Even though more and more Internet users switch to broadband
every year, a large portion of the web's population is still running on good
old dialup connections. It is therefore unwise to count them out of the
equation when you're designing your website, and a very major consideration we
have to make for dialup users is the loading time of your website.
Generally, all the text on your website will be loaded in a
very short time even on a dialup connection. The culprit of slow-loading sites
is mainly large images on your website, and it is very important to strike a
delicate balance between using just enough images to attract your users and not
to bog down the overall loading time of your site.
You should also go to a greater length and optimize every
image on your site to make sure it loads in the least time possible. What I
really mean is to use image editing software to remove unnecessary information
on your images, and thereby effectively reducing the file size of your image
without affecting its appearance.
If you own Photoshop, it will be obvious to you that when
you save an image as a JPEG file, a dialog box appears and lets you choose the
"quality" of the JPEG image -- normally a setting of 8 to 10 is good
enough as it will preserve the quality of your image while saving it at a small
file size. If you do not have Photoshop, there are many free image compressors
online that you can download and use to reduce your image's file size.
On the other hand, you can opt to save your images in PNG
format to get the best quality at the least file size. You can also save your
images in GIF format -- the image editing software clips away all the color
information not used in your image, hence giving you the smallest file size
possible. However, saving in GIF format will often compromise the appearance of
your image, so make your choice wisely!