How big is too big?

[alexpgp]

The subject is graphics, being downloaded onto a Web page. (And what first crossed your mind? Hmm? But I digress...)

Sitting on the end of a 31 kbps connection, I receive somewhere between 3 and 4 kB per second when there is a tailwind around the data in the phone wire. Therefore, a 15 kB graphic takes 4-5 seconds to load, and a 60 kB graphic takes four times as long.

I've been on the receiving end of some utterly humongous graphics (though not from anyone one my friends list here on LJ that I recall), so I know what kind of a pain it is to suffer through.

Is there any conventional wisdom to cover this? I've got to figure that a 60 kB graphic would be near the maximum end of the scale, no?

Cheers...

Comments

[pixelpusher.livejournal.com]

As a courtesy, I try and keep all my web graphics and file attachments under 60 k, unless I know for sure that the enduser has cable modem or better.

60k is the high end of Big for a regular-bandwidth website.

[alexpgp.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. I just picked 60 kB out of a hat, kind of. But it's good to know it's about the right figure.

Galina'd signed up for one of those sites that offers a sort of on-line "office." The only problem was the folks running the show figured unless the whole thing was highly graphical (e.g., a telephone to denote an address/phone book), it wasn't snazzy enough. To make a long story short, you could not download the entire page in under 3 minutes if your life depended on it and you had a less-than-DSL-quality connection.

Thanks for the info.

Cheers...

[laurelo.livejournal.com]

I know it wasn't all that long ago that the rule of thumb was 50-60kb per web page, text & graphics included. My own pages are slightly larger, but in general the smaller the better,

[volkris.livejournal.com]

I saw a rule of thumb once that you sould try to keep your webpage, including graphics, to a size where it would download in less than 30 seconds. That's 30 seconds assuming the speed of connection that you expect to cater to. I like this way of looking at things because of its timelessness and allowance for the author of the webpage to adjust for power users with fat pipes or not so technologicaly advanced countries still running 14.4k.

If I remember right, the rest of the rule basically said that any webpage taking longer than about 45 seconds to load better damn well have a warning for the user telling him that if he clicks this link he will have a wait.