Most of my time on t'internet is spent reading. In recent years I have become more and more vexed by the insistence of morons like newspaper editors to add an image preceding their text, and the more so because the pic is usually not specifically relevant to the actual text. Generally it is just an image culled from an image library, on the apparent basis 'no story without a picture .. relevance is irrelevant'.
Today I finally got round to an experiment I had been meaning to do for so long .. but never did till now.
I invoked ifconfig to see, right down to the last byte, just how much data traffic those stupid irrelevant pictures were costing me. I totted up the traffic on loading a well-known newspaper page, with and without image enablement in the browser.
I was stunned to see that the full deal with pix cost 5.8 MB (hey, that's just one page!), but the image-free information which I sought to read clocked only 0.49MB. This kind of nonsense is hugely beneficial to the sharks who sell us data connections on a limited GB basis, and hugely expensive to the poor punters who can't understand why they're being charged so much for their browsing.
I do need to look at images now and then - charts, diagrams - as most people do. Soooo, there is surely a need for a quick images on/off switch for economical browsing, rather than the very lugubrious edit=>preferences=>privacy=>etc. route to change the browser settings.
If only I had the knowledge and skill to provide a .pet to do just that, I'd be be posting it right now .... but I haven't ... can anyone help?
Pointless images, the great data traffic ripoff
Hi Ted Dog,
If you use Seamonkey or Firefox try the PrefBar 6.2.2 addon as shown in the screen shot below.
My regards
If you use Seamonkey or Firefox try the PrefBar 6.2.2 addon as shown in the screen shot below.
My regards
- Attachments
-
- image-2.png
- (64.51 KiB) Downloaded 231 times
Thanks, everyone!
I agree that a text browser has much merit .... but that is a fairly heavy way of handling the requirement for a quick images/no images switch.
Ted Dog, I also mourn the passing of the early Netscape stuff, which seemed to do just what I wanted, without the burden of all that jobsworth-inspired bloat and bling which Mozilla now seeks to thrust up me, to do what Mozilla wants instead of what I want.
Jasper, the PrefBar addon looks just grand .... but (here we go again!) Mozilla, blast them, are it seems no longer offering PrefBar 6.2.2, just the 6.3.0 which apparently lacks reverse compatibility with my cherished Seamonkey 1.1.18 ... mozdev link is not responding ... most grateful if you can point to any alternative source of the good stuff.
I agree that a text browser has much merit .... but that is a fairly heavy way of handling the requirement for a quick images/no images switch.
Ted Dog, I also mourn the passing of the early Netscape stuff, which seemed to do just what I wanted, without the burden of all that jobsworth-inspired bloat and bling which Mozilla now seeks to thrust up me, to do what Mozilla wants instead of what I want.
Jasper, the PrefBar addon looks just grand .... but (here we go again!) Mozilla, blast them, are it seems no longer offering PrefBar 6.2.2, just the 6.3.0 which apparently lacks reverse compatibility with my cherished Seamonkey 1.1.18 ... mozdev link is not responding ... most grateful if you can point to any alternative source of the good stuff.