Design faster web pages, part 1: Image compression
Lots of web developers want to achieve fast loading web pages. As more page views come from mobile devices, making websites look better on smaller screens using responsive design is just one side of the coin. Browser Calories can make the difference in loading times, which satisfies not just the user but search engines that rank on loading speed. This article series covers how to slim down your web pages with tools Fedora offers.
Preparation
Before you sart to slim down your web pages, you need to identify the core issues. For this, you can use Browserdiet. It’s a browser add-on available for Firefox, Opera and Chrome and other browsers. It analyzes the performance values of the actual open web page, so you know where to start slimming down.
Next you’ll need some pages to work on. The example screenshot shows a test of getfedora.org. At first it looks very simple and responsive.
Browser Diet – values of getfedora.org
However, BrowserDiet’s page analysis shows there are 1.8MB in files downloaded. Therefore, there’s some work to do!
Web optimization
There are over 281 KB of JavaScript files, 203 KB more in CSS files, and 1.2 MB in images. Start with the biggest issue — the images. The tool set you need for this is GIMP, ImageMagick, and optipng. You can easily install them using the following command:
The image — which is only in grey and white — is saved in 8-bit/color RGBA mode. That’s not as efficient as it could be.
Start GIMP so you can set a more appropriate color mode. Open cinnamon.png in GIMP. Then go to Image>Mode and set it to greyscale. Export the image as PNG with compression factor 9. All other settings in the export dialog should be the default.
The output shows the file’s now in 8bit gray+alpha mode. The file size has shrunk from 6.4 KB to 2.8 KB. That’s already only 43.75% of the original size. But there’s more you can do!
You can also use the ImageMagick tool identify to provide more information about the image.
This tells you the file is 2831 bytes. Jump back into GIMP, and export the file. In the export dialog disable the storing of the time stamp and the alpha channel color values to reduce this a little more. Now the file output shows:
Next, use optipng to losslessly optimize your PNG images. There are other tools that do similar things, including advdef (which is part of advancecomp), pngquant and pngcrush.
Run optipng on your file. Note that this will replace your original:
JPG-LS and JPG 2000 are not widely used. Only a few digital cameras support these formats, so they can be ignored. aPNG is an animated PNG, and not widely used either.
You could save a few bytes more through changing the compression rate or choosing another file format. The first option you can’t do in GIMP, as it’s already using the highest compression rate. As there are no alpha channels in the picture, you can choose JPG as file format instead. For now use the default value of 90% quality — you could change it down to 85%, but then alias effects become visible. This saves a few bytes more:
Alone this conversion to the right color space and choosing JPG as file format brought down the file size from 23 KB to 12.3 KB, a reduction of nearly 50%.
PNG vs. JPG: quality and compression rate
So what about the rest of the images? This method would work for all the other pictures, except the Fedora “flavor” logos and the logos for the four foundations. Those are presented on a white background.
One of the main differences between PNG and JPG is that JPG has no alpha channel. Therefore it can’t handle transparency. If you rework these images by using a JPG on a white background, you can reduce the file size from 40.7 KB to 28.3 KB.
Now there are four more images you can rework: the backgrounds. For the grey background, set the mode to greyscale again. With this bigger picture, the savings also is bigger. It shrinks from 216.2 KB to 51.0 KB — it’s now barely 25% of its original size. All in all, you’ve shrunk 481.1 KB down to 191.5 KB — only 39.8% of the starting size.
Quality vs. Quantity
Another difference between PNG and JPG is the quality. PNG is a lossless compressed raster graphics format. But JPG loses size through compression, and thus affects quality. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use JPG, though. But you have to find a balance between file size and quality.
Achievement
This is the end of Part 1. After following the techniques described above, here are the results:
You brought image size down to 488.9 KB versus 1.2MB at the start. That’s only about a third of the size, just through optimizing with optipng. This page can probably be made to load faster still. On the scale from snail to hypersonic, it’s not reached racing car speed yet!
Finally you can check the results in Google Insights, for example:
In the Mobile area the page gathered 10 points on scoring, but is still in the Medium sector. It looks totally different for the Desktop, which has gone from 62/100 to 91/100 and went up to Good. As mentioned before, this test isn’t the be all and end all. Consider scores such as these to help you go in the right direction. Keep in mind you’re optimizing for the user experience, and not for a search engine.
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 10-11-2018, 05:18 AM - Forum: Lounge
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Why The New Halloween Movie Is Ignoring The Sequels
With Michael Myers stalking back into theaters to go toe-to-toe with Laurie Strode one more time, there's a major change happening. The new Halloween film isn't another in a long line of sequels to the franchise. Instead, it's disregarding Halloween 2-8 and instead following up directly on the first movie alone.
That means Laurie and Michael are no longer siblings, Busta Rhymes never live streamed the killer murdering teenagers online, and Michael's long-standing feud with his niece--which somehow lasted three movies--never took place. Instead, the new film picks up 40 years after the "babysitter murders" in the first film, leaving audiences to discover whatever became of Laurie and Michael after that one night.
For Jamie Lee Curtis, that's an important aspect of the characters, especially Laurie, to explore. "I believe Laurie Strode went to school November first. I think she went to school with a bandage on her arm, maybe some stitches from the emergency room," she said during a group interview at the Halloween press junket. "I think her parents sent her back to school. And of course, two days before, she was an intellectual honors student heading off to be the valedictorian, no doubt, of her class, was going to go to Smith, do you know what I mean? She was going to get out of Haddonfield, she was going to go off, expand her mind. And two days later, she was a freak."
Of course, there was more behind the decision to retcon those other movies away. The franchise has simply gotten too complicated with a number of fragmented timelines. In some movies, Jamie was Laurie's deceased daughter. In Halloween H20: 20 Years Later, though, Jamie was removed from continuity entirely, and Laurie has a son named John.
With such a muddy canon to wade through, the answer was clear. In the words of executive producer Bill Block, "you simplify it." He continued, "You come back to the core of a family tragedy, the impact and I'll call it the cascade effect of the tragedy, sustain it down through the generations trying to act like it never happened."
Doing that, according to producer Jason Blum, was a call made by director and writer David Gordon Green, along with his co-writer Danny McBride. "There have been a lot of bad ones, a couple of good ones, the first one's the greatest horror movie ever made," executive producer Jason Blum told GameSpot. "And I was excited to attack that challenge. I did not have, no one here had a specific idea of how we would do that and the notion to make this movie simply a continuation of the first movie."
`The two didn't exactly see eye-to-eye at first, though. Green admitted, "I hung on tight to Halloween II for a while and McBride was always trying to get me to let it go." There's one specific scene, though, which screened at San Diego Comic-Con that changed his mind. "Actually, our collaborator, Jeff Fradley, wrote the scene where Michael goes door-to-door and had this thing in his head of this whole one-shot thing," he said. "And we're like, 'Oh yeah.''' And when I read that, I was like, 'Okay. But that only works if he's not just trying to kill his sister.'"
In the end, if the reviews are any indication, it was a smart choice to make. It might have been difficult for Green to let go of Halloween II as part of the film's plot, but even he can't deny how much better the new Halloween is for it. "I'd much rather him get out of the cage and he's just doing what does and then this lady is like, 'Don't forget about me. I'm over here,'" he said. "I like that where the victim can turn the tail on the task."
Space Hulk: Tactics is a faithful adaptation of the board game Space Hulk, bringing a unique twist to the cult classic formula. Battle as either a squad of Terminator Space Marines or the deadly alien Genestealers.
Overwatch Halloween Terror 2018 Skins Are Live With New Event Update
Overwatch has kicked off its regular annual Halloween promotional event, Halloween Terror. The seasonal event will operate through October 31, and brings with it a bunch of new spooky and kooky skins and other cosmetic items to unlock through loot boxes, as well as some significant changes--specifically to Torbjorn.
Blizzard has been teasing the event with some unveils of the new skins, including Pharah and Moira, Doomfist, Wrecking Ball and McCree, among others. The new trailer reveals several more like Bride Sombra and Slasher 76. It's all styled after a haunted house, with the viewer's perspective trying to escape the various monsters' clutches. As advertised, the 50 loot box bundle includes a bonus 10 boxes during the promotion, for those of you hunting down skins.
The Halloween Terror event is available across PS4, Xbox One, and PC. In addition to the creepy Halloween-themed costumes, it will explore the next chapter in the story of Dr. Junkenstein--a Halloween version of Junkrat. The addition of Sombra as the Bride implies she'll be joining his ranks in whatever this next piece of the story holds.
This year, Junkenstein's Revenge includes not one but two playable modes: Junkenstein's Revenge (Classic) and Junkenstein's Revenge: Endless Night. It also adds two new heroes for the PvE mode, Tracer and Brigitte.
Icons dev Wavedash Games lays off ‘majority’ of staff
Oakland-based indie studio Wavedash Games published a blog post today announcing it has laid off “the majority of the development team” after failing to hit some (unspecified) goals.
It’s a rough blow for Wavedash, which set up shop in 2015 and launched its free-to-play platform fighter Icons: Combat Arena on Steam’s Early Access service earlier this summer.
How many people remain at the studio is yet unclear, but the post makes it clear that the game is meant to continue in some form.
“Sadly, we have fallen short of our goals,” reads an excerpt of the post. “Having learned this day was approaching, the team has been hard at work on a ‘Definitive’ version of Icons that will continue to live on, fully playable, for the community. We’ll post about what that looks like next week.”
Gamasutra has reached out to Wavedash for more details on how many jobs were lost and whether or not those who were laid off today will receive appropriate severance. As always, if you or someone you know has been affected by this closure you can email Gamasutra to share your story confidentially.
Video Game Deep Cuts: Uri Geller’s Pessimistic Starlink
The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutras community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.
[Video Game Deep Cuts is a weekly newsletter from video game industry ‘watcher’ Simon Carless (GDC, Gamasutra co-runner), rounding up the best longread & standout articles & videos about games, every weekend.
This week’s highlights include Uri Geller vs. Pokemon, why we need pessimistic games, a look at Ubisoft’s Starlink, & lots more besides.
One fun thing this week is that I’ve started helping out Gamasutra’s editorial staff, by commissioning some ‘straight to the point’ Q&As with smart indies who are being (at least moderately!) successful right now.
So far it’s been Joel Couture & John Harris chatting with the creators of The Universim & the Parkasaurus devs respectively – but there’s lots more to come! And is a good way to highlight games and creators at the same time on VGDC, too.
Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis (or, Of Movies and Games and Whether the Twain Shall Meet)(Jimmy Maher / The Digital Antiquarian – ARTICLE)
“Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the game arises from the fact that its designers were adapting from the shooting script rather than the finished movie, which they got to see in the Skywalker Ranch theater only when their own project was in the final stages of bug-swatting and polishing.”
How developers harvest your data to make their games better(Alex Wiltshire / PC Gamer – ARTICLE)
“Barth can see how many players reached every one of the levels in his games, and how many succeeded. He can see how long they took and how many got stuck and never come back. He can see where the difficulty spikes are and do something about them, and he can take what he learns from one game and apply it to the next.”
Years in the Making: The Long Game of Boyfriend Dungeon(Tanya X. Short / Gamasutra Blogs – ARTICLE)
“Overnight successes don’t exist, from what I’ve seen. There’s usually years and years of work behind the scenes and then MAYBE your game blows up, but mostly not. Plenty of people work for years and their game still doesn’t blow up — that’s certainly what happened for our previous games. I guess it’s possible SOME game out there enjoyed overnight success.”
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is big, beautiful, and shallow(Daniel Starkey / Ars Technica – ARTICLE)
“While the series struggled under an accelerated release schedule some years back, Ubisoft’s tentpole franchise is on a more solid pacing again. That means a return to what Assassin’s Creed does best: expounding on and remixing prominent game design ideas and serving them up an aesthetic and conceptual cocktail. Odyssey, much like last year’s Origins, takes ideas from its best contemporaries and reassembles them into a new whole. [SIMON’S NOTE: people generally seem to dig the game – & there are lots of romance FAQs, too.]”
Beneath a Starless Sky: Pillars of Eternity and the Infinity Engine Era of RPGs(David Craddock / Shacknews – ARTICLE)
“But stars come before constellations. In 2003, three producers left Black Isle Studios, publishers and developers of the Infinity Engine quintet, to found Obsidian Entertainment. Their sky was dark and blank, save for those five stars: Baldur’s Gate and its sequel, Planescape: Torment, and two romps through Icewind Dale.”
Thumbs down: how the video games industry is battling Brexit(Marijam Didžgalvytė / The Guardian – ARTICLE)
“Brexit and Wetherspoons, Brexit and fashion, Brexit and bananas … It seems as if so much of our everyday lives will be affected by Brexit – and if you play video games, you can certainly expect changes. The British video games industry adds £5bn to the economy and employs more than 12,000 people, 35% of whom are EU citizens.”
Ubisoft’s ‘Starlink’ Designed For ‘Gamer Kids’ and Their Parents(Brian Crecente / Variety – ARTICLE)
“Ubisoft’s upcoming action-adventure toys-to-life game “Starlink: Battle for Atlas” is the byproduct of creating for one of the many new sorts of audiences blossoming within the video game space. [SIMON’S NOTE: this game still seems kinda ‘under the radar’ – but maybe it’ll get somewhere with that unique approach?]”
How The Universim’s ‘god game’ twist charmed Early Access players(Joel Couture / Gamasutra – ARTICLE)
“Gamasutra spoke with Alex Koshelkov of Crytivo, developers of The Universim, to talk about making living worlds and beings that react to player decisions rather than directly obey them, and the challenges that have come for the game as it moves through Early Access towards full release.”
We Need More Pessimistic Games(Cameron Kunzelman / Waypoint – ARTICLE)
“The vast majority of our games produce heroes; the heroes have stories fit for heroes; the world changes in response to the player’s tectonic actions. Our blockbuster video games are plagued with the optimism of gameplay.”
Call Of Duty: Black Ops 4 devs on balancing Blackout battle royale mode(Matt Cox /RockPaperShotgun – ARTICLE)
“There’s a new Call Of Duty around the corner. Call Of Duty: Black Ops 4 is out on October 12th, so I sat down with Treyarch’s studio design director David Vonderhaar and Jason “Director of Zombies” Blundell to quiz them about the game’s new battle royale mode, Blackout, why they’ve left regenerating health behind, and how they handled no longer making a singleplayer campaign mode.”
Queens of the Phone Age: The Narrative Design of Reigns: Her Majesty(Leigh Alexander / GDC / YouTube – VIDEO)
“In this 2018 GDC talk, writer Leigh Alexander shares her narrative design process around the tricky political tightrope of women’s power, especially when it has to be both violent and funny.”
Occult Space | Cultist Simulator(Sam Zucci / Heterotopias – ARTICLE)
“The real draw of Cultist Simulator is its occult topography. The Mansus—the game’s occult centre—is another name for a feudal unit of land measurement and so expectedly, progress through the Mansus is framed as spatial, as the player moves from The Wood to the White Gate and so on.”
There’s not enough videogames; everyone should be encouraged to make them (or, videogames are just art)(Brendan Keogh / BRKeogh.com – ARTICLE)
“The problem with much of the Indiepocalypse discourse is that it perpetuates the misunderstanding that ‘making videogames’ is first and foremost an economic activity. Of course, for a whole lot of people, making videogames is an economic activity; it’s their job! The thing is, you can make videogames without it being your job.”
The Little Things That Matter A Lot(Ben Brode / YouTube – VIDEO)
“Ben Brode kicks off PAX Dev 2018 with a talk about the little details of game development that can end up having a huge impact on players and developers… Come laugh and hear a few stories from the former Hearthstone game director as he transitions into his new role as chief creative officer of Second Dinner.”
Breaking fences, escaping dinosaurs?! Oh my, it’s Parkasaurus‘ developers(John Harris / Gamasutra – ARTICLE)
“Canadian microstudio Washbear’s new simulation, Parkasaurus, recently released on Steam Early Access to general delight from players, since it’s a lighthearted romp into the world of dino management and theme park wonder with a jovial ‘sim’ bent.”
The state of indie dev and why it will not get easier(Cliffski / Cliffski’s Blog – ARTICLE)
“In practice it seems that indie development is still seen as attractive enough that there is another decade or so of new entrants coming in to replace every developer who drops out when their finances run dry. I really cannot see the ‘number of games released on steam this week’ metric dropping a lot in the medium term.”
The future of GOG: mod support, Steam rivalry and problematic tweets(Robert Purchese / Eurogamer – ARTICLE)
“Almost 10 years ago to the day, CD Projekt launched the online digital game store Good Old Games. The operation and scope was small – a handful of people salvaging iconic old PC games for modern operating systems – but the prices, customer service and DRM-free message were right, and slowly the service grew. And grew, and grew. And today things are different.”
The Tragic End Of Telltale Games(Megan Farokhmanesh / The Verge – ARTICLE)
“When employees showed up for work on Friday, September 21st, at Telltale Games, there was nothing to suggest the day would be different than any other. The second episode of The Walking Dead’s final season would ship the following week; developers across multiple teams were busy with plans for in-progress titles. But only hours later, 250 people would find themselves with no job, no severance, and health insurance that would be gone by month’s end — just nine days.”
A Brief History of Speedrunning(Kat Brewster / Read Only Memory – ARTICLE)
“A good speedrun is hypnotising to watch – this goes for ones showcased at GDQ, or the ones which get circulated around the internet for their insane jumps or cutscene skips or lightning fast movement. They’re a dizzying show of hard won skill and palpable effort.”
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[REMINDER: you can sign up to receive this newsletter every weekend at tinyletter.com/vgdeepcuts – we crosspost to Gamasutra later on Sunday, but get it first via newsletter! Story tips and comments can be emailed to [email protected] MINI-DISCLOSURE: Simon is one of the organizers of GDC and Gamasutra & an advisor to indie publisher No More Robots, so you may sometimes see links from those entities in his picks. Or not!]
New Preview Beta and Delta (subset) 1810 Update – 9/29/18
Starting at 2:00 p.m. PDT today, members of the Xbox One Preview Beta and Delta (subset) Rings will begin receiving the latest 1810 Xbox One system update (180925-1920). Read on for more about the fixes and known issues in the latest 1810 system update.
NOTE : Today a subset of Delta Users are receiving the 1810 build. We are doing the subset of users as we are targeting the upgrade process and will move the remaining set of Delta users in over the next week as we flight new builds to test the upgrade process.
Fixes:
Audio – Blu-Ray Playback
Fixes to resolve BluRay playback errors out in pass-through mode when playing discs with trailers that have different audio formats. The user is no longer forced to restart the application and try again.
Matchmaking
Fixes to the stability of matchmaking when a user attempts to join a session from a console.
System
Fixes to the performance of the Virtual keyboard
System Memory and Performance fixes in this build.
Localization fixes in this build.
Virtual Keyboard
Fixes to the performance of the Virtual keyboard
We have fixed the issue with special characters and emjoi’s when using the Virtual Keyboard.
Known Issues:
Avatars
It can take up to 10 seconds to view an Avatar on the profile screen after creating a new Avatar.
My Games & Apps
We are aware that some users are experiencing crashing of a game or the Youtube app when you are either launching or resuming the Youtube app.
If you are in the Youtube app and then Resume to a Game the app/game and console may hang or crash.
We are aware that some users are experiencing challenges navigating the Ready to Install Filter options in My Games and Apps. Some users are unable to select the filter options at all and we are investigating.
Power
We are tracking an issue in which the console is fully powering off when it is placed into Instant On mode.
Profile Color
Sometimes users may encounter the incorrect Profile color when powering on the console.
Fortnite Is Getting A $30 Physical Edition On Switch Courtesy Of Warner Bros.
Fortnite is getting its very own physical, retail edition thanks to a partnership between developer Epic Games and Warner Bros. Interactive. The bundle will be available on Switch and other consoles later this year.
Called Fortnite: Deep Freeze Bundle, this new retail edition will include the standard, free-to-play Fortnite Battle Royale game, as well as premium content including the Frostbite Outfit, Cold Front Glider, Chill-Axe Pickaxe, Freezing Point Back Bling, and 1,000 V-Bucks which can be used to purchase in-game items.
The game itself will naturally be the very same game available for free directly from the eShop, with the cost covering the extra items that are supplied alongside the game. This new bundle isn’t exclusive to retail stores, however, as players will also be able to purchase and download the content digitally from the eShop or Nintendo’s websites.
The bundle launches for Switch, Xbox One, and PS4 on 16th November and will be available for £24.99 / $29.99, securing the extra shelf space and visibility in stores that it (definitely doesn’t) need.
Are you thinking about joining in with the Fortnite craze? Will you be grabbing a copy of this bundle to get stuck in? Let us know with a comment.
