Monday, January 29, 2007

Is Dial-Up Still Standard?

As web developers, we like to equip ourselves with the speediest computers, the fastest Internet connections, and the most standards-compliant browsers, but how is the rest of the world keeping up?

Albert Listy writes:

With all of the things you hear and see about Ajax these days I would think that dial-up should no longer be considered the standard. When you look at .NET you have post-backs and you take care of most of the page control on the server side and just serve up HTML (mostly) to the client. With Ajax you send more files and control substance to the client which take more bandwidth.

My web development question is should we still consider a “dial-up” connection the “standard” for our web design projects?First off, I should point out that some of the conclusions you’re drawing are a little off. The heavy use of post-backs in ASP.NET is actually a real source of pain for dial-up users, who are being forced to reload an entire page with almost every action they take. A well-designed AJAX application, meanwhile, can significantly reduce bandwidth usage by sending relatively small parcels of JavaScript code to the browser at page load, which then allow the browser to handle much of the user interaction without having to reload entire pages from the server.

At last check, more than a quarter of active Internet-connected users in the United States were still on dial-up, and predictions state that they won’t be making the move to the fat pipe anytime soon (due in part to the fact that local calls are free in North America).

Other countries seem to be having more success in fostering broadband adoption, so the answer to this question depends in part on your target audience.

Here at the Yank family cottage, where it’s dial-up or nothing, my sympathies lie with that stubborn minority. Unless your site can better fulfill its purpose by taking advantage of broadband (e.g. a video sharing site), I’d say you should still design with an eye to limiting bandwidth usage. Even your broadband users will thank you when your site loads in the blink of an eye.

Kevin Yank
Sitepoint Times…

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