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By: Alexander Dawson | //onextrapixel.com

Whether you believe in global warming or otherwise, the earth does still have limited resources. With an ever increasing population this means that we should try and reduce our consumption of fuel and wastage whenever possible. While I’m not going to start a hippy campaign and say that we should all go live in a world without computers (that would drive me to the point of insanity) I think that as web professionals, there are small things we can do to pass on the savings to our customers.

This article aims to highlight some of those potential energy and resource saving tweaks that we can make to ensure that if our visitors wish to reduce the amount of resources they expend, the process will be as painless and unobtrusive as possible. While this list is certainly not extensive, hopefully it may give you the opportunity to think about the process you use to build a website and how to best meet the ecological needs of your visitors as they are of an ever increasing level of importance.

Image credit: emitea

Figure 1: Recognising ways to save energy will make you an eco designer.

Note: Everything listed has some scientific credibility behind the theory, but the amount of savings that can be made depend on various factors. My advice is that if doing small things can help visitors reduce their electricity bills or resource costs without incurring extra ourselves, it’s worth the effort!

Blackle is The New White

While this item has a lot of controversy surrounding it, there is some clear merit associated with the practice therefore it’s worth breaking apart the facts from the fiction. A few years ago a site called Blackle appeared and made a name for itself due to its simple idea that by using a black background, you could reduce the amount of energy expended by your display. The theory behind this was that it requires more energy to illuminate a white pixel than a black (non active) one, sounds easy right?

While this item has a lot of controversy surrounding it, there is some clear merit associated with the practice therefore it’s worth breaking apart the facts from the fiction. A few years ago a site called Blackle appeared and made a name for itself due to its simple idea that by using a black background, you could reduce the amount of energy expended by your display. The theory behind this was that it requires more energy to illuminate a white pixel than a black (non active) one, sounds easy right?

Figure 2: Blackle conceptualises a method to help CRT displays reduce their energy consumption.

Well the truth is that the claims by promoters of the theory itself based on a scientific study were rather exaggerated. You see, with the advancement of technologies and the progression from CRT displays (which a real difference can be measured) to LCD’s (which require near enough the same amount of energy to produce black as white), much of the idea behind such a noble campaign has been debunked. So why is this item included in the list? For one reason, backwards compatibility!

As web professionals we are used to the fact that people may be browsing our sites using clunky old pieces of technology, from elderly browsers to a machine that would have been in existence longer than your children. It’s still a fact today that many people still regularly make use of CRT displays as they visit websites. Therefore it may be worth the consideration of giving your users an alternative stylesheet which they can pick based on black to pass on potential energy savings to those devices.

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