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Average Web Page Size Triples Since 2003
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Mon Apr 28, 2008 08:31 AM
from the just-the-freshmen-fifteen dept.
from the just-the-freshmen-fifteen dept.
Andy King writes "Within the last five years, the size of the average web page has more than tripled, and the number of external objects has nearly doubled. While broadband users have experienced somewhat faster response times, narrowband users have been left behind." The article breaks down a number of changes besides just page size, including image types and video duration.
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Submission: Average Web Page Size Triples Since 2003 by Anonymous Coward
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Check out the size of the /. front page. (Score:3, Interesting)
(Front Page?)
Re:Check out the size of the /. front page. (Score:5, Insightful)
Hard drives get bigger -> Applications use more space
Media storage increases -> Home videos get larger and quality improves
CPUs get faster -> Windows programmers add "features" and chow down on cycles
Fish bowls get larger -> Goldfish grow
Some good, some bad, some ugly. But not shocking.
Parent
Re:Check out the size of the /. front page. (Score:5, Funny)
if by "quality improves" you mean resolution, I'll give you that one. But a quick glance of some of what litters youtube goes to show that 'quality' isn't going anywhere...
Parent
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Home movies have always sucked. And in HD they SUCK more. You see HD, even 1080i, requires you to pan slowly, limit zooming and other fast or shakey camera motions. now HD amplifies the careless shooting of the home video and makes people even more sick.
Honestly as a videographer I wish they required classes before people buy a camcorder. Either that or make the camera shock the user if it is tilted or moved too fast or if zoom is used when record is pressed.
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If I take my trash to the dump, do you call that littering?
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Re:Check out the size of the /. front page. (Score:5, Interesting)
The biggest thing I'd argue is that advertisements have gotten heavier over the years, with static images giving way to animated images giving way to flash objects.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I checked.
Around 75KB, down to 17KB with gzip compression.
Plus around 20KB in png/gifs.
Not that big.
While we're at it... (Score:2, Insightful)
... let's note how they've grown in screen size, too! I mean, back in the day, it used to be good enough to have a monitor that could display 640x480. Now, if you're using a 14" CRT, you're totally out of luck when viewing the intarwebs!
Ahem... honestly, I agree that "narrowband users have been left behind," but so have those with smaller monitors, older operating systems, and the like. Sometimes upgrading the hardware/software is just a necessity at some point. If you can't, chances are there's a lib
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with DSL slashdot isn't too bad, but some sites I don't even bother visiting. The bloat isn't so much bandwidth but processor requirements. remember when you could browse the web with a 25mhz 486. now if you don't have an 1 ghz Pentium you can barely load up most websites.
Re:While we're at it... (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course not. People shouldn't be specifiying the width for their columns in absolute terms in the first place. Use relative measures and let the browser decide where everything goes. At least that way your site degrades gracefully if the browser doesn't meet your expectations.
Well written HTML + CSS should be completely device independent. It should be fully navigable on a 1600x1400 monitor, a 320x240 cell phone, or a line by line screen reader. And it should be completely transparent to the user. We have the technology, designers just need to use it.
Parent
Re:While we're at it... (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
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Re:While we're at it... (Score:4, Informative)
Um, that's in the spec already [w3.org]. Both the "height" and "width" attributes for the IMG tag can be defined as percentages.
Parent
Video probably prime reason... (Score:4, Insightful)
It seems to me that embedded video alone could account for at least half of this increase.
OMG ! (Score:2)
I would like to see more stripped down text only pages ( like the BBC has ) on web pages but otherwise I'm perfectly happy with this and don't see any need to handicap web developers just because some luddities out in the sticks somewhere haven't got a faster connection yet.
!=haven't, rather == can't get (was Re:OMG !) (Score:3, Interesting)
Low bandwidth, flexible pages using CSS are also good for people on mobile units w/ small screens.
William
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You know what they say (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:You know what they say (Score:4, Insightful)
Usually when sites go Add Crazy they do not last long because there is to much adds and prevents repeat visits, so they go away because they cannot make proper money from it.
Also back in the early 2000's flash wasn't used for most of the adds but animated GIFs and Flash is much more efficent then animated GIFs. So you are actually saving bandwith.
Think of the alternatives to adds. Having to Pay for directly out of own pocket for access to a web site. Web sites collecting information about you and selling them to spammers. Web sites that are a labor of love and will get updated every year if you are luckly and could go down any day.
Like it or not Web Banner Adds are actually the best happy medium that we have come up with that keep most websites running. Some websites such as HomeStarrunner.com make their mony selling swag but that may not be as profitable for other sites.
Parent
Online banking via dialup is intolerable (Score:2)
Fight: Text blasts bloat (Score:3, Insightful)
Everything still runs pretty fast, certainly much faster than those few occasions when I need graphics or https: and run Firefox. The difference is noticable on all machines, and greatest (~2x) on the slower ones.
Sometimes formatting gets messed up, but the main content is still in text and still very readable.
Parkinson's Law hold true after 60 years (Score:5, Interesting)
Whatever next? Software expands to fill the hardware available....?
Re:Parkinson's Law hold true after 60 years (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Tell me about it. (Score:2)
I know Slashdot has a "Palm" edition, which is very low bandwidth, but it only gives you the stories, and top 5 comments. No posting, no nothing.
Surely the great web-wizards at Slashdot can make something that checks for a "Nokia" or "Symbian" user agent, and handles appropriately?
Compression and other methods (Score:2)
As for many pages there is a lot of junk in there that could be stripped out or put into separate documents. This includes CSS or Javascript that is being reused by multiple pages, since this would be downloaded once
Avoid bloat (Score:3, Informative)
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Security wise though it's awesome.
Arrgh! "Narrowband" used on slashdot! (Score:2, Informative)
The fault lies with the bloggers (Score:2)
I don't know if the blog software is to blame, the clueless blogger, or if it was intentional in order to have the most pointers from Google. If I end up at one I immediately back out -- I don't need to hear the opinion of anyone that maintains a site like that.
The multi-meg
How much is necessary? (Score:2)
Excluding places like YouTube where it revolves around big content, and ignoring bloggers who don't have the sense to link to external pages for their videos and so embed a dozen
Narrowband? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why can't they just say (Score:3, Insightful)
My biggest complaint... (Score:3, Interesting)
It has however, benefited my pocket since many of the businesses who have had a site built by these morons come looking for someone to "make their sites work better." It does still amaze me that even in this day and age your average business still doesn't check the credentials or abilities of the people that they hire as programmers.
-Goran
Re:Times change (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
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Flash too, despite the bad rep it gets here can (I stress, can be fairly small in size.
The reason these things feel clunky isn't because they're big and slow, it's because they're, well, clunky.
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I'd even go a step further.
Accessibility options. A page done almost entirely in Flash is almost guaranteed to be inaccessible to someone with a screen reader.
Another pet peeve is cropping a page so that it has only one page of info on it. I can use the scroll bar on the site. Give me (at least the option) of reading the entire article on one freeking page. It can contain ads every 'x' lines of text, I don't want to keep clicking!!!! (Carpel tunnel here I come).
If anyone wants to
Re:Times change (Score:4, Informative)
People who don't have to deal with are very misinformed about what is available. There is no cellular or towers available. DSL isn't even remotely feasable. And sattelite is so over sold by the 2 monopolies that the speed is OFTEN less than the 24.4 tops dial up that is available from 2 carriers.
Yes, were I live sucks big time. I made the mistake of thinking coverage would eventually be available, but its not. Around here (southern VA, east TN) a $50 dollar bribe to a cop and you can still get away with murder. It's the old west. I dont see things changing any time soon.
But no, I don't expect anyone to do anything to help poor old me out. But just don't go around thinking I have options available, I don't.
Parent
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Re:Times change (Score:5, Interesting)
It might be extra work, might even be a pita, but 'unfeasible'? Most modern websites of any size separate content from presentation through some sort of content management system.
With a decent CMS it should be trivial to offer a 'light' version of your site - I think someone else mentioned the low graphics version of the BBC news site as an example.
It is possible that a lot of the content that is increasing page sizes are flash adverts - if I fire up internet explorer there seems to be an ever increasing number of these animated adverts (can folk actually read a web page with three animated adverts amongst the text?). I'd hazard a guess that the reason many sites don't offer light versions of their pages is the threat to revenue through decreased ad views and has very little to do with the complexity of serving up two variants of a website.
Parent
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... In my opinion it would be unfeasible to maintain two sites, one for narrow band users and one for high speed users....
I disagree on this point, the WWW is basically built by software, is run by computers, and is automated. That is to say no human intervention is required when you request a web page via your browser.
If HTML editors were what they should be, generating a lightweight site along with the mighty and powerful web 2.0 version should be no problem. You are using a computer to generate your website pages, NOT an abacus, and the computer should be doing more for you than it is. I think that the basic narrow band/b
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Good grief! I guess this comment shows why we're behind in this country with cell phone and other wireless gadget technology.
Maybe it shows that we're behind, but not why. The reason that we're behind is because the infrastructure is "good enough" for most people, and putting out cell towers that service a dozen people in the sticks is not cost-effective.
People look at countries in Europe and wonder why the US can't have as comprehensive a cellular infrastructure.. Usually, they have forgotten that those countries are a) much more socialist (not that I'm judging socialism one way or another, but the governments there have a gre
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On the other hand, often times the PNG is completely redone and looks a lot nicer than the older GIF, at which point the tradeoff is between quality and file size. I don't think most web users mind an increase in quality, especially if it
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