Ten Rules for Designing for Low Bandwidth
1.
Design your pages to load within 10
seconds over 20kbps connections, which
means 25kB is the maximum page
size. If you do one thing, do this. Read more...
2.
Good design is possible without lots
of images. Use CSS for layout and
rollovers, instead of images. Make sure your site is usable if
images are turned off in the browser. Optimising the images you do
have can make them a fraction of the size. Read more...
3.
Provide easy navigation. Don't make
users load unnecessary pages which are annoying for all users but
really frustrating for users with low bandwidth connections.
Read more
4.
Using style sheets
(CSS) is more efficient.
Don't use tables for layout. Avoid using JavaScript. Avoid
embedding style rules within the page. Read more...
5.
Every image, CSS file, JavaScript file and
HTML page requires a
separate HTTP request. Too many
requests will add delays to page loading.
Read more...
6.
Enabling compression on your web
server could shrink your pages to half the size. Read more...
7.
Allow browsers to keep a local copy
of, or "cache", your pages. Read more...
8.
Avoid using PDFs. If you use them,
optimise them for low bandwidth. PDFs can be optimised by using
vector-based graphics and minimising the number of fonts. Read more...
9.
Put main navigation items at the top
of each page so they load and display first. Make your pages useful
even before they finish loading. Read more...
10.
Don't force the user to download large
things, always link to them, and if they are over 75kB say
how large they are going to be. Read more...