Re: The ability to turn off animations in browsers

Hidvégi Gábor wrote:

> I'm new to this list, but not to the web, I've been working with it 
> since 1999. My concerns about the destruction of our environment
> (thus the extinction of species) and the growing hunger for energy
> (but the lack of cheap renewable energy) have led me to ask
> developers to reduce the energy-consumption of the websites we
> create. This can be achieved by giving the users the ability to turn
> off animations browserwide to save energy and time.

To be honest, I do not think that animations /per se/ are a major
cause of concern, either from the energy perspective or from
the perspective of wasted computer resources.  Of far greater
concern, from my perspective at least, is the use of video-based
advertising.  Quite clearly I (and 99.999% of others) have zero
interest in the content, yet without my consent it is streamed
using my bandwidth and displayed using my resources, not only
when I visit some web pages (where at least AdBlock Plus can
assist) but also (for example) when I use the "Home" option
in Skype (where AdBlock Plus is of zero benefit).  If we could
successfully address this issue, we might effect far far greater
savings in resource utilisation than could ever be achieved by
preventing animation from occurring.

Philip Taylor

Received on Wednesday, 12 June 2013 08:23:11 UTC