There are a few tools that make it much easier to design websites for low bandwidth.

• Page analysers will measure the size of your web pages, not just the HTML but also any images, style sheets and scripting files that are part of your page. These are a great place to start to see how well your pages would perform over low bandwidth connections.

• Bandwidth simulators will show you how your site would look over a low bandwidth connection by temporarily restricting your bandwidth.

• Browser plug-ins can be a great help when designing web pages. They can allow you to see your pages in different screen resolutions. They let you turn javascript, cookies and images on and off. They can also show you HTTP headers so you can see if your pages are compressed or cacheable.

• Code Optimisers are useful for condensing your HTML, style sheets and javascript files. They remove comments, white space and make other optimisations. We ran the CSS file for this website through an optimiser and halved its size.

We have collected links to the most useful tools on our Tools page, where we discuss each tool in a bit more detail.