12-21-2008
An Internet search for green websites did not find any organization devoted to the actual practise of establishing guidelines of what might be considered a 'green' website. This site was created with the design to help spark additional interest among webmasters to build websites that are user friendly and bandwidth green. Please email us at greeninternet {at} sbcglobal.net with any suggestions and/or information about other green websites or organizations that might be interested in helping to establish a web-wide guideline for green.
This website is new and it will receive frequent updates and redesigning in the months to follow.
The current grades of green are preliminary guidelines that will be further defined in the future. A guideline is currently being devised for green business websites, forums, blogs, and other sites that require high bandwidth and scripting beyond HTML.
Webmasters that submit their web pages for certification will have a link to the pages placed here at green-net.org. Regardless of whether a webmaster links to green-net.org or not, the goal is to increase an online awareness for webmasters to design and create low-impact websites.
Ideally, in the future a web page with the 'green-Internet at green-net.org' certification will signify to the public that the web page loads quickly, is safe from possible virus threats, is safe to view by all ages, and contains information that is of a positive and useful nature.
12-23-2008
Additional research produced good references for illustrating one of the main problems with the green movement: too many of the 'green' sites are not green. Comscore is currently #2 on a GoogleTM search for "green internet." Comscore® itself is a good site with less than a 200kb page weight. The three sites that Comscore lists as popular green sites are the EPA at around 375kb, and two other sites that weigh in at over 1 megabytes each (as measured by the Firefox® "page info" tool at the time of my viewing the sites). It is hoped that green-net.org will help increase awareness that bandwidth-heavy web pages are unnecessary and un-green.
01-15-2009
Web surfing leaves trail of pollution : "That's among the findings of a recent study by Harvard physicist Alex Wissner-Gross on the environmental impact of Internet usage... In a yet-to-be published study, Wissner-Gross found that roughly 20 milligrams of carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere for every second that an average website is viewed. ...At an individual surfer scale, the impact is not that large – about 50 per cent larger than a human exhaling," said Wissner-Gross yesterday."
There is no question that the Internet saves many of us the cost of fuel to drive to libraries and stores, and for those of us who have lived off the grid with solar power, as well as for everyone that chooses laptops instead of desk-top computers, the quantity of energy consumption is far less than average. But though some of us have purposefully lowered our energy consumption, there is still much that can be done. A lean Internet, capable of someday being completely powered by solar energy, is the desired goal.
01-31-2009
The real-green grade has been eliminated in favor of simply having two primary grades, that of green and mega-green, plus the ultra-green for sites without graphics. Discussions are still debating favorable standards for commercial websites that rely on high bandwidth and various scripts.
Internet Bandwidth Usage at Lamar University has two excellent graphs that illustrate the bandwidth being used. "If you are like most people you wonder why the Internet seems to be so slow at times." Follow the link on the page to Why Is The Internet So Slow? that better explains why the problem exists, and why green-net.org is pushing for lighter weight websites.
02-01-2009
Individuals interested in supporting the greening of the Internet are encouraged to investigate the page sizes of their favorite websites. In Firefox click on the "Tools" menu and choose "Page Info." The "General" tab will show the page weight, and the "Media" tab will show the graphics weight. Perhaps the fastest and easiest method to measure a web page's weight is to save the page to a folder on your hard drive and to then right click on the folder and choose "Properties" to find the total KB.
If the web page is more than 200kb it might be useful to contact the website's webmaster and politely ask if it is possible for the site to be lightened to support green Internet bandwidth conservation. Many webmasters are undoubtedly unaware of how large some of their web pages have grown, so surely many webmasters will happily reconfigure their sites to be bandwidth friendly.
04-25-2009
A discussion is in progress that questions whether CSS and javascript should be acceptable in a mega-green site. The two primary difficulties with CSS/script are (1) that far too many websites have buggy CSS, which implies that either the webmasters are not coding correctly or else browsers are not yet compatible with the code, and (2) many users purposefully turn off java and javascript on their browsers, especially for security reasons in the work-place. The goal behind a mega-green site is that it will be viewable by all users regardless of what browser is being used, and the site will be 100% stable. A third, but minor difficulty, is that the CSS file is separate from the web page, which requires additional download weight. While there is no question that a competent webmaster can build a quality and stable site with CSS, the problem is that not all webmasters are competent in CSS, and so for a mega-green classification to achieve maximum acceptance there must be a maximum number of stable sites being built under the mega-green classification. With HTML only, an estimated 99%+ of sites would be stable, but with CSS the estimate is closer to 50% and perhaps considerably less. One of the top ranked web design companies on search engines uses programming that crashes MS Explorer, and since MS Explorer is typically used by around 70% of all users, it illustrates that regardless of one's experience and expertise, not all script is stable. Also, though a CSS site might appear stable under normal viewing, most of the sites we tested lost their stability when the text size was increased or decreased. A mega-green site is to be viewable by the largest number of users, including those individuals with visual handicaps who must increase text size to read the text, and so if a CSS site cannot have its text enlarged, then it cannot be deemed viewable by the greater number of users. Unless evidence can be presented that a high percentage of CSS/script sites can and will be stable, the mega-green classification will remain being HTML-only.
06-10-2010
At present the mega-green may use script in the head similar to what this page is using. Since there are no graphics involved, there is a much lower possibility of the text losing its format when zoomed to larger sizes. If the results remain positive, script may become permanently accepted in the future.
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