[ 60K ] RE: [thelist] File size limit?

[deke]

On 2 Jun 2001, at 19:50, nate posted a message which said:

> all that said tho, i'll put out there that the new benchmark is 60K. i
> almost never build a site under 40K. the most common sign-off i get from
> clients is 60K. If it's snazzy, 80-100 is the high end. If you want to pin
> me down tho, i'd say a site should weight 60K.

Not to be picking on Nate, but this thread is getting to be rather
confusing because people are answering a different question than
Flavia asked. She was specifically asking about *IMAGE* file
size, not the total of all files used to build a page.

I generally look to shrink photos until they are under 20K. There
rarely is any visible difference, and I deal with that on an individual
basis. Other images are usually GIFs, not JPGs, and tend to be
under 10K and often under 4K.

There is a theory that one can download large images faster if
they are sliced. This has always struck me as being equivalent
to the Yogi Berra joke about slicing the pizza into six slices, not
eight, because he wasn't hungry enough to eat eight slices. The
HTTP/1.1 standard says that you open a maximum of *two* 
sockets between server and client, so cutting a big image into
pieces *increases* the amount of time doing overhead, without
doing anything substantive to reduce the download time.

Because large files compress more effectively, slicing an image
into many pieces *increases* the number of bytes that must be
downloaded. 

I've done time trials between sliced and unsliced images, and 
found that sliced images occasionally have a little advantage, but
most of the time, the unsliced image won hands down.

The differences are small enough that you won't see the difference 
on a T-1 line. Like most of America, though, I cannot buy DSL, 
cannot buy cable, and I get a 24K-28K connection most of the time 
using a rockwell-chip v.90 modem.  Instead of taking the time and
the extra HTML to slice an image, spending the same amount of
time shrinking the image gives much better results.

deke
















 
> I'm talking about professional, highly-designed, info-rich sites.
> 
> When starting a project, it's a fun exercise to put competitors sites into
> http://websitegarage.netscape.com/ and see what they weigh. You'd be amazed
> how many sites tip the scales at 120-150K.
> 
> I think it's worth noting that it's possible for mr. x's site to weight 60K
> and load/render much faster that mr. y's 60K site.
> 
> happy saturday everyone,
> nate
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: thelist-admin at lists.evolt.org
> [mailto:thelist-admin at lists.evolt.org]On Behalf Of richard winter
> Sent: Saturday, June 02, 2001 2:05 PM
> To: thelist at lists.evolt.org
> Subject: Re: [thelist] File size limit?
> 
> 
> agreed..
> im usually at a 28.8 and im in the shadow of microsoft
> flash is the worse..
> 
> 
> rick
> 
> 
> At 01:15 PM 6/2/01 -0700, you wrote:
> >On Sat, 2 Jun 2001 14:45:20 -0400, you wrote:
> >
> > >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...
> >
> >Due to attenuated phone lines, I average about 26k when connecting.
> >The kicker is that I live within 25 miles of the high-tech mecca
> >Seattle.  Large sites rarely hold my attention of 30 seconds f they
> >take to long to load..........
> >
> >=============================================
> >Brendan W. Vittum                 webwarrior at directionx.com
> >
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