web design sucks, but...

I'm biting the bullett and learning more javascript stuff and web design. I still hate it, but I need to know it. So, I borrowed a textbook, called "SAMS teach yourself web publishing with HTML and XHTML in 21 days." Here's what I found...

In the 22nd chapter, it has a list stating how to keep your "images small."

"pages shouldn't take more than 20 sec. to load on a 56k",
"Interlace your GIFs", and "save your JPEGs as progressive JPEGs."

WTF? get to the point, graphicsguy...
OK I will:

1. Can someone tell me why I should use a progressive JPEG? I think they suck.

2. What timing guidelines should I use? Of late, all my web designer friends say "screw dial up users." I like that idea.

3. Does anyone really give a crap about Netscape? Really? No, Reeeeeeeeally? c'mon....

Any thoughts? Advice for your old pal graphicsguy?
thanks

If it looks good on my comp, I'm okay with that. If other people can't see it the way I do, it's time for them to upgrade.

If you're just doing a site for yourself, then you should be fine with moochan's theory even though it's pretty egotistical and closed minded. However, if you actually want to get paid for doing sites, you should probably not alienate your client's customers just because they don't spend thousands of dollars getting the latest computer with a high speed internet connection, and spend their precious time scouring the internet for the most recent browser.

Progressive JPEG? I don't do it... I don't think it is really that important anymore. Back when everyone had 14.4, it was nice. But I would just compress it well enough that no one is going to mind waiting for it to come in a line at a time.

I would not alienate dial-up users... More than half the people on the internet are still on dial-up. So if you alienate them, you lost a pretty big chunk of your audience. There is really no excuse to not have a page load in 20 or so seconds on dial-up. I mean what would take that long to download? Your nav bar shouldn't be that big... Pictures on your site should be kept to thumbnail size and then clicked to be blown up and see the hi-res version. So I think 20 to 30 seconds is still very reasonable, if not too long. I mean who wants to wait that long for a stupid web site?

Netscape... Hm. Again if you are doing a clients site, you probably don't want to alienate their audience just because they don't go out and download every beta release of the latest web browser. I have personally stopped testing sites in 4.7... Just because it is nearly impossible to make a site look good in that thing anymore. 6 and 7 are easy to support though. Not really any excuse that your site can't look good in either of those.

There are still a huge number of 56K modem users. As a matter of fact, some demographic sources say it's equal to or greater than the number of broadband users so to screw them is to screw 50% of your audience according to these sources.

20 seconds sounds about right on the high end for 56K. But what are you putting on your pages that it takes 20 seconds to download? Most research indicates that people who surf are generally looking for info and/or solutions to problems and want quick textual content, not flashy graphics that take 20 seconds to download on each page.

But here's the thing. What kind of site are you building? Is it a personal portfolio of your graphic designs or maybe a gaming site? Or is it a site for a local book club who wants to discuss the Grapes of Wrath online? Obviously, the *type* of site and who your targeted audience is, should strongly dictate how you construct the layout and content. Gamers typically have faster connections and higher resolutions. And folks who are visiting a graphic designer's site, usually expect a moderate amount of graphics throughout the site which takes longer to download. Folks who discuss the Grapes of Wrath however, may not be so Internet saavy and could care less about a slick Flash animation or an artistic JPEG of the book's cover that takes 20 seconds to download whenever they visit. They just want to click on the forum button and talk about the Dust Bowl. Figure out who you are targeting before you decide how to build it.

Netscape vs. IE vs. ???? If you are going to ignore Netscape or Opera, or __________ users, check your site with their browsers so you are at least informed about how *some* of your audience is going to see your work. Sure the percentage is smaller. But maybe there are a couple of easy fixes you can incorporate to make it look better. If not, then decide for yourself just how badly you are going to burn this segment of the Internet popluation. If nothing else, do a browser check and at least inform your visitors that the site is not going to look right if they aren't using the ____________ browser you intended it for.

And if you'd like some general Internet demographics, you can start your research here...

http://www.thecounter.com/stats/
http://www.upsdell.com/BrowserNews/stat.htm
http://www.cen.uiuc.edu/bstats/latest.html
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp
http://gostats.com/gogi/browser_war.pl?mn=gostats
http://www.webreference.com/stats/browser.html

With Netscape having less than 4% of the browser market right now, I'd say that you can get away without trying to make a page Netscape-perfect now.

As for JPEG images, don't use progressive. I guess its not that big a deal, but a 56ker isn't going to care whether or not a JPEG pops up all blocky/mosaic-ey and slowly gets clearer.

I hate netscape and dial-up --- HOWEVER!!

If you(or anyone) is half of a webdesigner your stuff should look ok and load ok on both netscape and dial-up..... Now i say this with my arms up waiting for retaliations, but....

There is a webdesigner for realworld
and a webdesigner for Artsy/Graphics people (lotsa flash and long loads)

both are great but 99% of interent sites and business sites MUST comply with old stuff to be useful..

and agian, if you are making a site for a client, peek at there office computer before you start work to make sure it'll loook ok -- but make sure the site is for them and there clients --

The sites posted here are for graphic designers who can be expected to have hi-res large monitors, fast connections etc.

Screw netscape. I design for IE, Opera and Mozilla. How long a webpage takes to load really depends what kind of website it is.

Corporate, information websites should load much faster since the main focus is content. Photoshop's save for web has been really useful and Opera's timer for page loading and page size.

WHO IS YOUR AUDIENCE?

That is all that matters.

EDIT: I deleted a bunch of this because everyone is repeating the same points over and over...myself included. what is the point...?

My answers to the original questions:

1. Why do you think they suck? Personally, I think jpgs are unpredicatble and i use gifs as much as possible.

2. When you are desiging, be thinking about the best way to translate your ideas to the web. what won't be as effective (gradients, blurs, etc) and what will (flat colors, hard lines). those factors should be influencing your design. there are limits! work within them! too many designers go crazy and then at the very end realize that their work can't really be optimized without major loss of quality. this is lazy, sloppy, and unprofessional!

Also, I suggest squeezing every single graphic as much as possible to get it as small as possible. Sidefx is right, you will be suprised what you can do with 'save for web'.

3. netscape is tricky. i still check sites in version 4.6. unless you are doing some really off-the-wall, innovative stuff, you can code carefully and make sites that are accessable by netscape, IE, mozilla, and opera. it is not hard. if you are doing a lot of stupid, gimicky **** then yes your site will break in some browsers. that is why i frown upon most of the stupid things people are doing... pushing the limits for minimal gain. if you have raw talent, you don't need all that bull**** to pull off truly amazing work!

Remember, the more complexity you add into any system, the more likely it is to fail.

when it comes to making flat colour, a tip would be to make a 1*1px size image of the colour and stretch it in a border...that way it only loads a 1px image, a few bytes in size...just a small tip

Sidez is right, screw netscape...their new release doesn't actually work over 1 week on a Mac...macs are getting popular don't forget ;)