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04:21:2001 Entry: "Curmudgeon Rant"
Curmudgeon Rant
This is the problem with geek culture. I was looking through Dynamic Drive the other night and found this script. Wow, make a gradient bar without using any graphics. Oh no, you don't want to use GRAPHICS. Graphics take a long time to download (it's really funny to hear a geek bitch and moan about graphics loading when they'll turn around and brag about their fast broadband connection! Thank goodness I don't need to go to any holiday parties with geeks in attendance this year). If at all possible, do it with a SCRIPT! OK, I tried out the script. It's approximately 2378 bytes. A GIF graphic gradient with 70 colors (because the gradient is 350 pixels long and the colors change every 5 pixels...read the info on the script) the same dimensions (350x20) is 2475, roughly the same size. A jpeg at good quality ("50," for those of you using Photoshop) is 694 bytes! And with a graphic, you don't even need to make it 20 pixels high...you can make it 10 pixels high and let it tile (if it's a table fill), reducing the size even further. Oh no, graphics take longer to load. My butt. And who wants to mess with reconfiguring that script each time you need a new gradient while you can just whip open an image editing program, select a two-color gradient, and wham...there's your gradient. I mean, have people become so enamoured of the concept of coding that they've lost all common sense? Do they feel a graphic is contaminating to their all geek, all the time, 100% nerd self-image? Ewww...you'll get artist cooties!
script 2378 bytes (oh, I forgot...you won't even SEE this if you're using Netscape)
350x20 gif image 2475 bytes
350x20 jpeg image 694 bytes
350x10 gif image 1633 bytes
350x20 jpeg image 590 bytes
Not to pick on geeks, I definitely get the *opposite* sense from non-digital visual artists when they find out that I'm involved in digital art (to be specific without being too specific...this has basically been a Madison phenomenon), like I'm not a REAL artist because I create on a computer as well.
Baaah. People.
2 Comments
Ok, just so no one think you're just making up you have a secret admirer I have filled in all the optional information even so I now become the unsecret admirer ;-) Anyway, the script doesn't work with opera either, infact no scripts work with opera even so the guys over at www.webstandards.org list it among their webstandard browsers, well, that's another issue. How come the jpeg image is so much smaller than the gif, thought it was lots of bytes to save by using gifs instead of jpegs. But who wants a squareended gradientbar on their page anyway?
Could as well just make a 350x3 or so table and use a backgroundcolor to divide whatever one needed to divide, it would look much better and load much faster than the script.
Posted by Your secret admirer @ 12/23/2001 04:09 PM CST
Hiya!
OK, to answer your first question, I think the JPEG is smaller because the gradient is a continuous tone, like a photo, which jpegs excell at. With gifs, it has to create all these intermediary steps between the two colors, hence, more colors.
To answer your second question, who wants a square ended gradient bar on their page? The same people who complain about ugly rainbow bar GRAPHICS...heh.
Posted by Ann @ 12/23/2001 04:30 PM CST