Low-Res your Blog

There are many people these days accessing the internet through various remote connections. In other words, while working on one computer, it appears like you're sitting at a different one, somewhere else in the world. (This is achieved with programs like Windows Remote Desktop, VNC, LogMeIn, RAdmin, etc) Why? Well, say you want to be able to access your data AND RUN YOUR PROGRAMS on your home computer while you're somewhere else like a friend's place, work, internet cafe, etc. That's a nice option, isn't it? You can buy computers now that are no more than a plug in a wall that creates a remote connection to a central server that everyone works from. Remote even works over dialup; if your home computer is on high speed, you can download files as normal in low speed areas. There are also remote clients for all smart phones. (Android, Blackberry, Windows, etc.. oh and iPhone, if you're into that sort of thing) It also means if you want to do banking, you can do it more securely - if you're at work, personal time (hopefully just on lunch and breaks, right?) can be somewhat anonymous - same if you're at a public hotspot at a coffee shop, where you can't even be sure if someone's hijacked your connection to watch what you're doing. (it's easy, and you'd never know)

Alright, now that we've been over the "cool", lets talk about accommodating people who live in this world of digital freedom. Now when I say "low-res", I don't mean 8-bit, but simply to take actions that hopefully make your blog remote friendly.

I recently investigated changing around the layout of my blog - unfortunately Blogger's layouts aren't very remote friendly. They look great, but remote desktop usually has trouble when websites use a lot of layering. If you have another blog platform that perhaps offers simpler layouts, you could create a plain look that works incredibly well via remote. However, now you're giving up a nice looking site in trade to accommodate a small percentage of readers who could (and probably do) use an RSS reader instead. (which is purely article content, no blog filler)

So lets talk alternatives. Create a link to a separate section of your blog that's designed specifically as a low-res page. For example, I've added a link to the new Sidebar View of my blog. (Unfortunately, I believe the sidebar view offered by Blogger only works in newer browsers) Other websites will have "print" links (like this) that cut their pages into a no hassle basic look.

For those of you using Wordpress, perhaps there's an RSS formatting plugin someone knows about?

It's not indexable, but another option is to link people to your RSS feed as a low-res copy of your blog. By using a service like Feedburner, you can enable "Browser Friendly" viewing that detects you're accessing the feed from a browser and formats it nicely.
For example, my RSS feed can be seen here.

I suppose this wasn't a super helpful article, but hopefully it's acted as a suggestion to just try to keep remote users in mind when you're considering adding some sort of moving image, flash object, transparency effect and so on. As a bonus, this advice will also help users who are using slowing internet connections or older computers - not everyone is fortunate enough to have the latest and greatest iLife.