1. Reduce Energy Consumption

At the dawn of the web-era, there was much focus on how environmentally friendly websites were: we’d chop down fewer trees, ship fewer products, and travel less for business.

And because the web was small, any negative impact it had was relatively small. But the Internet’s no longer small, and neither is the impact it has on the environment. The average website uses 211,000g of CO2 per year, watching a video online outputs an estimated 0.2g of CO2 per second, and a single email can cost 50g of CO2.

In the next four years, the tech industry as a whole may use up to 20% of the world’s electricity and be responsible for 5.5% of global CO2 emissions.

The good news is that because websites are viewed many times, even small improvements can multiply into real change.

1. Reduce Energy Consumption

Through electricity use, the Internet generates around the same CO2 as most major countries. That carbon comes from two sources: the devices we use to access the Internet and the servers that host our data.

Computers heat up, and when they heat up, they slow down. Servers are especially vulnerable and use extraordinary amounts of energy to keep cool and functional, which is why Microsoft keeps throwing servers into the sea.

Make It Faster

The faster your site, the less data is used to serve it, and the less carbon it’s outputting; it’s that simple.

Reduce the Number of Resources Used

Everything you load on your site has an impact. You might think that a tiny PNG is too small to really impact your carbon footprint, but over thousands of page loads, its impact is multiplied. Anything you can do to reduce the number of actual files requested will reduce your carbon output. You can use sites like Ecograder to estimate your own site’s CO2 output.

Optimize Images

If there’s one thing you can do to reduce the size of your site, the amount of data that needs to be sent over the Internet to serve your site, and the resulting speed, it’s optimizing your images.

Nothing reduces a site’s footprint like optimizing images. It’s easy and free to reduce the size of JPGs and PNGs with a service like TinyPNG. Offer WebP to any browser that will accept them; it will boost your Lighthouse score and improve your CO2 usage.

Lazy Load Images

Lazy loading images means images are loaded as they are required; images at the top of a page always load, images further down only load when the user scrolls to them; if the user doesn’t scroll to the bottom of the page, they don’t load, saving you CO2.

Reduce The Amount Of JavaScript You Use

Yes, JavaScript is awesome. Yes, it can be hugely beneficial to UX. And yes, it munches on energy like it’s candy.

When a web page loads, it’s done, the total cost is in. If JavaScript keeps running in the background, redrawing the screen based on user interaction — as is the case with a parallax site — the web page keeps using up energy on the device.

Choose a Sustainable Hosting Company

You can reduce the power needs of a site, but you can’t eliminate them. One simple step is to opt for a hosting company that gets its electricity from sustainable sources such as wind power or solar.

Low←Tech Magazine is powered by a server that runs on solar energy and carries a warning that it may go offline. But it’s possible to host both reliably and sustainably. Many web hosts outsource their actual server management, so they have no control over how those servers are powered, but there are plenty of exceptions that guarantee green web hosting. Google Cloud aims to be the cleanest in the cloud industry. For green web hosting, I always recommend the all-round superb Kualo.

2. Be Inclusive

One of the biggest issues with the EV (Electric Vehicle) movement is that we’re replacing cars earlier than we normally would in a rush to move to “clean” driving.

A new EV certainly outputs less than a gas-powered vehicle when driven the same distance. Combine increased use — because owners think they are driving cleanly — with the fact that a new EV has to be manufactured, the minerals for batteries have to be mined (in horrific conditions), and it then needs to be shipped to you, and EVs are not as friendly as they appear — so go ahead, buy that vintage Porsche it’s probably better for the environment than a Tesla.

Support Legacy Devices

The same issue that applies to cars applies to devices. Every time we rush ahead to support the latest iPhone, we leave older generations behind. A device can and should last longer than two years.

This is not to say that you shouldn’t embrace modern web standards. Technologies like CSS Grid are excellent at reducing markup size and speeding up sites. CSS Grid has been well supported for over four years, and even “legacy” devices can handle it. If you can keep a phone for an extra six months, the environmental cost of that phone is reduced by 20%.

3. Help Users Make Good Choices

More and more people are trying to make good choices. We’re eating a healthier, balanced diet. We’re recycling clothes. We’re traveling by bike, and on foot, instead of by car. People want to do the right thing, and they seek out companies that aid them.

Improve Navigation

Anything that you can do to make your content more findable will mean fewer page loads and therefore consume fewer resources.

By improving your information architecture, improving your search accuracy, and improving on-page signposts like bread crumbs and link text, you help users find content faster.

Feelgood Feedback

When the environmental impact of a user’s actions are quantifiable, let them know. Users who care will appreciate it, and users who don’t will ignore it.

Raileurope.com adds a note to any quotation letting you know how much carbon you’ve saved by traveling by train instead of flying.

Don’t Remove the Shipping Rate

Many ecommerce sites offer free shipping, especially above a certain order value; it’s a good way to encourage higher sales. But absorbing the shipping cost implies that there is no shipping. By highlighting the shipping costs, even if they’re not passed on to the customer, you remind them that there is an environmental cost and a financial cost.

You can absorb the shipping rate without implying there is no cost by adding the shipping and then explicitly deducting it as a discount.

Sustainable Web Design Is Good For Business

The fundamentals of good web design are the fundamentals of sustainable web design.

Make it fast and usable, and you’ll also be making it energy efficient. Make it inclusive, and you’ll help the industry slow the ever-growing tendency to consume. Make it transparent, and you’ll help your users make good choices of their own. All of these things are not only good for the environment, but they also result in improved UX and SEO.

Featured image via Pexels.

The post 3 Effective Ways To Improve Your Site’s Carbon Footprint first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.

22 avril 2021/par Service comm.

What Is The Independent Web And Does It Matter In 2021?

Ten years ago, people began talking about the “Independent Web.” Although we don’t commonly use the term anymore, that doesn’t mean that it’s not still as vital a topic of discussion today as it was a decade ago.

Today, I want to look at where the term came from, what it refers to today, and why it’s something that all of us in business, marketing, and web design should be thinking about.

What Is The Independent Web?

The Independent Web is a term that was coined back in 2010 by John Battelle.

In “Identity and The Independent Web,” Battelle broaches the subject of internet users losing control of their data, privacy, and decision-making to the likes of social media and search engines.

“When we’re ‘on’ Facebook, Google, or Twitter, we’re plugged into an infrastructure that locks onto us, serving us content and commerce in an automated but increasingly sophisticated fashion. Sure, we navigate around, in control of our experience, but the fact is, the choices provided to us as we navigate are increasingly driven by algorithms modeled on the service’s understanding of our identity.”

That’s the Dependent Web.

This is how Battelle explains the Independent Web:

“There is another part of the web, one where I can stroll a bit more at my own pace, and discover new territory, rather than have territory matched to a presumed identity. And that is the land of the Independent Web.”

In 2010, this referred to websites, search engines, and apps where users and their activity were not tracked. But a lot has changed since then, and many websites that were once safe to peruse without interference or manipulation are no longer.

What Happens When the Dependent Web Takes Over?

Nothing good.

I take that back. It’s not fair to make a blanket statement about Dependent Web platforms and sites. Users can certainly benefit from sharing some of their data with them.

Take Facebook, for instance. Since its creation, it’s enabled people to connect with long-lost friends, stay in touch with distant relatives, enable freelance professionals like ourselves to find like-minded communities, etc.

The same goes for websites and apps that track and use visitor data. Consumers are more than willing to share relevant data with companies so long as they benefit from the resulting personalized experiences.

But the Dependent Web also has a darker side. There are many ways that the Dependent Web costs consumers and businesses control over important things like:

Behavior

If you’ve seen The Social Dilemma, then you know that platforms like Facebook and Google profit from selling their users to advertisers.

That’s right. They’re not just selling user data. They’re selling users themselves. If the algorithms can change the way users behave, these platforms and their advertisers get to cash in big time.

Many websites and apps are also guilty of using manipulation to force users to behave how they want them to.

Personal Data

This one is well-known thanks to the GDPR in the EU and the CCPA in California. Despite these initiatives to protect user data and privacy, the exploitation of personal data on the web remains a huge public concern in recent years.

Content and Branding

This isn’t relevant to websites so much as it is to social media platforms and Google.

Dependent Web platforms ultimately dictate who sees your content and when. And while they’re more than happy to benefit from the traffic and engagement this content brings to their platforms, they’re just as happy to censor or pull down content as they please, just as Skillshare did in 2019 when it deleted half of its courses without telling its course creators.

What’s more, while social media and search engines have become the place to market our businesses, some of our branding gets lost when entering such oversaturated environments.

Income

When algorithms get updated, many businesses often feel the negative effects almost immediately.

For example, Facebook updated its algorithm in 2018 to prioritize “meaningful content.” This pushed out organic business content and pulled regular user content to the top of the heap.

This, in turn, forced businesses to have to pay-to-play if they wanted to use Facebook as a viable marketing platform.

Access

The Dependent Web doesn’t just impact individuals’ experiences. It can have far-reaching effects when one company provides a critical service to a large portion of the population.

We saw this happen in November when AWS went down.

When Amazon Web Services burps and half the Internet goes down maybe just maybe it’s not a great idea to have a single company with so much control over what has essentially become our society’s critical infrastructure?

— Evan Greer (@evan_greer) November 25, 2020

It wasn’t just Amazon’s servers that went down, though. It took out apps and sites like:

1Password
Adobe Spark
Capital Gazette
Coinbase
Glassdoor
Roku
The Washington Post

And there’s absolutely nothing that these businesses or their users could do but sit around and wait… because Amazon hosts a substantial portion of the web.

Innovation

When consumers and businesses become dependent on platforms that predominantly control the way we live and work, it’s difficult for us to stand up for the little guys trying to carve out innovative pathways.

And that’s exactly what we see happen time and time again with Big Tech’s buy-and-kill tactics.

As a result, we really lose the option to choose what we use to improve our lives and our businesses. And innovative thinkers lose the ability to bring much-needed changes to the world because Big Tech wants to own the vast majority of data and users.

How Can We Take Back Control From The Dependent Web?

Many things are happening right now that are trying to push consumers and businesses towards a more Independent Web:

Consumer Privacy Protection: GDPR and CCPA empower consumers to control where their data goes and what it’s used for.

Big Tech Regulations: The Senate held tech regulation hearings with Facebook’s and Twitters’s CEOs.

Public Awareness Initiatives: Films like The Social Dilemma bring greater awareness to what’s happening on social media.

Ad Blocker Adoption: Adblocker usage is at an all-time high.

Private Search Engine Usage: Although Google dominates search engine market share, people are starting to use private search engines like Duck Duck Go.

Private Browsing Growth: Over 60% of the global population is aware of what private browsing is (i.e., incognito mode), and roughly 35% use it when surfing the web.

Self-hosted and Open Source CMS Popularity: The IndieWeb community encourages people to move away from Dependent platforms and build their own websites and communities. This is something that Matt Mullenweg, the founder of WordPress, talked about back in 2012.

“The Internet needs a strong, independent platform for those of us who don’t want to be at the mercy of someone else’s domain. I like to think that if we didn’t create WordPress something else that looks a lot like it would exist. I think Open Source is kind of like our Bill of Rights. It’s our Constitution. If we’re not true to that, nothing else matters.”

As web designers, this is something that should really speak to you, especially if you’ve ever met a lead or client who didn’t understand why they needed a website when they could just advertise on Facebook or Instagram.

A Decentralized Web: Perhaps the most promising of all these initiatives are Solid and Inrupt, which were launched in 2018 by the creator of the Web, Tim Berners-Lee.

As Berners-Lee explained on the Inrupt blog in 2020:

”The Web was always meant to be a platform for creativity, collaboration, and free invention — but that’s not what we are seeing today. Today, business transformation is hampered by different parts of one’s life being managed by different silos, each of which looks after one vertical slice of life, but where the users and teams can’t get the insight from connecting that data. Meanwhile, that data is exploited by the silo in question, leading to increasing, very reasonable, public skepticism about how personal data is being misused. That in turn has led to increasingly complex data regulations.”

This is something we should all keep a close eye on. Consumers and businesses alike are becoming wary of the Dependent Web.

Who better than the creator of the web to lead us towards the Independent Web where we can protect our data and better control our experience?

Featured Image via Pexels.

The post What Is The Independent Web And Does It Matter In 2021? first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.

21 avril 2021/par Service comm.

Poll: Is Environmentally Conscious Web Design Really Worth It?

We’re no longer arguing about whether climate change exists because climate change is now extensively documented. Instead, we’re arguing over whether climate change is a natural cycle or human-accelerated.

At this point, the reasonable best-case (yes, best-case) scenario is that global temperatures will rise by 2˚C — if we don’t meet our global emissions targets, then it will be higher.

A 2˚C rise in temperature means a rise in sea levels of approximately 20m in the next 100 years. Major cities, including New York and London, will be decimated. Florida will become an island off the coast of Georgia. Venice is in serious trouble, as is the whole of the Netherlands. Many low-lying island nations will cease to exist. If we do nothing, there may not be enough farmable land left to sustain the population.

According to sustainablewebdesign.org, the whole Internet currently churns out 3.8% of global carbon emissions. Next Tuesday is Earth Day 2021, making this a great time to think about your own sites’ carbon footprint.

The key to reducing a website’s carbon footprint is to use as little electricity as possible — including battery power because batteries need to be charged. Some simple ways to achieve this are using dark mode, limiting the amount of resource-hungry JavaScript you use, and limiting your site’s payload. Small incremental gains like these can radically reduce the damage your sites are doing, and conveniently they also happen to be good for UX.

But let’s look at the numbers. An environmentally consciously designed site that gets 100,000 page views per year will output around 0.055 tons of CO2 per annum. By comparison, the average human produces 4 tons of CO2 (in Western countries, it’s closer to 16 tons) over the same period. The world as a whole produces 43.1 billion tons of CO2 per year. If you redesign your site to reduce power usage by 10%, you’ll have solved 0.0000000000001% of the problem.

With such a small impact on such a huge problem, is it really worth changing how we design websites to limit climate change?

Featured image via USGS.

The post Poll: Is Environmentally Conscious Web Design Really Worth It? first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.

15 avril 2021/par Service comm.

7 Skills You Need To Thrive As A Web Designer In 2021

Web design is an ever-evolving field. Those of us that have been in the industry a long time (i.e., six months plus) have seen the launch of more products, the establishment of more ideas, and the promise of more growth than most industries see over a whole career.

While the tools we use, the terminology we employ, and the goalposts we shoot for are constantly changing, core skills are transferable and long-lasting and will ensure you not only survive in the industry but thrive in it.

These skills are characteristics that you can learn, that will help you grow in 2021, 2022, and beyond.

1. Decision Making

Life is a series of decisions, from which pair of socks to wear to which crypto to store your life savings in. Each of us has a finite amount of decision-making fuel in the day — the more decisions you make, the sooner you reach decision fatigue.

Most people burn their decision-making fuel by second-guessing themselves; they make a decision and then remake the same decision over and over as doubt creeps in.

The ability to make a decision, and stick to it, separates those people who still have the fuel to make strategic decisions after close of business and those people who can’t decide what to have for dinner.

2. Clarity of Purpose

It’s never a bad idea to brush up on design fundamentals. From color theory to typography to UI and layout, these core skills are not only beneficial to your design practice, but they help you think about design on a higher level.

Too often, designers fail to see the wood for the trees, focusing on the project at hand instead of a wider picture. The wider picture doesn’t mean your portfolio; it means the whole history, culture, and design context.

Many musicians can play multiple styles, but they tend to favor one instrument; they made a fundamental decision that freed them to explore music in greater depth

Despite the term, design fundamentals aren’t universal; they’re personal to you. For example, should you pair a script with a serif? Your answer is probably, “it depends” because you’re an awesome designer; my answer is “no,” because, for me, that is a design fundamental.

Design fundamentals can be limiting, but by providing default answers to common questions, they also free you to consider larger questions about what you’re doing and why, which leads to clarity of purpose.

Many musicians can play multiple styles, but they tend to favor one instrument; they made a fundamental decision that freed them to explore music in greater depth.

3. The Holy Trinity

The holy trinity in web design is HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Learn what they are and what they do.

You need to understand them well enough to hold an intelligent boardroom-level conversation about them. You don’t actually need to know how to code them — although I’ve never actually met someone who knew enough about their roles to hold a strategic conversation, who didn’t also know how to code them from scratch.

I’m not talking about frameworks, libraries, or the latest build tools. Those things are just macros for coders. I’m talking about understanding the building blocks of a site, so if someone asks you whether you really need the company logo in the site footer, you can answer, and back your answer up with facts.

4. Simple Presentation

No matter what field of design you’re in, you’re going to need to present your ideas to someone who doesn’t share your knowledge. Whether you’re explaining the basics to a client or explaining your decision-making to a colleague, presenting your ideas simply is the best way to be heard.

a pitch is most effective when you exclude extraneous detail

Often, a persuasive presentation utilizes the less-is-more approach. Just as a design is finished when you’ve removed everything unnecessary, so too a pitch is most effective when you exclude extraneous detail.

Often you’ll find metaphor useful, especially if you have a passing knowledge of the person’s own area of expertise because it translates a concept into a format the person understands and is comfortable with.

“We should…because it will improve [a metric] by approximately…%” is often the most welcome language. If the person you’re selling your decision needs more detail — and they probably don’t need to know details, that’s what they have you for — they can ask.

5. Strategic SEO

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation, for the two people in the world who don’t know what that acronym stands for) is a vast field with as many sub-divisions as there are UX job titles.

There are various branches of SEO that a site needs to consider. Technical SEO is the stuff that coders do; if you’re not a coder, you can ignore that. Content SEO is the stuff that marketers do; if you’re not a marketer, you can ignore that. Strategic SEO is a macro-view of a site’s plans; everyone on every project should understand strategic SEO.

Strategic SEO covers topics like landing pages, single-page sites, whether a blog is necessary, how, if at all, social media is employed. Strategic SEO feeds all other branches of SEO. It is so fundamental that it informs the earliest decisions about a site. If you want to do more than make things look pretty, learn more about strategic SEO.

6. A Second Language

You’ve probably noticed by now that the web extends beyond your town limits. It’s a global force, which means billions of people who don’t speak the same language.

If you’re not a native-English speaker, then it’s a no-brainer to learn a little English. You don’t need to be fluent; you certainly don’t need to be poetic, but the vast majority of documentation, GUIs, blog posts, forums, conferences, and the Web itself are in English, and translation code only gets you so far.

If you are a native English speaker, then learn something relevant to your region or the industry you specialize in. It doesn’t really matter what you learn; picking up a language, and culture, makes you a more rounded human being. And provided you don’t pick something obscure, you’re opening yourself up to millions or even billions of users you were previously missing out on.

7. Saying, “No.”

It doesn’t matter whether you’re a freelancer sofa-diving for spare pennies to meet the rent or a seasoned in-house designer with targets to meet; everyone struggles to say, “no.”

The fear is that if we decline a project, or a feature request, that we won’t be asked next time; eventually, we’ll be passed over for all projects until we have no career left.

The problem is that we only have so many hours in a day. If we do too much, we end up doing it badly, so there have to be limits. Every time you say “yes,” you’re increasing the chances that you will have to say “no,” to a future opportunity that’s great for you.

By all means, decline gracefully. Do it politely. Be kind. Offer to refer the client elsewhere. But it’s better to say “no” than to have to say “no” to the perfect project because you’re over-stretched.

Featured image via Unsplash.

The post 7 Skills You Need To Thrive As A Web Designer In 2021 first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.

Source de l’article sur sap.com

7 avril 2021/par Service comm.

6 startups intègrent la nouvelle promotion Femmes Entrepreneures

Actualités, ERP & Applications, SAP, Uncategorized

Paris, le 8 mars 2021 – Le Village by CA Paris, accélérateur de startups qui accompagne les grands groupes/ETI vers le futur de leurs industries, annonce la sélection de 6 startups pour la nouvelle promotion Femmes Entrepreneures lancée en partenariat avec Microsoft France via son programme Microsoft For Startups et SAP via son programme SAP.iO No Boundaries. Elles ont passé avec succès le comité de sélection soutenues par quatre réseaux féminins : Femmes Business Angels, Professional Women’s Network Paris, #JamaisSansElles et Willa.

6 startups lauréates

Le comité de sélection composé des partenaires du Village by CA Paris dont Stelllantis, Naval Group, Crédit Agricole Assurances, SAP, Microsoft… ont sélectionné les startups suivantes :

– Dolipharm

Dolipharm permet aux entreprises d’aller plus loin dans les domaines de la prévention des services de santé au travail. Elle développe une offre pour permettre aux salariés de

bénéficier du conseil du pharmacien, de la livraison de médicaments et des produits de parapharmacie, et des services associés, le tout sans quitter l’entreprise.

– Tarmac Technologies

Tarmac Technologies développe une plateforme permettant aux acteurs des opérations aériennes de collaborer et d’échanger leurs informations afin d’augmenter leurs performances opérationnelles et de repartir à l’heure et en toute sécurité.

– Refyld

Refyld, développe des produits de soin, d’hygiène, d’entretien et d’alimentaire, sains et naturels, fabriqués en France, rechargeables à l’infini et vendus à prix coûtant grâce à une simple adhésion annuelle.

– Hkind

Hkind est une solution digitale qui facilite l’échange d’initiatives, de solutions et de bonnes pratiques entre celles et ceux qui font la santé d’aujourd’hui et de demain.

– Sweet Show

Sweet Show est une solution SAAS à destination des équipes Sales et Marketing BtoB, qui permet d’assurer le déploiement des offres tout en diminuant le temps perdu en tâches de Back Office et en garantissant une expérience client différenciante grâce à la data générée à chaque étape du cycle de vente.

– 3DIMO
3DIMO est une solution utilisant les nouvelles technologies connectées qui permet la

détection précoce des risques pour la santé chez les animaux d’élevage.

Un programme d’accompagnement global à la clé
Les startups lauréates intégreront le Village by CA Paris pendant 2 ans (moyennant un loyer) et bénéficieront de programmes complémentaires délivrés par Microsoft et SAP.

Prochaine étape : La Pitch Party de présentation des startups lauréates se tiendra en septembre 2021.

« Nous sommes très heureux d’accueillir, au sein du Village By CA Paris, ces 6 startups créées ou co-crées par des femmes. Nous vous attendons en septembre prochain pour venir découvrir ces startups et ces femmes entrepreneures inspirantes. » déclare Fabrice Marsella, directeur du Village by CA Paris

« Félicitations aux 6 startups sélectionnées pour cette nouvelle édition de « Femmes Entrepreneures » ! A l’image de notre promotion Femmes de l’École IA Microsoft, nous sommes fiers de contribuer à des initiatives en faveur de la féminisation du secteur du numérique et d’accompagner leur croissance à l’international aux côtés de notre écosystème. » commente Agnès Van De Walle, Directrice de l’entité Partenaires et Startups de Microsoft France.

“Quand on parle d’entrepreneuriat, on pense le plus souvent à des hommes. On manque de modèles féminins. Pourtant ils existent ! C’est tout l’objet de cette promotion : mettre à l’honneur les talents féminins qui dirigent de jeunes pousses prometteuses et les aider dans leur développement. Cette année, nous avons sélectionné des startups aux profils très variés. Leur point commun est bien sûr l’innovation mais pour beaucoup d’entre elles un impact positif.” explique Sébastien Gibier, Directeur SAP.iO Foundry Paris

The post 6 startups intègrent la nouvelle promotion Femmes Entrepreneures appeared first on SAP France News.

8 mars 2021/par Service comm.

Variable Font Reveals The Full Horror of The Climate Crisis

Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat has developed a variable font, that is designed to make the effects of human-driven climate change tangible in a simple graphical form.

Whereas most type designers use variable font techniques to embed a range of weights in a single font file, the team — lead by Helsingin Sanomat’s art director Tuomas Jääskeläinen, and typographer Eino Korkala — used the technique to “melt” the typeface.

In the design process, we tried out countless letter shapes and styles, only to find that most of them visualized the disaster right in the earliest stages of the transformation. That’s something we wanted to avoid because unlike a global pandemic, climate change is a crisis that sneaks up on us.

— Tuomas Jääskeläinen

The default typeface represents the volume of Arctic sea ice in 1979 (when records began). It’s a rather beautiful, chiseled, chunky sans-serif, with cut-aways that open up counters to give it a modern appeal. As you move through the years towards 2050 the shapes appear to melt away, to the point that they’re barely legible.

Set the scale to 2021 and you’ll see an already dramatic loss of Arctic sea ice, and the resulting desalination of the ocean.

As depressing as these outlines are, they aren’t an estimate. The typeface’s outlines precisely match real data — there was an unexpected uptick in Arctic sea ice in 2000, and that’s reflected in the font.

The historical data is taken from the NSIDC (The US National Snow and Ice Data Center) and the predictive data comes from the IPCC (The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change).

We hope that using the font helps people see the urgency of climate change in a more tangible form – it is a call for action.

— Tuomas Jääskeläinen

You can download the font for free, for personal or commercial work.

The post Variable Font Reveals The Full Horror of The Climate Crisis first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.

16 février 2021/par Service comm.

Top 9 Tips For Optimizing Images in 2021

The ‘need for speed’ is an essential item on every website’s bucket list these days. And why not? Enhanced speed is directly responsible for converting traffic into paying clients.

Anyone in any industry wishes to boost their website’s loading speed, providing an improved user experience. Plus, don’t forget that escalated site speeds also escalates the website’s ranking to more competitive spots on the search engine result pages and improves core web vitals. So, how can this need for speed be achieved? The answer is image optimization.

What is Image Optimization?

Image optimization is a process of delivering superior-quality images in the appropriate format, size, and resolution while keeping them at a compressed size. Image optimization, if done right, improves not only a website’s performance but also certain other metrics like:

Page loading speed;
SEO ranking;
Conversion rate;
User engagement;
User experience;
Resource download time.

However, the image optimization process can be accelerated for better efficiency if some modern tips are followed. ImageEngine, with its years of experience in the image optimization industry, has cherry-picked some tips that can help businesses in the year 2021 and beyond.

Tips for Perfect Image Optimization in 2021

In this article, the top five tips to optimize images have been outlined to help you maximize business opportunities. All the tips included are backed by comprehensive research and years of experience in the image optimization industry.

The Right Format Matters

Selecting the right image format matters a lot in the optimization process because every format is meant to serve a specific requirement.

JPEG: Best for still images, real-world images, and complex coloring;
PNG: Best for web images like logos and flat images;
GIF: Best for low-resolution images, animated graphics, small icons, and simple images — however, it is not advisable to go with GIF format but rather use mp4 or a webp instead;
TIFF: Best for high-quality and large-size print graphics;
WebP: A modern image format that offers superior compression while maintaining great quality.

Choosing the right format reduces bandwidth consumption for an improved webpage loading speed. However, a new format has joined the club: AVIF, that covers all the above image formats’ good qualities and surpasses even WebP while maintaining an excellent compression ratio. AVIF provides almost 50% savings in size when compared to JPEG format.

Serving images in the next generation formats like WebP and AVIF is a trending practice these days.

Go for Image Compression

Once the correct format has been selected, it becomes important to reduce the images’ size through a compression method. There are two methods of compressing images:

Lossless compression: In this compression method, all the unnecessary metadata linked with the images is removed without degrading the quality. The metadata can be erased safely while exhibiting the images on a website or application.

Lossy compression: In this compression method, the quality of the image is slightly reduced to accomplish a smaller size. The file size obtained in lossy conversion is lower than lossless compression, however, a naked human eye cannot highlight the difference between the original image and the lossy compressed image.

Never Skip the CDN

Image optimization and image CDNs are a match made in heaven. Website images not only need to be optimized but have to be delivered fast and easily as well. An optimized image is of no use if it cannot be transported quickly. An image CDN (Content Delivery Network) takes care of this need. It makes the rapid delivery of optimized images possible by reducing the distance between the online visitors and the servers.

The global image CDN also serves a ton of other benefits like:

Enabling fast global reach via cloud acceleration;
Audience segmentation (based on device viewport) becomes easy;
It saves many costs by eliminating the need to invest in separate server providers in different parts of the world;
Pulls down the load on the server to achieve reduced delivery cost;
Secure storage capacity.

The carefully engineered image CDN from ImageEngine distinguishes itself from the rest with its unique features listed below:

The images are optimized to be delivered 30% faster than other CDNs in the market;
It is easy to integrate and configure ImageEngine CDN;
The images are automatically optimized to the relevant format as per the user’s viewport size;
The images can be delivered in next-generation formats such as AVIF and WebP;
The images delivered have reduced size (irrespective of the format) and outstanding quality at the same time;
ImageEngine’s extensive global CDN network provides support for HTTP, HTTP/2, WAF, and DDoS protection.

Set-up Browser Caching

The “Leverage Browser Caching” warning displays on the Google PageSpeed Insights tool when there is no caching rule in the place, or the expiration time has been set too low. In simple terms, the warning is a suggestion to improve website speed.

Browser caching instructs the visitor’s browser to save some specific files on the visitor’s local system instead of downloading them repeatedly. For example, a visitor needs to download the logo image of a website on the first visit. However, after every subsequent visit, such a visitor would load the logo file from the website’s local cache, provided that the browser caching has been enabled. The result? Faster loading because the visitor is no longer required to get everything from the website’s server directly. Browser caching can be used for images and many other types of files like statistical resources and object data.

There are many ways to leverage browser caching but simply adding the following lines of code to the .htaccess file is the most effective one:

Browser caching stores the images for a decided interval of time for easy and quick accessibility. A custom timeline or industry standards can be followed for this purpose. The timeline in the above-shared code snippet is one year.

The .htaccess file can be found with the help of an FTP program for connecting to the root directory of the website’s server.

Disable Hotlinking

Hotlinking means when an individual or business copies the URL of an image, which belongs to another website, and embeds it on their website. This results in the image being displayed as if it was an owned content. Hotlinking is a next-door neighbor of copyright infringement, but despite this fact, the practice is widespread. In many cases, hotlinking is unintentional, but it can cost the original owner of the image some money. It can even affect the website’s performance if a drain of the server’s resources happens.

Optimize for Flaky Connections

If a website has a lot of content and rich images to offer, but a portion of the users visiting the website doesn’t have a reliable internet connection, then this portion of visitors would not convert. This situation is no different than any lost business opportunity. Not all website visitors have access to fast and reliable internet facilities; therefore, it is recommended to optimize image content for spotty connections.

One trusted way of optimizing the images for slow connections is compressing the images appropriately in real-time. However, even before compressing the images, it is important to determine the network speed of users visiting the page and then categorizing them into buckets based on connection types like 4G, 3G, 2G, or slow 2G.

But ImageEngine simplifies the whole compression process. It fetches and optimizes the images in the right format, dimension, and quality directly from the URL and then delivers such images on the website’s front-end via global image CDN.

Handling Responsive Images

A lot of traffic arrives from mobile devices, and as such, it is important to have the perfect strategy for responsive images.

If vector-based images are being used, then using SVG format would be a great way to optimize them for any viewport without worrying about sizes because SVG images are resolution-independent.
Using media queries for background images or images that have been produced via CSS is the best way to display smaller images to mobile devices.
For inline images, techniques like the srcset attribute or the picture element can be used.

srcset attribute: This attribute can be implemented on the img element for defining the images at different sizes so that the browser can select the best option based on the device characteristics like width.

picture element: This is best to be used if different images are required to be displayed based on the device’s display size.

All the aforesaid discussed options offer different ways of displaying the optimized images to visitors depending on how they view the website. MDN’s responsive image guide and Google developer’s image guide can be referred to for learning more about responsive images and using picture elements or srcset attributes.

Responsive Images

Images are required to be responsive to deliver the right optimal image for every screen size. It enhances the user experience and reduces load time. According to the browser or device in which images are viewed, images of different sizes are displayed, such as full-size, thumbnail, or featured images. To create a responsive image, you need to have different versions of the image.

The problem is to optimize a high-resolution image that looks great with details while displaying it on mobile devices; details can be missed, so instead of shrinking the image details, consider cropping or scaling down the image for mobile devices.

Advantages of responsive images:

Improve the page loading speed;
Increase your reach through smartphone responsive design;
Increase conversion and sales rate with consistent user experience;
Reduce load over the server and server memory;
Boost conversations.

Client Hints

The fundamental of Client Hints is simple — the client through a device sends the server some hints regarding the requirement. The server with responsibility serves them with the right resource according to the hint. For example, with hints, browsers ask the server for 600px images for the device layout — the image to be served based on the requested parameter. Even if the client informs that data saver mode is enabled, the server delivers identical images of a lighter version. The browser and server interact through Client Hints, the job becomes readable, shorter with the same functionality.

Client Hints with ImageEngine

ImageEngine delivers images with the required – width, DPR, and Data Saver. The responsive images are created based on client hints about width and DPR and later cover the Data Saver client hint.

Optimize Images For Retina Displays

Apple coined the term “retina displays,” which display clear and densely packed pixels to provide perfect vision from an appropriate viewing distance. Now, most smartphones and desktops deliver users a high crispy viewing experience. Apple with Retina squeezed four times the pixels into the same space to create a density of 326 pixels per inch (PPI), making the displays smooth.

Why Optimize Images for Retina?

The average screen pixel density is quite low, so the web-based standard images need to include 72 PPI to cover a certain height and width.

We need to maintain the appropriate density of pixels. Otherwise, the image will cram or get stretched. As a result, a fuzzy image is created with jagged edges that distract the viewer from your brand. To solve the problem, Retina class displays came into the role. They increased image resolution, optimized high pixel density in small space, and even displayed images decently over large screens.

People these days browse from a different device; most users access images from smartphones rather than desktops. So you need to optimize the image for Retina displays.

Wrapping it up

There are many tips and tricks to optimize images, but of all these tips, using a CDN has proven to be the most effective and long-term solution for many businesses all across the globe. Image CDNs automate the optimization process for a business to focus on its core activities properly. The good thing is that it is not all expensive to integrate image CDN. It is easy to get started with and generates the results in a short space of time.

[– This is a sponsored post on behalf of ImageEngine –]

The post Top 9 Tips For Optimizing Images in 2021 first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.