[thelist] File size limit?

[aardvark]

> From: "Flavia Silveira-Tarzwell (FayeC)" <fayec at canada.com>
[...]
> I was wondering if the image file maximum size (hypotetically) has
> changed in the last couple of years considering the fact that more and
> more people connect to the internet using high speed than 2-3 years
> ago. I understand that by default we should keep the image files as
> small as possible but I was wondering what you guys out there consider
> to be small enough nowadays...

um, no?  or yes...

i'm writing this while connected via a 33.6 modem... i'm so sick of 
fatter and fatter pages that i surf with images turned off for the most 
part, and backpedal out of Flash pages (not just file size, but CPU 
cycles)...

granted, i may be the only person on this list using a 4.5-year-old 
machine, but hey, i'm out there...

now, independent of that anecdotal response, the best answer is 
completely dependent on the audience of the site... and you'll see 
this response in the archives as a general answer to lots-o-
questions...

you building a site for gamers?  dedicated to the highest end 
games on the market?  well, it's probably safe to assume that 
they've got decent machines, and there's probably an above-
average number of users with broadband access (especially if the 
games you tout are network-friendly)...

you building a site to sell ben-gay?  well, less of that audience is 
likely to access from work, and if they access from home, they be 
on a hand-me-down machine with an AOL dial-up... hell, my folks 
have more bandwidth than me, but it's only 56k... and they search 
for stuff that appeals to their demographic...

so, if someone tells you yes, they're wrong...  if someone tells you 
no, they're wrong... and yeah, i know it wasn't a yes/no question... 
but you really have to make that decision on a per-site basis...

in my case (anecdotal again), when i can't tell enough about the 
users (little knowledge of the market, no research, inability to poll, 
etc.), i tend to stick to 24k max for page sizes, including HTML 
(and linked CSS/JS)... of course i have sites that go over that, like 
my own photo gallery, but, well, it's a photo gallery...