How big is too big for 56k?

[fizzak]

In my previous post, I've had a couple of complaints that my site takes too long to view on a dial-up connection. The site weighs in at around 117k. I've since checked MSN and Netscape's home pages and they hit past the 200k mark not counting the flash ads and popups.
117k did not seem unreasonable to me after testing it on my laptop with a snoozing 28.8 dial-up.

What is a rule-of-thumb size to go for for 56k users?

40K, 80k? Or perhaps my hosting service is slow for some users?

 

[GUJUm0deL]

fizzak, I don't know what the rule of thumb for a site is for dialup speed, but what I do know is that if a site (and this doesn't matter if its dialup or broadband) takes more then 20-30 seconds to finish loading, its not good. Typically, an average net user waits about 20 secondds for a site to load, and this includes me (and I have broadband).

A few things you can do speed up the site is place all font tags in an external style sheet, and call that CSS on all relavant pages, this way the browser doesn't have to load all the <font> tags over and over. Also, slice up the images. Tis better to have an image load in portions, then as one very large image.

[sub]
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Just Imagine.

http://www.imajinarts.com

[sub]

 

[hotfusion]

My view:
For a commercial site, keep it lean as possible as people just aren't going to wait before clicking the 'back' button - 50K tops including images. Focus on text. Remember there will be other competitors with simmilar content out there.

For a reference site, you could get away with rather more as people are looking for specific information, so may be prepared to wait for relevent images to load.

Regarding coding: Ensure all instances of <IMG SRC= bla bla bla> have the height and width specified, so the browser can get on with rendering the page layout and displaying the text before the images appear - this at least gives the visitor something to look at and read if you must have those huge jpgs. Set those dimensions to the image's actual size. If the size is wrong for your layout, resize it in a graphics editor.
I have witnessed an instance where an image little larger than a typical thumbnail weighed in at 70Kb - it had simply been downsized in the code. What a waste of bandwidth.

Choose the correct image format - so often people choose .jpg when .gif would have looked better and been smaller in size. Be sensible with the compression. Use lo-res images on the page, but if it's necessary, link to a hi-res version. Give the viewer the choice.

Finally....
Netscape and MSN's home pages are perfect examples of what NOT to do when designing a web page that expects return visitors. Difficult to accept these were designed by professionals.....

Regards, Andy.
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My primitive attempts at designing a private web site can be laughed at here:

http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/andyspatch

 

[AncientTiger]

A survey awhile back found the the two biggest complaints of internet surfers were popups and slow loading pages. They turn people off BIGTIME, so they're not nearly as likely to bookmark it.

Good rule of thumb is 15-20 seconds. I've also heard that IE and Netscape will fetch 4 items for download at a time, so try to use multiples of 4 with the total number of images on a page (not always possible, but interesting to keep in the back of your mind).

If you can use GIF's, USE THEM. If you can't, then don't make the JPEG's resolution any larger than is absolutely necessary. And you may even get away with dropping the color depth somewhat to downsize even further.

Flash? Yep, it's flashy, and it'll help ensure that your page (if it has any other images at all) will take 30-60 seconds to load...I have no desire to use it whatsoever.

I think you'll find that most surfers are there for the content, and are more interested in a site that's content rich, and easily navigated. Making a site that's graphics laded and flash ridden just impresses the client you're doing it for, and then only if they're viewing it with a highspeed connection

Just my 2C worth

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Nearly 20 years of programming, and still learning every day!

 

[firegambler]

&quot;Flash? Yep, it's flashy, and it'll help ensure that your page (if it has any other images at all) will take 30-60 seconds to load...I have no desire to use it whatsoever.&quot;

Sorry to object;
I have been working using flash for a pretty long period now and most of the files I produced for website-purposes weighed around 20 to 60 kB; if it comes to spectacular contents 120 kB max.
So the biggest ones should result in a maximum download-time of about 20 seconds; the majority would just take between 5 and 10 seconds.

In fact download time is not a question of Flash itself, it is a question of how clever you use its ressources.

Users and designers that experienced Flash as some kind of &quot;funny tool&quot; might not have yet found out what you can do with it using it smartly.

It is not my aim to have some kind of advertising-post here,... just some other opinion of somebody who worked with that tool a lot.



regards

 

[AncientTiger]

Well, I applaud you firegambler for being a &quot;conservative flash developer&quot;. God knows the rest of the industry could use a hundred more just like ya!

Most of the flash pages I see take me back to the days that folks discovered that they could make animimated gifs appear on webpages... 600x300 resolution, full color, and dozens of frames... and several of them on one page, all centered. (better be careful, I'm dating myself )

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Nearly 20 years of programming, and still learning every day!