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This kind of thing certainly does help, but there are other promising paths that are complementary. For example, adopting better compression for images and vide

This kind of thing certainly does help, but there are other promising paths that are complementary. For example, adopting better compression for images and video would cut down loading times by almost half. All it takes is something tiny, like Safari adopting webp which performs way better than jpeg and png on lossy and lossless compression respectively. The new generation of video codecs also will save a great deal of bandwidth and energy.

teddyh 7y ago
I fear that all of the bandwidth thus saved would immediately be consumed by induced demand.
- overeater 7y ago
  If so, wouldn't the opposite be true too -- making less efficient images will reduce demand? If that sounds absurd, then I think the fear is unfounded.
  - patrec 7y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
- noahtallen 7y ago
  I feel like image performance on the web is good enough at this point that folks aren’t holding back. Sites with images (Reddit, imgur, Facebook, etc) are crammed with images already. Even for a personal site, I wouldn’t hold back on sticking hundreds of images in a blog post. Honestly, UX of looking through those images is probably a bigger concern for me than bandwidth.
nicoburns 7y ago
That helps for traditional informational websites. But to be honest, it's already pretty easy to make those performant. This kind of thing helps dynamic web apps, that are still lagging the performance of native apps.
kevingadd 7y ago
Those both help but less than you'd think. Most websites aren't playing videos, and while better image compression means you spend less time downloading bytes over the network all images are getting decompressed into raw RGBA32 textures that cost the same amount of power to render on the compositor side. It would really help if browsers added support for Basis images though, because those can decode (quite efficiently!) to GPU compressed textures that cost less power to composite into the framebuffer.

teddyh 7y ago

I fear that all of the bandwidth thus saved would immediately be consumed by induced demand.

overeater 7y ago
If so, wouldn't the opposite be true too -- making less efficient images will reduce demand? If that sounds absurd, then I think the fear is unfounded.
- patrec 7y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
noahtallen 7y ago
I feel like image performance on the web is good enough at this point that folks aren’t holding back. Sites with images (Reddit, imgur, Facebook, etc) are crammed with images already. Even for a personal site, I wouldn’t hold back on sticking hundreds of images in a blog post. Honestly, UX of looking through those images is probably a bigger concern for me than bandwidth.

nicoburns 7y ago

That helps for traditional informational websites. But to be honest, it's already pretty easy to make those performant. This kind of thing helps dynamic web apps, that are still lagging the performance of native apps.

kevingadd 7y ago

Those both help but less than you'd think. Most websites aren't playing videos, and while better image compression means you spend less time downloading bytes over the network all images are getting decompressed into raw RGBA32 textures that cost the same amount of power to render on the compositor side. It would really help if browsers added support for Basis images though, because those can decode (quite efficiently!) to GPU compressed textures that cost less power to composite into the framebuffer.