Optimizing Images on Alexa's Top 100 Global Sites | Hacker News Reader

Optimizing Images on Alexa's Top 100 Global Sites

blog.kraken.io

35 pointsrast-a12 comments

A third of Google's image size is this thing: https://ssl.gstatic.com/s2/oz/images/notifications/spinner_3... which is basically a loading icon that is rarely seen.

How does HTTP compression factor into image optimization? Is it possible to optimize an image but the HTTP compressed size ends up being greater?

You should release a monthly report with this same algorithm. You should also put in a column for competitors algorithm (not the just ones you beat, all of them).

Don't forget that some images are loaded after the page and content load, so they have very little impact on user experience (and all these sites make heavy use of CDNs).

At first I assumed Google's reduction was so high because they'd scraped the site on a day when the logo was a doodle. But I just manually checked Google's main logo and was surprised to see a 40% lossless reduction. I would assume they dogfood PageSpeed (or at least use some internal version of it) which does image optimisation automatically for them. So is Kraken just better or is it just an oversight from Google?

There might be a browser support issue that prevents doing it.

The bandwidth and mobile loading might not be an issue because of their massive amount of data-centers to serve content from.

It seems like it to would be easy to test the new image to see if anyone reports any issues, but there might just not be any benefits to reducing the homepage image by 40%. Make sure you consider that the homepage image is being scaled smaller than the actually image is, some optimizers take this into account and will give you a scaled image.

> but there might just not be any benefits to reducing the homepage image by 40%

There would be advantages to people on limited bandwidth mobile data plans?

I'm gently curious about the amount of CO2 it takes to push that extra 40% through the Internet.

(Off topic: Seeing the Daily Mail on the Alexa list is profoundly depressing.)

CO2 from extra bandwidth? Probably less than a text-message.

According to this "Club Penguins" are a major source of CO2, I'm not sure why. http://visualization.geblogs.com/visualization/co2/#/club_pe...

That obnoxious spinner is used for Mr. Tinkles, the Asshole Of Notification. Because even after Mr. Tinkles starts ringing out, he has no idea what to say. So when you click on him to make him shut the hell up, he still hasn't loaded the hundred bytes of your notification, and you have to look at that stupid spinner while all of Google's horrifying social storage infrastructure lurches into action. And because Mr. Tinkles is part of Google's all-in Social Death Pact, you have to load that image on every Google property: Gmail, Maps, Drive, Search, everything.

Hm, tested the field/mountain comparison from kraken.io first page on JPEGmini - 184kb on jpegmini vs 242kb on Kraken.io

Seems their solution is both cheaper and better?

http://www.jpegmini.com/

Well the server version start at $199. So i dont think that is cheap.

Considering you are not limited to any amount of images, yes it is.

I just tried two product images on both and JPEGmini was either the same filesize or larger. So I think the subject will have something to do with it.

I don't know much about the technical side of things, but as someone studying SEO and UX this seems like a huge win. Not only by cutting down on page load size / speed but so much better fo rUX.

> I don't know much about the technical side of things, but as someone studying SEO and UX.

I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of developers suddenly cried out in terror...

Joking aside it is usually a win to reduce page load sizes from a speed and bandwidth point of view (which on a heavily tracked site can add significantly to costs) occasionally you have to be careful as some of the compression methods result in non-standard or "technically standard but the client doesn't really do it that way" files which can render corrupted or more slowly.

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