22: Links about downgrading bandwidth

• A recent UK survey questioned more than 2,000 people and found that 41% of respondents regarded a slow Internet connection as the most annoying part of their day.

Customization (bottom of the list of site desirables) = decoration and embellishments. It's out of vogue with viewers. The new trend in web design is simple and austere. Those features combined produce speedier page load times. "Content density" is how many pictures and words are crammed onto the page. People want low density, simple messages for faster comprehension. These desirables are the opposite of what websites production is today. This is because business owners and designers aren't listening to the audience. The audience doesn't want what's been served up for the last decade. They want change. And more than anything they want SPEED!

A year ago, enough people downgraded their highspeed bandwidth to cause ISPs to charge new "downgrade fees" (usually about $5.) Another chance to make a buck! Highspeed monthly rates are a little less than $40 --nationwide average. People feeling the pinch for dollars did NOT discontinue services generally but elected to work-and-play with less.

USA Unemployment and Penny Pinching
So will employment go up thus improving the Internet bandwidth situation. Um? I think not. We have several waves to ride out caused by changes in the GLOBAL economy. Bailout begets bailout internationally. This sounds pretty pessimistic, I know. The point I'm making is there now is a demand for unadorned and faster websites. It's driven by need and wish. People wish the web was faster. But it won't be for sometime. The solution IS leaner, smaller websites --economy of scale and less bloated gluttony of bandwidth. As one article put it, the Internet went from "Primitive to Complex and now to Simple." We're being forced to move into the "simplify stage." The Internet isn't going to collapse! It's just will be unpleasantly slow and sometimes painful to use.

ISPs Pullback Building Business
With the downturn in the economy, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are not upgrading their capacity to match demand. In fact, they are limping along propping up an overloaded system. Internet connections are slowing down because of this delay in upgrading. Streaming video, YouTube, SPAM, and mammoth downloads are some culprits hogging bandwidth. Saturation! I think we'll be seeing more communication company mergers.

Alternative Budget
Instead of dropping highspeed, people are opting to drop cable TV and watch online. This only creates more demand for bandwidth. The pipe isn't getting bigger. Things are tightening.

What About Fiber Optics 100X Speeds?
Idealists and Utopian technocrats are preaching converting copper to glass and connecting America for higher access speeds. This conversion to fiber optics isn't happening soon. We say, "Yeah, but they did it in Japan!" Ahem. Japan is a tiny island nation -smaller than most of our states. We have a lot of mileage to cover in the USA. Is it realistic to say this "growth" will happen during bad times? Perhaps by increasing the money supply (inflation) the government can bankroll it. But how long would it still take for the conversion? Years or decades? Interestingly, Google is giving "matching-fund" grants to rural communities for installation of fiber optics. But Google alone can't bear this burden.

So grassroots innovation in website efficiency is the stopgap and edge --until better times.

http://www.recessionbudget.com/downgrade-high-speed-internet/

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10206157-93.html
Recession forces some to downgrade to dial-up

Americans switching from broadband to dial-up
http://www.myce.com/news/Americans-switching-from-broadband-to-dial-up-15598/

DIAL-UP: RESURRECTED BY RECESSION?
http://www.populationstatistic.com/archives/2009/02/26/dial-up-resurrected-by-recession/

"As we've become a high-def, two-way, video-on-demand society, we're overloading the wires and, especially, the airwaves along which our data travels. The result is going to be a three-year slowdown of the Internet experience, with more expensive connections and innovation turning toward efficiency rather than extravagance."
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2344696,00.asp

"Monopoly economics on the wire-line side and inadequate networks on the wireless side means we're not going to see cheap, unlimited Internet over the next few years. The result of this mismatch between applications and infrastructure is going to hurt everyone at the start, but don't underestimate clever technologists. Bandwidth will become a currency. Web pages will get more basic; marketing bloat will decrease."

The Great Internet Slowdown
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2344697,00.asp
"We're entering an era of efficiency —of doing more with less bandwidth. That doesn't mean we're going to stop innovating. It just means we're going to do it with fewer bits."

21: Checking liquid screen sizes

A 10K LoBand webpage compared at different screen resolutions.

1440x 900 pixels


1024 x 768 pixels

800 x 600 pixels

20: Speed and Ranking

Website Speed Now A Definite Factor in Google Rankings and 12 Tools to Check Site Speed

Check this link for info current as of May 2010 about measuring webpage speed.

19: CATHEDRAL EFFECT REVISITED

In entry 09, I talked about the Cathedral Effect. With some consultation with my brother, Brad Teare, he recommended trying some purple behind the text with blurred edges. This is a complementary color (somewhat) to the yellow on the following page. I also added a "prettier" HTML NEXT button. It then seemed the next page with the former black-text-over-yellow-flower appeared bland or flat. Switching the text color to a purple helped --but not the same purple (#330033) as on the HOME page. It had to be lighter (#330066). The eye read the dark purple text as black with all that surrounding yellow. This is an optical effect known as "simultaneous contrast."

Here are the new results:
(click to view larger images)


The HTML rollover effect of the button would be better with the opposite colors lit up on rollover. I didn't particularly want it centered but not all test browsers rendered it in the same place. Centering cured the problem. Fine!

Two Big Questions: Legibility and Speed?
Is the new purplish background more readable than the old screen in entry 09.

Here's the old:

And the new:

Click to see larger versions. Do we lose the HTML Times New Roman type edges? Is it better? The button definitely is pulling the eye away from the text. It needs the "reverse" color solution as mentioned. The bright red is glaring.

So Why Add the Purplish Background Glow?
We're doing an experiment based on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's color theories of physiological color. There is some speculation complementary color resets the cones in the eye giving a pleasure sensation. Is it true? I don't know. From our experiment, does it seem more pleasant?

Try a live test.

So What About Speed?
I tested the HOME page loading speed on websiteoptimization.com

They said:
Congratulations, the total size of this page is 7081 bytes. This page should load in 2.21 seconds on a 56Kbps modem. This site is not using HTTP compression, otherwise called content encoding using gzip.

I then used some Firefox addons to test pageweight:

YSlow tool for Firefox = A rating 10.9K
Extended Status bar addon for Firefox = 10K in 0.7 seconds.





What is that 1.3K of JavaScript?
I'm not using any JavaScript. It's an external attempt to load GoDaddy code. It's being suppressed but still slows down the loadtime a tad. I do not have PHP features because free hosting doesn't include server languages --something GoDaddy doesn't tell you when you sign up. (Bait and switch? Most definitely.) Any registration for a domain name qualifies you for this hosting. BUT-- Dot-info domains are only $1.07 per year with 10GB of hosting space included. This requires using the "GoDaddy Hack" NOTE: entry #38 is the only trick that still works. GoDaddy changed their code process a few years ago.

GZIP-COMPRESSION: What's the speed gain?
GZIP is very old --existing even before Internet days. It's an open-source file compression technique that reduces redundancy in the HTML code. All browsers can decompress GZIP on-the-fly. It's not the same as removing "white space." White space removal eliminates spaces between words and code. That would buy a 10% reduction in the HTML and was significant on dialup --but not any more. GZIP will reduce the HTML code (not images) by 50% to 70% of the file size. For this page, we have about 7 or 8K of code. Chopping out 4K would give us a little speed --but it'd be more significant of a gain on a bloated 375K page. So for the extra cost of $75/year we don't need PHP and GZIP. When I have GZIP-PHP available I use it. The extra boost in speed makes me smile. (Removing white space AND using GZIP is an insignificant gain. Not worth the time since all "blanks" are redundant and compressed by GZIP anyway.)

So the Questions remains: Was the 2.7K purple blur background worth the effect? You tell me.

18: VALUE ANALYSIS: Why lean websites matter.

Value analysis is a principle used to improve industrial process but it can be applied to many aspects of creativity and innovation. The components are: combination, simplification, elimination, standardization, and substitution. These principles are also used in optimizing lean manufacturing.

Is there really such a thing as lean websites?
While "lean" websites is an ideal, generally "manufacturing" and "web engineering" don't quite fit the same model. It's been tried. Manufacturing has inventory and delivery of materials. Uh? Where is that in websites? LoBand website philosophy is about as close as you can get to this ideal of streamlining web construction.

Does LoBand web make a difference?
It depends upon what your goals are. What kind of resources do you have: time, budget, energy, space, speed, etc. Nothing is faster than LoBand. Nothing is simpler. There are simple "canned" alternatives like templates and blogs, but nothing for custom work with branding and theming.

Branding requires originality.

Branding is more than a logo. It is something beyond your control. It's the perception in your customers mind. They OWN your brand. How visitors feel when they land on your website is part of the branding experience. It is something you can't buy in a can or a template.

Learn more from this slide show by Marty Neumeier what branding really is.

17: Links to LoBand Guides Online

A "LoBand" website is a website with very simple architecture and designed for users with low bandwidth connections.

Aptivate Top10 LoBand Guidelines
Aptivate has a lot of good suggestions for low bandwidth websites. I agree with most of the things they say but their motive seems to be making information accessible to third-world nations. That is a worthy goal, but not the objective of LoBand websites.

Low-Bandwidth Design
This article summarizes the most important considerations when designing a low-bandwidth website. This is a good overview of LoBand benefits and shortcomings.

BMO: Guidelines for Low Bandwidth Websites
There are two very good reasons why creating small websites (sites requiring minimal data download to see and use) is something everyone should consider: usability and global accessibility.

16: Bad Economy: the LoBand friend

With LoBand websites the cost of failure is cheap. It's so low, you can swing the bat many more times. In a bad economy, no one really notices or cares about more failure. That creates a better environment for risk-taking, which is the only way innovation occurs.

At the same time, launching in a bad economy imposes a kind of discipline, forcing entrepreneurs to keep costs low and be smart about marketing and distribution. LoBand is a self-imposed discipline.