having the text be handwritten in different colors and sizes gave it a different feel, in a good way, in that the color and size in a way stood in for speech modulations like tone/volume/etc.
I have absolutely no idea what you mean, here—which means that any such effect, even if it’s intended, will simply not be perceived by some (many?) readers.
Other disadvantages of this “text as images” format:
Can’t search. (This one is huge, and it alone would make me strongly prefer text.)
Can’t set in whatever font/size I prefer to read in.
Can’t easily save/archive.
Can’t easily quote.
(Edited to add, as per gworley elsethread) Can’t machine-translate.
(Edited to add) Makes the post a way, way bigger download (problematic for people on slow/metered connections) and requires more HTTP requests (problematic for people on unreliable connections).
(Edited to add) Total lack of accessibility for people on text browsers, screen readers, etc.
(Edited to add) Scaling of images makes post unusually difficult to read on mobile devices.
Makes the post a way, way bigger download (problematic for people on slow/metered connections)
Let me emphasize this part by pointing out that this post contains over twenty megabytes of images.
Edit: Note that converting the images from PNGs to GIFs would cut the file size down by about 75 percent, with zero loss of quality (so it would only be about 5 MB of images—still totally unnecessary, IMO, but not quite as egregiously so).
Since when did GIFs have notably better compression than PNGs? (Perhaps the issue is that these are badly-generated PNGs, and simply loading them into something that knows how to write PNGs and saving them again would produce similar gains?)
It’s the color palette; you can indeed save them as 256-color PNGs and get the same file size reduction. I suggested converting to GIF because it’s more likely that the OP knows or can figure out how to do that, than that he has & knows how to use a tool which can save palette-reduced PNGs.
I have absolutely no idea what you mean, here—which means that any such effect, even if it’s intended, will simply not be perceived by some (many?) readers.
Other disadvantages of this “text as images” format:
Can’t search. (This one is huge, and it alone would make me strongly prefer text.)
Can’t set in whatever font/size I prefer to read in.
Can’t easily save/archive.
Can’t easily quote.
(Edited to add, as per gworley elsethread) Can’t machine-translate.
(Edited to add) Makes the post a way, way bigger download (problematic for people on slow/metered connections) and requires more HTTP requests (problematic for people on unreliable connections).
(Edited to add) Total lack of accessibility for people on text browsers, screen readers, etc.
(Edited to add) Scaling of images makes post unusually difficult to read on mobile devices.
Let me emphasize this part by pointing out that this post contains over twenty megabytes of images.
Edit: Note that converting the images from PNGs to GIFs would cut the file size down by about 75 percent, with zero loss of quality (so it would only be about 5 MB of images—still totally unnecessary, IMO, but not quite as egregiously so).
Since when did GIFs have notably better compression than PNGs? (Perhaps the issue is that these are badly-generated PNGs, and simply loading them into something that knows how to write PNGs and saving them again would produce similar gains?)
It’s the color palette; you can indeed save them as 256-color PNGs and get the same file size reduction. I suggested converting to GIF because it’s more likely that the OP knows or can figure out how to do that, than that he has & knows how to use a tool which can save palette-reduced PNGs.
Ah, I see. Yes, that would be an improvement, maybe 10% as good as just making the stuff be text in the first place.