The Hateful Weight: image management

The Hateful Weight
by @HenriHelvetica

Synopsis:

The web’s growing complexities has made for even more complex metrics. Web performance and it’s dark artistry demands for the interpretation of Gordian data, legible only to the erudite. But the most comprehensible metric remains the page weight. It continues to grow at an alarming rate, wreaking havoc to data plans and user experiences world wide.
THE HATEFUL WEIGHT talk plans to look @ the main actors in this drama - image formats. Despite their simplicity, images are “low hanging fruits” in web performance, which have high-impact on page loads, yielding a possible 30% faster load times were they avoided entirely.
That is however impractical and unrealistic, as images add great usefulness, benefit, and in some cases are absolutely essential - like in ecommerce. As such, it is a dire requirement that their delivery and loads be taken very seriously, as mismanagement can:

• blow data caps,
• have alarming impact on user experience and browsing,
• cripple mid to low level handsets - like ones found in emerging markets. 

THE HATEFUL WEIGHT is for the new like the seasoned developers. Image optimization is largely overlooked, but also reflects the all too oft dismissed case for performance on a whole. 

Not only will attendees leave with the wearwithal to differentiate between image formats, understand their strengths and shortcomings, ability to pick the correct format and the tools to optimize, but they will also have acquired a little bit of performance culture - an acutely needed intangible for the web to thrive for all worldly users.