years into the Eternal September, web pages have gotten big. Really big. According to the HTTP Archive's 2022 State of the Web Report, as of May 2022 the median page size was 2.2 MB, up from 669 KB in 2012. Contrast with 2002, when Trends in the Evolution of the Public Web by O'Neill et al reported average web-page sizes between 10-20 KB. Much of this growth can be attributed to the rise of multimedia: web-pages in the 90's were predominantly text, and web connections were still slow-enough in the early 2000's that video cost a significant amount of bandwidth. High speed internet connections are everywhere nowadays, so bandwidth is much less of a concern than it was in the day of 56k modems.
But let's not dwell on the bloat of the web. Instead, there's a silver lining: These days, creating eye-catching web pages is a breeze. Thanks to fantastic tools like Flask, Django, and Jekyll, crafting dynamic web pages has never been easier. Tools like Flask, Django, and Jekyll make it simple to dynamically render web pages, and have plugins to make things as fast as possible to get up and running. React and Redux allow for complex websites that remain performant. And on the horizon are the possibilities of Large Language Models, which can allow for rapid prototyping and content generation.
Some fun facts about this website:
- This site is hosted on GitHub pages.
- The first iteration of this site (way back in 2020) did actually use Jekyll!
- The header, footer, and navbar get included dynamically with JavaScript. This function could easily be expanded into a simple includes system if needed.
- The average page size on this website is ~120 KB, although 73 KB of this is the background image.
- The background image was hand painted by me! Imagine a crystal, delicately held together by interconnected wires. That's the vibe I wanted to capture.
I hope you have a delightful time exploring the content and appreciate the effort that went into its creation!