I need help determining what is an acceptable page size, nowadays. I always stick to the under 40 Kb per page (including all images) but I am working on a new site that has to feature lots of picture for every page. The best i can do is to keep it somewhere around 90 Kb. I know it won't be a prob for ppl who use broadband but would this size be acceptable for slower modem users? I have been looking at big sites and it appears that their pages are sometimes quite big ( over 100 Kb ), so IMHO, it might be okay. But I need opinion from others. Can anybody give their thoughts on this?
A smart guy at WMW put together a guide about how to make big bucks with a brand new site, and his biggest point was that you should keep all files UNDER 10K to faciliate faster page load time. Myself, I've always surpassed it. I just like graphics too much.
Under 10 K? Wow! so it's all text and almost no pics? What about site that needs to show catalogs of products?
he .. he .. that's what i thought! as big as dots .. So, do you guys think 80-90 Kb page is acceptable for page that features catalogs of say paintings ?
If you are using gzip or deflate compression on your webserver you will be better off regarding dial-up users. You would be surprised how many people out there still use AOL, etc. straight up a 90K file will take 14 seconds on a 56K modem - 28 seconds at 28.8 and I believe those times are at optimum speed which is rarely if ever achieved. If you use compression and see, say a 70% size reduction (fairly common for text, but you're not going to gain any advantage by compressing images) a 56K modem would grab your page in 3 seconds, 7 seconds for a 28.8 modem - still a long time, but short enough that the user probably won't just click away. Think about it from an end user's point of view - would you wait around 14 seconds for each page on your site to load? If it's images that are causing the size issue, then use width and height properties so their download does not prevent your page from displaying - and avoid using big images in css (or use mod_expire) because IE will not cache css images (unless you do something like in this thread. Here's another thread I put together about using php to compress your pages In apache 2.0 mod_deflate is a cakewalk to set up, but it's a little more difficult in 1.3x using mod_gzip and on IIS I'm not sure what the options are. I've been working on some speed optimization and the difference is amazing if you pay attention to it. A 3-4 second page load time is no big deal for me normally, but I've taken my 3-4 second (broadband) page to almost instant on my test server. I think it will really help with user retention for dial up users. Server load is a bit of an issue with compression, but IMO it will be negated by the decrease in page load times. Bandwidth is relatively cheap and most web developers have broadband connections so people don't think about compression or page size a lot.
Super help nevetS, Thanks for the reply and links. Looking at those methods now to see if they fit my plans. Appreaciate the help