Does anyone still design a website for 56k nowadays? If so, how fast does it have to load on a 56k connection? My blog ( http://www.urbanmonk.net/ )takes about 25 seconds to load on 56k according to one website speed tester, is that too long? I can't find statistics on how many people still use 56k in 2008 anymore. Any advice would be great, thanks
Consider who your target audience is, and who'll you'll be making clicks/conversions from. If they're not likely to be using 56k modems, then it doesn't matter 25 seconds is pretty fast anyway. Most people on 56k will be used to at least a 25 second wait to view most contemporary websites.
Experts recommend an optimum median weight of (no more than) 50KB-60KB. But it all depends on what you're displaying. If you have a photography site, you'll be showing images & it could be fairly heavy. Also to consider: some Flash sites actually load faster than HTML.
UrbanMonk, your page is fine, you should just tune it up a bit. Using GZip compression on CSS and images would be a good start. Use Firefox's YSlow extension to get an analysis and recommendations for your site. The dial-up line you are using must have issues if it takes 25 seconds to load your page or maybe the server was just overloaded at the time. No, it does matter. Even broadband users (particularly those with poor quality <=1Mbit speeds) appreciate leaner pages.
I used that as a sig a few years ago. You left off the important part; "Always code as if the next person to work on your code is a psychopathic serial killer, who knows where you live". It's always fun to be reminded of good words to live by. cheers, gary
Very little people use 56k anymore. I'd say regardless of the connection speed... a site should load in 10 secs or less.
There are still millions of people world wide that uses 56k connection. Thats why companies like a0L and Netz3ro ( you know what i mean) still exists. If you are going to design a website especially ecommerce website, I would make sure it is fast enough for the 56k users. As far as images goes, I would use gif instead of jpeg. You can easily configure the gif size image easily. Feel free to correct me if i am wrong
I don't think anyone would want to wait more than 15 seconds for a website to load now days, but on 56k i'd say 20-30 at the most. If your site takes longer than this to load, you need make some adjustments.
Oh my gosh guys, sorry I didn't reply. I didn't get any emails updating me that there were replies, so I thought nobody did. Thanks for all the help everyone, I'm doing my best to streamline things now.