Mar 2, 2012

Making the Web Design More Environmental Friendly

When any one talks about making the web design more environmental friendly, the first thought would most probably about the paperless office. In fact, this is just a conclusion of limited perception. We as human beings are responsible for maintaining the environment in the best possible way for our future generations to come. When we study this issue in depth we come across some other aspects that would have been otherwise overlooked. Some of these aspects are as follows.
 
Dual use of the computers:

Suppose you are accessing a website in UK and the server is in the USA. This implies that two computers have to be run across the Atlantic Ocean, one as a server and the other as a browser. These two computers need electricity to run. This implies that the power plants generating power would be pumping out a lot of pollutants in the air for generating the electric power. One of the studies has revealed that though the users of computers and internet feel that they are saving a lot of energy, it takes 50,000,000 horsepower to run an internet that is 56 gram in weight.

Another study highlights the pollution through CO2 emissions. According to this study, when a person conducts ten thousand searches on Google, that person contributes to so much CO2 that is emitted on traveling in an average kind of automobile for 5 kilometers.

Graphics and page size:

There was a time when the internet was not able to handle a graphic that weighed more than 20 kb. Nowadays, the broadband services permit us to have web pages with full screen images that weigh180 kb.  The size of the pages has increased five times over the last few years. When we are concerned about the environment we need to think that the browser, server and the network needs energy to be run properly. When the size of the pages increase or graphics with lot of weight is included in the website it is going to take a lot of time for it to do be down loaded. This reduces the speed of downloading. Consequently this is going to lead to increase in the energy that is going to be used.

According to a research, when you view a simple web page there is generation of twenty milligrams of carbon dioxide within a second. When the website is with complex graphics such as videos and animations, the quantity of CO2 generated goes up to 300 milligrams per second.

Use of black color:

The screen of any monitor is basically black. If this black color of the monitor is used constructively for creating contrast and color then the energy used for displaying the contents of the website on the monitor is going to be comparatively less than the energy used for displaying the website with coloring graphics.

Copyright © 2012
Protected by Copyscape Online Plagiarism Tool