.7 megabytes in June 2018.

It's the second place I see such low average size values (I'd say, somewhat reasonable), but I'm having a hard time believing in them. On a typical site, when I hit F12 and proceed to Network tab, I usually see ten times greater values. I fear that those statistics are either undercounting something, or 500k is just so many domains that the long tail of lightweight sites drags the average down, making values not representative of the real situation. I wonder how those stats would look if the average was weighted by the number of visits.

Re: How to Build a Low-Tech Website

#46

Post by rossdavidh »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #45

> The size of the average web page (defined as the average page size of the 500,000 most popular domains) increased from 0.45 megabytes (MB) in 2010 to 1.7 megabytes in June 2018. It's the second place I see such low average size values (I'd say, somewhat reasonable), but I'm having a hard time believing in them. On a typical site, when I hit F12 and proceed to Network tab, I usually see ten times greater values. I f…

There is also the issue that caching (e.g. cdn of jQuery or React libraries) can mean that, if you visit a given website every day in a month, you may only download that library once (the first time). Their estimate is definitely lowball for your first visit, but it might be a reasonable estimate for how much is actually downloaded on average.

Re: How to Build a Low-Tech Website

#48

Post by claudiulodro »

b2ccb2 wrote: post #20
ktpsns wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I understand you correctly, you propose a image format which should provide a better quality for less file size. However, to implement an in-browser client-side reader, one probably needs a javascript library, and this will blow up the size again [Side note: Actually I am surprised the site uses JavaScript at all, being that static]. Another proposal for image compression is to fall back on SVG, c.f. https://jmper…

Those are compression techniques, they do not require js, nor a different client and work with the jpeg standard.

To implement the improvements you suggest on this site (which appears to be a static site), the best way would be to have your proposed image compression as part of the static site preprocessor, correct? Just trying to understand how it would be implemented, as this site is an interesting idea but the dithered images would likely not have mass-appeal.

Re: How to Build a Low-Tech Website

#49

Post by rossdavidh »

tw1010 wrote: post #33

Small sub-cultures, like this one, do experiments all the time in their little corner of the web. Some of the cultures die after a while, and some grow into something else, something bigger, something that starts to percolate on the mainstream surface, albeit possibly only tangental to how it started. I'm not sure I'd predict this movement will grow into something that reaches mainstream tech, but let's say I'm wrong…

Could well not happen, but the most likely driver of slimmed down websites, anyway, would be a desire to make them load better in India, Africa, parts of Latin America and eastern Asia that have low connection speeds. Not saying that's how it will go, but it's feasible that to get to the second and third billion internet users, you need to be slimmer.

Re: How to Build a Low-Tech Website

#50

Post by foxhop »

mLuby wrote: post #40

Wonder if they've considered a gravity battery? As an additional benefit it'd let someone local "recharge" the battery manually rather than being 100% tied to the Sun.

Is there an off the shelf gravity battery that one could purchase for charging over USB?
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