Despite Germany’s goal of 80 percent renewable energy by 2050, coal mines are still ravaging its landscape. The tiny village of Atterwasch has already endured strip mines' scarring for decades, and now a proposed coal mining plan by Vattenfall, a Swedish energy company, would eviscerate it. To bring international awareness to the issue, an innovative documentary titled after the town explains several of the 241 residents’ dismay. Scroll-activated content allows the viewer to remain in control throughout the experience. Minimal design stays out of the way to instead spotlight Marco del’ Pra’s photography and Edith Carron’s animated illustrations, which dance atop Pra’s landscape and portrait photos. A simple XML file for all texts and translation in only four languages keep the visual-heavy site as lightweight as possible. Divided into seven chapters, each with 50 high-resolution photos and illustration, the site is powered by a CDN, server-sided caching and progressive loading for every chapter. These features combine to minimize the users' wait time considerably. The response has been strong: more than 70,000 visitors saw Atterwasch in its first week this July. The documentary's web developer Jiannis Sotiropoulos says, “Atterwasch.net is establishing itself as a best practice when it comes to the growing genre of online documentary.”
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