On Web Responsibilities

I recently launched a new version of my gallery and took to opportunity to implement imgix. I didn't really need it and it's an extra cost. So why did I do it? Two reasons:

  1. the site is slightly faster and if I can save even a second of your life I'm gonna do it even if it costs me money
  2. the site is slightly lighter

The average weight of webpages is constantly increasing and I blame designers for that. Yes, I said it. If you're a digital designer, and especially if you're a graphic designer that for some reason is working on the web, ask yourself this: when was the last time you considered page size when designing something? When was the last time you decided that page weight was more important than visual quality? Probably never.

You probably don't care. You're probably happy with your site loading fast on your 500 Mbps connection and don't give a FF that your homepage makes 150 requests for 50MB of data. You probably don't even care that your stupid WordPress theme builder is loading 8 font files that you're not even using. Because it "looks fine" on your machine and that's all you care about.

Who cares if I'm wasting expensive data on mobile connections in other countries. Who cares if load time contributes to more Co2 emissions. It looks great and that's what's important right?

Fortunately, some people do care.