Ever wonder what a website looks like without text? Ji Lee has made that possible with Wordless Web.
The Facebook designer created the Wordless Web bookmark in his spare time with the help of developer Cory Forsyth. When clicked, the tool strips all text from the current webpage, leaving only photos.
"The amount of content on the web is growing exponentially, but our time to consume the growing content is not increasing," Lee told Co.Design. "Images are lot quicker to register and process than words. So, I think it’s a natural trend for the web to become more visual."
The Wordless Web bookmark, which can be dragged and dropped to a browser's bookmark bar for easy use, may not be practical, but it certainly shows the web in a different light.
Lee describes the heavy visual point of view on his website:
No text also means no context. You're free to enjoy the images in their purest form, without names, labels, definitions, or purpose. It makes the pictures we see across the web more mysterious and open to interpretation of our own imaginations.
Whereas images are universal, Lee explained, "words are limited by different languages.” Wordless Web removes the impediments of text to give viewers a simple way to scan through content based on visual appeal.
"I spend hours online every day consuming huge amount of information. Sometimes it becomes too much and I start to feel overwhelmed. So I wondered if there were ways to turn my experience on the web little less overwhelming and more soothing. I wondered what would happen if all the words were gone."
While it's interesting to see Wordless Web's effect on websites that feature plenty of images, the tool is not as useful on text-heavy sites like Wikipedia.
Lee accrued some fame with the run of the Bubble Project, a gorilla campaign in which Lee printed and plastered 50,000 thought bubbles on street ads throughout New York City. Onlookers were encouraged to fill in the blank white bubbles with any expression in order to encourage open public dialogues. Debuted in 2002, the project gained notoriety and quickly spread to other countries.
You can try out the bookmark for yourself on your favorite websites. Lee enjoys using Wordless Web on Facebook.
"It’s like being in a silent party where everyone agreed not to speak, but to just walk around and smile at each other," Lee told Wired.
See how HuffPost Tech's page looks before and after the tool is used.
BEFORE:
AFTER:
Check out the gallery below to see other ways to take a break from your normal tech routine.
