Average Web Page Size Triples Since 2003

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.

Check out the size of the /. front page.

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

Around 1/2 a megabyte. Yup. That big.

(Front Page?)

Times change

[ironicsky]

While I feel for the people on dial-up or other narrow-band style connections, there isn't much anyone can do for them. Times change. While the majority of internet users in the states are on broadband(70% or more according to Web Site Optimization.com [websiteoptimization.com]) . In my opinion it would be unfeasible to maintain two sites, one for narrow band users and one for high speed users. Those people in rural area's still have the ability to get high speed internet, such as satellite, direct line of site towers, cellular or even DSL.

!=haven't, rather == can't get (was Re:OMG !)

[WillAdams]

The U.S. is big, and there's a lot of it where the local phone connection is as good as it gets.

Low bandwidth, flexible pages using CSS are also good for people on mobile units w/ small screens.

William

Re:Check out the size of the /. front page.

[jandrese]

IIRC, that's actually smaller than it was before the 2.0 makeover. Before that you have to look back a long way to find a thinner and lighter Slashdot. Probably back before the sidebar was added. Slashdot has always been a fairly heavy website unless you use the lite mode, but at least it has a lot of content so that's not such a bad thing.

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.

Parkinson's Law hold true after 60 years

[benwiggy]

So, we've gone from "work expands to fill the time/space available" to "Internet expands to fill the bandwidth available".

Whatever next? Software expands to fill the hardware available....?

Re:Times change

[Albanach]

In my opinion it would be unfeasible to maintain two sites, one for narrow band users and one for high speed users.

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.

Re:Check out the size of the /. front page.

[Professeur Shadoko]

Hummmm...
I checked.
Around 75KB, down to 17KB with gzip compression.
Plus around 20KB in png/gifs.

Not that big.

Re:Arrgh! "Narrowband" used on slashdot!

[morgan_greywolf]

People think 'broadband' means 'fast'. Actually broadband can ~= faster. Broadband just means that there a particular signaling path has broader range of frequencies (more bandwidth) than some other signaling path. 768Kbps ADSL is broadband compared with a 56Kpbs modem, but is not broadband compared against a fiber optic connection.

In a more technical sense in telecommunications, though broadband is divided into into channels, where baseband just has one signal over the maximum of the bandwidth of the medium. So while cable is a broadband technology and 100-base-TX is a baseband technology, 100-base-TX is of course, much, much faster than cable.

The opposite of 'narrowband' is 'wideband', which doesn't mean the same thing as 'broadband' despite the fact the 'wide' and 'broad' are synonyms.

Confused yet?

Re:Check out the size of the /. front page.

[Lumpy]

Oh good god yes.

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.

My biggest complaint...

[sirgoran]

Is that with the advent of the WYSIWYG, every Charlie dipstick that can figure out how to use one thinks He's/She's a web developer. It doesn't surprise me that page size has doubled. The average WYSIWYG writes crappy code, and if you don't know how to write it yourself the page stays bloated.

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