The Image Compression Challenge Results

Published on Nov 27, 2024, filed under development (feed). (Share this on Mastodon or Bluesky?)

Four weeks ago, I invited to the image compression challenge, to work with Imagemin Guard or equivalent tooling to confirm whether one’s website’s or main project’s images were all compressed at a basic level.

I only asked for “positive” reports and therefore cannot comment on how many “negative” results there were, or how many people even tested their projects. Maybe participation was in the millions—or, perhaps, no one bothered!

But I do know how many positive reports I received: 0.

(One report confirmed nothing to be compressed on the second run.)

That leaves us with nothing to work with. That’s unfortunate, but, to be sure, by design—I wanted to make the challenge easy as well as non-confrontational, in that this wasn’t a challenge to put anyone on the spot.

Now, for every report sent, I promised to donate $1 to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).

With the number of well-compressed projects that reported in being so low, this would mean UNRWA gets very little—so I decided to donate as if 100 peers had reported back, that is, $100:

As for the challenge, you can still accept it privately, and use whatever tooling makes it easy for you to largely losslessly compress your image assets. In my mind, this is useful—it shaves off bloat and just bloat, and is a great safety to prevent it from creeping into production. There’s enough of bloat (and creepery) out there already.

(You can always donate to and help people in need, too.)

Thanks to everyone who participated in the challenge!

About Me

I’m Jens (long: Jens Oliver Meiert), and I’m a web developer, manager, and author. I’ve been working as a technical lead and engineering manager for companies you’ve never heard of and companies you use every day, I’m an occasional contributor to web standards (like HTML, CSS, WCAG), and I write and review books for O’Reilly and Frontend Dogma.

I love trying things, not only in web development and engineering management, but also in other areas like philosophy. Here on meiert.com I share some of my experiences and views. (I value you being critical, interpreting charitably, and giving feedback.)