kb limit ?

[Martin!]

hi all,

i was wondering how many kb nowadays acceptables is for a page to load
over internet ? i thought that 75kb is a lot but when i checked a few
big sites (see list) i may have to update my number...

CNN: 250kb
BBC: 150kb
Netscape.com: 290kb
MS: 100kb
NBC: 200kb
FOX: 135kb

so... what do people here aim at ??

i would be very interested to hear some opinions and numbers !

martin

[C A Upsdell]

Martin! wrote:

hi all,

i was wondering how many kb nowadays acceptables is for a page to load
over internet ? i thought that 75kb is a lot but when i checked a few
big sites (see list) i may have to update my number...

CNN: 250kb
BBC: 150kb
Netscape.com: 290kb
MS: 100kb
NBC: 200kb
FOX: 135kb

so... what do people here aim at ??

i would be very interested to hear some opinions and numbers !

A lot of designers appear to assume that all their visitors have
high-speed connections. And they refuse to listen to anyone whoo
suggests otherwise.

For some info related to this issue, see
http://www.upsdell.com/BrowserNews/res_load.htm

[Eric Kenneth Bustad]

In article <Pf********************@rogers.com>, C A Upsdell <""
U> wrote:

Martin! wrote:

hi all,

i was wondering how many kb nowadays acceptables is for a page to load
over internet ? i thought that 75kb is a lot but when i checked a few
big sites (see list) i may have to update my number...

CNN: 250kb
BBC: 150kb
Netscape.com: 290kb
MS: 100kb
NBC: 200kb
FOX: 135kb

so... what do people here aim at ??

i would be very interested to hear some opinions and numbers !

A lot of designers appear to assume that all their visitors have
high-speed connections. And they refuse to listen to anyone whoo
suggests otherwise.

For some info related to this issue, see
http://www.upsdell.com/BrowserNews/res_load.htm

The data on that page is pretty old.

Is there any newer data around?

Even on broadband connections, though, many sites are *way* too big!

--
= Eric Bustad, Norwegian bachelor programmer

[C A Upsdell]

Eric Kenneth Bustad wrote:

In article <Pf********************@rogers.com>, C A Upsdell <""
U> wrote:

Martin! wrote:

hi all,

i was wondering how many kb nowadays acceptables is for a page to load
over internet ? i thought that 75kb is a lot but when i checked a few
big sites (see list) i may have to update my number...

CNN: 250kb
BBC: 150kb
Netscape.com: 290kb
MS: 100kb
NBC: 200kb
FOX: 135kb

so... what do people here aim at ??

i would be very interested to hear some opinions and numbers !

A lot of designers appear to assume that all their visitors have
high-speed connections. And they refuse to listen to anyone whoo
suggests otherwise.

For some info related to this issue, see
http://www.upsdell.com/BrowserNews/res_load.htm

The data on that page is pretty old.

Is there any newer data around?

Not that I have been able to find. A lot of the stats sources that used
to offer free info have switched to a costly for-pay system over the
last few years, so a lot of new data is just not available to the
average joe. If you know of newer data, PLEASE tell me.

[me]

"Martin!" <ma**********@home.nl.knip.knip.knip> wrote in message
news:d1**********@news5.zwoll1.ov.home.nl...

hi all,

i was wondering how many kb nowadays acceptables is for a page to load
over internet ? i thought that 75kb is a lot but when i checked a few
big sites (see list) i may have to update my number...

CNN: 250kb
BBC: 150kb
Netscape.com: 290kb
MS: 100kb
NBC: 200kb
FOX: 135kb

so... what do people here aim at ??

i would be very interested to hear some opinions and numbers !

martin]

IMO 170kb is the maximum for dialup and that's assuming you have a loading
message. It will take approximately 40 seconds to load a page that size at
50kbs. The important question is how long will a visitor wait for your page
to load.
Signed,
me

[Stan Brown]

"Martin!" wrote in comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html:

hi all,

i was wondering how many kb nowadays acceptables is for a page to load
over internet ? i thought that 75kb is a lot but when i checked a few
big sites (see list) i may have to update my number...

CNN: 250kb
BBC: 150kb
Netscape.com: 290kb
MS: 100kb
NBC: 200kb
FOX: 135kb

In your mother's words, "If everyone else jumped off a roof, would
you do it too?" :-)

In your KB counts, are you including just the page or everythiong
else has to be loaded, CSS and images and so forth? I don't think
we can state a hard and fast rule, but if I don't see _something_
useful on my page within about 30 seconds I'll almost certainly
give up. For a 56 K modem (still quite common) on a good phone
line, that means about 200 KB. But I wouldn't go that high if I
could avoid it.

--

Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com/

[Jim Moe]

Martin! wrote:

i was wondering how many kb nowadays acceptables is for a page to load
over internet ?

i would be very interested to hear some opinions and numbers !

With rare exception I keep the page sizes below 40 kiB--the average
being 15 kiB--and images below 25kiB.
A 56 kbaud modem transfers at about 5 kiB/sec. So a typical page with a
mix of text and images initially downloads in about 20 seconds. Images are
recycled as much as possible to allow browsers to draw them from cache
instead of the site.
Of course, those lucky ones with DSL or broadband see an almost instant
load given the small file sizes.

--
jmm dash list (at) sohnen-moe (dot) com
(Remove .AXSPAMGN for email)

[Els]

Stan Brown wrote:

"Martin!" wrote in comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html:

hi all,

i was wondering how many kb nowadays acceptables is for a
page to load over internet ?

I don't think we can state a hard and fast rule, but
if I don't see _something_ useful on my page within about
30 seconds I'll almost certainly give up.

30 seconds? You are so patient! :-)

--
Els
http://locusmeus.com/
Sonhos vem. Sonhos vão. O resto é imperfeito.
- Renato Russo -

[Martin!]

Stan Brown wrote:

"Martin!" wrote in comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html:

hi all,

i was wondering how many kb nowadays acceptables is for a page to load
over internet ? i thought that 75kb is a lot but when i checked a few
big sites (see list) i may have to update my number...

CNN: 250kb
BBC: 150kb
Netscape.com: 290kb
MS: 100kb
NBC: 200kb
FOX: 135kb

In your mother's words, "If everyone else jumped off a roof, would
you do it too?" :-)

In your KB counts, are you including just the page or everythiong
else has to be loaded, CSS and images and so forth? I don't think
we can state a hard and fast rule, but if I don't see _something_
useful on my page within about 30 seconds I'll almost certainly
give up. For a 56 K modem (still quite common) on a good phone
line, that means about 200 KB. But I wouldn't go that high if I
could avoid it.

i mean *everything* *all inclusive* graphics, scripts etc..
i can imagine that 56k modem users are a little more patient, but 30 sec
sounds indeed very long to me.

[Alan J. Flavell]

On Wed, 16 Mar 2005, Martin! wrote:

i mean *everything* *all inclusive* graphics, scripts etc..
i can imagine that 56k modem users are a little more patient, but 30 sec
sounds indeed very long to me.

10 secs is too long to ask people to wait to start seeing substantive
content. You could still be filling-in bits that they don't care
about, but they want to start seeing something that's of benefit to
them, well before then. The kind of page that spends the first 10sec
painting fancy decorations - or worse, banner advertisements - before
even starting to display anything that the user wanted to see, are the
sort that get clicked away from before the page had the slightest
chance to communciate with the potential customer.

Size alone may not be the only measure of a web site's responsiveness.
Cacheability also comes into it. Even if you don't use a shared
cacheing proxy (and thus stand some chance to pick up cached items
that others have recently viewed), there's still the issue of
navigating around the page.

A site which re-uses cacheable objects, with the same object at the
same URL every time, can be navigated much faster than one which uses
uncacheable objects and/or makes copies of the same object at many
different URLs.[1]

While this won't do very much for first impressions, since even
cacheable objects have to be downloaded the first time (;-) , it
nevertheless can make or break the user experience of navigating
around a site. See Mark Nottingham's Cacheability Engine for a report
on one's own site's behaviour, and his tutorial for hints and tips.

good luck

[1] The criterion is the absolute URL after relative URLs have
been resolved. Referencing different relative URLs is OK so long as
they resolve to the same URL in absolute terms.

[Stan Brown]

"Els" wrote in comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html:

Stan Brown wrote:

"Martin!" wrote in comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html:

hi all,

i was wondering how many kb nowadays acceptables is for a
page to load over internet ?

I don't think we can state a hard and fast rule, but
if I don't see _something_ useful on my page within about
30 seconds I'll almost certainly give up.

30 seconds? You are so patient! :-)

I have to _claim_ to tolerate 30 seconds, since one of my pages is
150 K of text. :-)

(I asked a group of visitors whether I should break it up into
smaller pages, and the consensus was "No, because it's really an
organic whole.")

--

Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com/

[GEO Me]

On Tue, 15 Mar 2005 21:24:18 +0100, "Martin!"
<ma**********@home.nl.knip.knip.knip> wrote:

i was wondering how many kb nowadays acceptables is for a page to load
over internet ? i thought that 75kb is a lot but....

<snip>

I guess this would be considered a bad example:

<www.diarioacayucan.com>
(web page of a Mexican newspaper)

Geo

[David Ross]

"Martin!" wrote:

hi all,

i was wondering how many kb nowadays acceptables is for a page to load
over internet ? i thought that 75kb is a lot but when i checked a few
big sites (see list) i may have to update my number...

CNN: 250kb
BBC: 150kb
Netscape.com: 290kb
MS: 100kb
NBC: 200kb
FOX: 135kb

so... what do people here aim at ??

i would be very interested to hear some opinions and numbers !

My largest HTML file is 63 KB, but I'm thinking of splitting it.
My next largest is less than 50 KB.

Except for photographs, my largest GIF or JPEG file is 75 KB. I
have 7 others 50 KB or larger. 210 are less than 15 KB (130 less
than 5 KB). Links to my pages that display photographs include a
parenthetical note of the total download size (HTML plus
graphics).

Note that almost half of those who access the Internet from home
still use dial-up modems.

--

David E. Ross
<URL:http://www.rossde.com/>

I use Mozilla as my Web browser because I want a browser that
complies with Web standards. See <URL:http://www.mozilla.org/>.

[kchayka]

Alan J. Flavell wrote:

The kind of page that spends the first 10sec
painting fancy decorations - or worse, banner advertisements - before
even starting to display anything that the user wanted to see, are the
sort that get clicked away from before the page had the slightest
chance to communciate with the potential customer.

A site like this has to have content that's *really* worth waiting for
if you can reasonably expect the visitor to wait around.

To me, sourceforge falls into this category. There is often what seems
an eternity between the time the page "wrapping" displays, ads are
retrieved (sometimes 30+ seconds), and finally the content shows. If it
were any other site, I'd never go back.

--
Reply email address is a bottomless spam bucket.
Please reply to the group so everyone can share.

[Stephen Poley]

On Wed, 16 Mar 2005 10:39:35 -0500, Stan Brown
<th************@fastmail.fm> wrote:

"Els" wrote in comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html:

Stan Brown wrote:

"Martin!" wrote in comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html:
hi all,

i was wondering how many kb nowadays acceptables is for a
page to load over internet ?

I don't think we can state a hard and fast rule, but
if I don't see _something_ useful on my page within about
30 seconds I'll almost certainly give up.

30 seconds? You are so patient! :-)

I have to _claim_ to tolerate 30 seconds, since one of my pages is
150 K of text. :-)

(I asked a group of visitors whether I should break it up into
smaller pages, and the consensus was "No, because it's really an
organic whole.")

I would make a distinction between the usual opening page(s) of a site
and "interior" pages. Sometimes interior pages have to be rather big,
e.g. because high-quality photographs are an intrinsic part of the
content. This isn't too bad if the reader has some idea of what to
expect.

But the majority of internet users are still on dial-up lines, and
whereas I usually got about 5 Kb/s over my modem I'm told I was luckier
than most. I would say for an opening page you want a *maximum* 40Kb
HTML file and another 40Kb for other bits and pieces.

--
Stephen Poley

http://www.xs4all.nl/~sbpoley/webmatters/

[kchayka]

Jim Moe wrote:

A 56 kbaud modem transfers at about 5 kiB/sec.

Keep in mind, however, that the modem is not the only factor. For
example, where I live the crappy phone lines don't reliably support
anything faster than 28.8. The modem capabilities are irrelevant.

--
Reply email address is a bottomless spam bucket.
Please reply to the group so everyone can share.

[Rick Cook]

Els wrote:

Stan Brown wrote:

"Martin!" wrote in comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html:

hi all,

i was wondering how many kb nowadays acceptables is for a
page to load over internet ?

I don't think we can state a hard and fast rule, but
if I don't see _something_ useful on my page within about
30 seconds I'll almost certainly give up.

30 seconds? You are so patient! :-)

IIRC, IBM did a study some years ago showing that at 5 seconds a user's
concentration is broken and after about 20 second you start losing
viewers on about a 15-second half-life.

Unfortunately I've never been able to find the reference again, but the
principle holds empirically.

The web is a three-dimensional medium and the third dimension is speed.

--RC

[Martin!]

"GEO" [e-mail] wrote:

On Tue, 15 Mar 2005 21:24:18 +0100, "Martin!"
<ma**********@home.nl.knip.knip.knip> wrote:

i was wondering how many kb nowadays acceptables is for a page to load
over internet ? i thought that 75kb is a lot but....

<snip>

I guess this would be considered a bad example:

<www.diarioacayucan.com>
(web page of a Mexican newspaper)

Geo

to determine the size [kb] i simply saved the page.
this simple tactics doesnt work in a flash site.
so i cant determine the size.
your example is completely valid but useless as long as we dont know the
size.

[Martin!]

Note that almost half of those who access the Internet from home
still use dial-up modems.

do you have a reference to some recent research on this ?

[David Ross]

"Martin!" wrote:

Note that almost half of those who access the Internet from home
still use dial-up modems.

do you have a reference to some recent research on this ?

News item on some Web news site late last year. I don't remember
which. It was newsworthy because, until then, more than half still
used dial-up.

--

David E. Ross
<URL:http://www.rossde.com/>

I use Mozilla as my Web browser because I want a browser that
complies with Web standards. See <URL:http://www.mozilla.org/>.

[Jim Moe]

kchayka wrote:

A 56 kbaud modem transfers at about 5 kiB/sec.

Keep in mind, however, that the modem is not the only factor. For
example, where I live the crappy phone lines don't reliably support
anything faster than 28.8. The modem capabilities are irrelevant.

Yes, well, I was presuming a perfect world for the modem.

--
jmm dash list (at) sohnen-moe (dot) com
(Remove .AXSPAMGN for email)

[Stan Brown]

"Stephen Poley" wrote in comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html:

But the majority of internet users are still on dial-up lines, and
whereas I usually got about 5 Kb/s over my modem I'm told I was luckier
than most. I would say for an opening page you want a *maximum* 40Kb
HTML file and another 40Kb for other bits and pieces.

That's assuming the pening page is even worth having -- a very
large assumption, based on sites I see.

--

Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com/

[c.thornquist]

"Martin!" <ma**********@home.nl.knip.knip.knip> wrote in message
news:d1**********@news3.zwoll1.ov.home.nl...

Note that almost half of those who access the Internet from home
still use dial-up modems.

do you have a reference to some recent research on this ?

I do: http://www.thecounter.com/stats/

I learned years ago that 44K is the rule. Think I read it at Web Pages That
Suck.

Visitors used to allow 20 seconds for a page to load before moving on, but
recently I read it's 10 seconds! Personally, I give sites 20-30 seconds
before giving up.

Carla

[Ståle Sæbøe]

c.thornquist wrote:

"Martin!" <ma**********@home.nl.knip.knip.knip> wrote in message
news:d1**********@news3.zwoll1.ov.home.nl...

Note that almost half of those who access the Internet from home
still use dial-up modems.

do you have a reference to some recent research on this ?

I do: http://www.thecounter.com/stats/

I learned years ago that 44K is the rule. Think I read it at Web Pages That
Suck.

Visitors used to allow 20 seconds for a page to load before moving on, but
recently I read it's 10 seconds! Personally, I give sites 20-30 seconds
before giving up.

Carla

A company(1) I worked did a study some years back when they were
revising their internet strategy and found that 5 seconds (!) was a
critical limit for the target group(2). I dont know how many they asked
or any other details about the study. We were told that after 5 seconds
the chance that the page would be discarded rose dramatically. This was
in Norway and most internet users had a 64k ISDN line or better at that
point. Today the number of broadband users is probably larger though.

(1)An oil company
(2)Around 1.000.000 gas station customers.