<SIMPLE>

"Wot, no animated graphics, no flash menus and no huglely complex page designs with lots of high-resolution colour images? Wot's going on?"

The answer's simple... what's the point? More especially, what are the effects of the excess of graphical dross that passes for acceptable web design today?

The Free Range Network design their pages simply, with a minimal level of graphics, scripting, and client-side code because for us what matters is the content rather than justifying our existence through a haze of colour and movement.

However, when push comes to shove, what is the effect of all this extra colour, images, animation and coding... IT BURNS ENERGY!!

When you load a web page the physical elements of the page – the text, images and/or scripting to make it work – require energy to move them from the server to your browser. But, once it's loaded onto your browser, if the page contains lots of activity and scripts, or worse still objects and plug-ins that constitute new operating processes, then your computer will burn yet more energy whilst you just look at the page.

"Well, so wot? Wot do I care if I'm burning all that extra juice
if makes the page look prettier!"

If you have a processor load and throttle monitor on your desktop take a look at what happens to the load on your system when you load one of our pages. Then compare it to a full-on commercially produced page full of animated graphics or plug-ins. Our pages should produce a minimal spike when they are load and nothing thereafter, and if you've a fairly fast processor it should cause the processor to throttle-up. However, if you look at a big commercial site, for example the web site for the UK's national newspaper, The Independent, you can see the difference that all the extra code and animated graphics make. Not only does your processor load increase, but your processor might even have to throttle at 100% to run the processes that the page spawn to provide all that "functionality".

In addition, the larger the page, the larger the amount of resources your system must devote to displaying that page. This can be problematic on older computers because they just don't have the capacity to process all this extra data speedily. So, if you can't afford the latest giga-hertz system (which, of course, the majority of the world's population can't) or you can get a broadband connection to easily download all these bloated pages, then all that extra "design" obstructs you participation in the online world rather than improving it!

"Yeah, so wot... your pages are boring!"

It's an issue of how our standards for using ICT affect the global environment!

Let's assume that viewing our main index page uses 2 watts of power less than viewing a comparable "high-tech." main index page (that's about the same amount of energy as a small incandescent torch bulb). If the page is viewed for a minute, and it gets viewed about 41,000 times a year (about the current level of usage), then that's about 1.36 kilo-Watt-hours of power saved per year. Under the UK's current system of power generation, that's a saving of about 830g of carbon dioxide per year. For our entire web site (currently about 415,000 page requests per year) that's about 8.4 kilos of carbon dioxide saved per year – just from our tiny web site!

Now, what of the web designers of the world took the "simple" or "less" approach? We'd be talking about many tonnes of carbon saved per year! OK, in the greater scheme of things it's not a lot (compared to other forms of power consumption such as lighting) but in terms of the energy or carbon efficiency of the Internet the issue of the power consumed by "high-tech." web designs is an issue that, to-date, has been utterly ignored.

Any view on this? If so, email us at simple@fraw.org.uk.