Broadband I LOVE thee

[redcircle]

Well, tonight I'm crying. Tears of horror are running down my face. My roommate didn't pay the cable bill. And you know what that means. Yes, I am stuck using dialup till he pays it. This is the first time in 4 years that I haven't been able to stream my fav net stations.

You know I've come to the assumption that all flash designers have broadband. I don't think they've ever looked at their sites over dialup. I think they'd change their mind about their "dream" technology. Another thing that I have noticed while I take my stroll through the 56k lane. WHY DON'T PEOPLE OPTIMIZE IMAGES. I can't believe that people would produce a professional website and not think about the size of their images. They must all have broadband too.

I WANT MY CABLE BACK!!!

[minstrel]

Welcome to my world - out here in the country there IS no high-speed... it's dialup on ancient telephone lines and junction boxes that on a good day might be 26.6 or 28K max...

So, yes, you learn to appreciate that people with dialup connections, and there are still a LOT of them, are probably not going to have the patience to sit for 5 minutes watching that little "Loading..." bar crawl from left to right...

Instead, they wind up at that ugly old website of your competitor down the road, who has no artistic taste at all but who does have a home page that loads in less than 30 seconds... and son-of-a-gun, but he's probably selling the same products or services as you are even if his website IS butt-ugly...

[labrynth_of_fire]

Well, tonight I'm crying. Tears of horror are running down my face. My roommate didn't pay the cable bill. And you know what that means. Yes, I am stuck using dialup till he pays it. This is the first time in 4 years that I haven't been able to stream my fav net stations.

You know I've come to the assumption that all flash designers have broadband. I don't think they've ever looked at their sites over dialup. I think they'd change their mind about their "dream" technology. Another thing that I have noticed while I take my stroll through the 56k lane. WHY DON'T PEOPLE OPTIMIZE IMAGES. I can't believe that people would produce a professional website and not think about the size of their images. They must all have broadband too.

I WANT MY CABLE BACK!!!
oh wow...that sucks!
(hmmm its 3:00 in the morning and im hunnngry...)

[redcircle]

Welcome to my world - out here in the country there IS no high-speed... it's dialup on ancient telephone lines and junction boxes that on a good day might be 26.6 or 28K max...

So, yes, you learn to appreciate that people with dialup connections, and there are still a LOT of them, are probably not going to have the patience to sit for 5 minutes watching that little "Loading..." bar crawl from left to right...

Instead, they wind up at that ugly old website of your competitor down the road, who has no artistic taste at all but who does have a home page that loads in less than 30 seconds... and son-of-a-gun, but he's probably selling the same products or services as you are even if his website IS butt-ugly...

Well the people that live in the boonies are my comanpies main customers. I work at a dialup ISP that pretty much offers dialup access where no one else has internet. For most of our customers we are their only choice. In that aspect it's pretty good. MSN, AOL, Earthlink etc don't have a local number, but we do.

[ldyguique]

This IS a huge reality -- the majority of internet connections are still made through 56k modems. One reason that I switched back from cable to 56k modem some months backs was due to budget considerations; however, another component was to get back in touch with what most people are experiencing (keeps my sympathy edge for teching calls). It should be part of every webmaster and SEOs arsensal, dialup and doublecheck everything. View it as most will see it.

Additionally, have several older friends and relatives view it. Many people cannot see anything well when the background is black and they will tell you! Either the text pinches to nearly invisible or if red is chosen, it's literally "unseeable." What is cool to a young person is unviewable to an older one. If your target audience is only one age segment, then, it's probably not an issue.

[redcircle]

I guess I have an edge. I'm colorblind. so if I can see it.. most others can too :)

[Narasinha]

We've had a cable modem for access at home for about four years. I wouldn't trade it for anything but a T-1 or an OC-3. I do use a 56k dial-up at work, so I still know the effects of a slow connection.

WHY DON'T PEOPLE OPTIMIZE IMAGES?
This reminds me of a job from several years ago (1996). I was working on a site for a client. They had another agency (who they had worked with for years) create the graphics for them. So, in addition to a link to our company for the site design and programming, we placed a link to the graphics designers. This company had also done a few web sites. I went to check out a couple of them. One of them, for a credit union, seemed to load very slowly. I found out why. The home page was a single 800k+ jpeg with an image map for the links. The entire page was one huge graphic! This was at a time when a lot of people were still using 14.4 modems. Can you imagine trying to view that site on a 14.4 connection?!?!