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Maintainable JavaScript and user-sniffing
Posted in Optimizing Code for Sustainability, Sustainable Virtual Design Theory on May 2, 2013
While I currently buried in developing a “swap green virtual ingredients” database right now, I thought I would add a couple of interesting links. The first is for JavaScript, by blogger Tim Corey: http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/580165/JavaScript-Best-Practices Following good coding practices for JavaScript is important for web sustainability. This is because it is easy to write very bad […]
Sustainable Web W3C Group launched
Posted in Definition of Sustainable Virtual Design, Sustainable Virtual Design Theory on April 15, 2013
There’s a new community group on W3C devoted to the Sustainable Web. http://www.w3.org/community/sustyweb/ At present, this group is for discussion. The state of Sustainable Virtual Design is such that we have to spend some time developing ideas about sustainable workflow, how Web Performance does (or does not) connect to sustainability, trade-offs in design and development, […]
The conflict between sustainable and “invisible” design
Posted in Definition of Sustainable Virtual Design, Other, Sustainable Virtual Design Theory on March 30, 2013
No to No Ui Here is an outstanding article on the perils of “invisible design” and the belief in the Internet as a sort of weightless “spirit world.” Invisible design, as an extension of the “less is more concept” has been a part of computer interfaces since the rise of the Internet, fueled by notions […]
Digital Carbon Footprints versus Printed Newspapers
Posted in Optimizing Code for Sustainability, Other, Sustainable Virtual Design Theory on March 23, 2013
Dop by the Guardian newspaper’s realistic computation of the carbon footprint of their web operations: Digital carbon footprint: steps in the right direction http://www.guardian.co.uk/sustainability/sustainability-report-2012-digital-carbon-footprint The Guardian used the services of Sympact Project, at the University of Bristol and Surrey. http://sympact.cs.bris.ac.uk/ This group is doing research similar to that done by Alma Media on carbon footprints […]
Code complexity and the collapse of civilization
Posted in Definition of Sustainable Virtual Design, Optimizing Code for Sustainability on March 13, 2013
A nice post over at JSClasses.org, with various discussions of complexity and its effect on code speed and maintainability. http://www.jsclasses.org/blog/post/43-Speed-up-JavaScript-using-HTML5-LocalStorage–Lately-in-JavaScript-podcast-episode-27.html#transcript One of the interesting things in this podcast is a discussion of “complexity evaluation” tools for JavaScript and similar languages. The programs parse source code, and compute a level of complexity. If it is too […]
I’m quoted in the Chicago Sun-Times about “Hummer” Websites
Posted in Other on February 21, 2013
Great article about MightyBytes in the Chicago Sun-Times last week! I’m quoted in the article describing “Hummer” websites. http://www.suntimes.com/business/18213319-452/b-corp-mightybytes-grades-the-greenness-of-your-website.html See the MightyBytes blog at: http://www.mightybytes.com/blog/
WWWaste, Carbon Footprints, and Real vs. Expected WPO
Posted in Embodied Energy of a Web Page, Optimizing Code for Sustainability on February 20, 2013
WWWaste Carbon Footprint Dynamic Infographic First, a note on a spectacular new (Fall 2012) website that uses an “infographic” approach to calculate carbon footprints. WWWaste http://www.wwwaste.fr/ The site uses published information on carbon footprints and the web (for more, see the “Factoids” page on this site). It then asks users to do a drag and […]
Maintainable code, performance, and command-lines
Posted in Optimizing Code for Sustainability on February 20, 2013
The push-pull of Maintainability versus Performance Besides user behavior, one way to reduce the carbon footprint of the web is to write more efficient code. This goes beyond standard Web Performance Optimization (WPO) which typically addresses who well programmed components work together. Attention to code itself is deemed important, but not often discussed from a […]
Great example of “Swapping Green Ingredients”
Posted in Optimizing Code for Sustainability, Other on February 8, 2013
A great post at Dyn is right up the sustainability alley. In this article, Lara Swanson comments on the performance enhancements you can get from a site by doing the basic stuff practical for designer-developers. http://dyn.com/how-we-improved-page-speed-by-cleaning-css-html-and-images/ According to the article, the worst offenders were: not saving images effectively for web: +28% page load time using […]
Sustainability and copyright, JavaScript’s dirty dozen, virtual worlds reboot
Posted in Embodied Energy of a Web Page, Optimizing Code for Sustainability, Other on February 3, 2013
Some commentary on a few Sustainable Virtual Design topics I’ve been thinking of recently… Sustainability and Intellectual Property One “big picture” area where sustainability and current practice in the design industry may conflict is in intellectual property. I realized this when reviewing some ideas on how to handle webfonts for improved WPO scores. In theory, […]
