Max homepage size?

[polestar]

What is a sensible size for a homepage?

Mine is approx 75kb, including java, gfx, etc and it sometimes takes ages to load (like half a minute).

But if i'm connected at 48000bps, in theory this should take less than 2 seconds right? What's going on?

[gyrbo]

It's 48000BIT/sec so thats:6KB/s
The max size should be 20kb

[polestar]

Long answer coming up....!

(1)
I'm showing my ignorance here, but if it's 48000 bits/sec (thanks - I didn't realise this :o) then

(75 * 1024 * 8) / 48000 = 12.8s ???
Why do you get it to be about half of this?

(2)
I loaded some popular sites with Opera, and noted the 'total size' given:

ixquick.com - 20kb
yahoo - 22kb
lycos - 30kb
aol.com - 46kb
amazon - 84kb
ask.com - 90kb
webdeveloper.om - 100kb
microsoft.com - 113kb
internet.com - 175kb

Are these sites in need of an urgent re-design?

In my opinion, even internet.com loaded in an acceptable amount of time, and I'm on a 57.6kb/s connection.

Space.com took 30s to load, from pressing the return key to all images being loaded, including two popups! It said it was 92kb - but this should still take much less time (like 16s @ 48000bps)??

(3)
It seems to me that there's only really a problem when it takes a long time for the page to begin to load, like a long dns look-up/slow server connection. As long as something (like a basic layout) appears onscreen then viewers are less likely to hit 'stop' and go somewhere else.

phew!

[lucifer]

I think gyrbo is right about the 20k rule

I haven't been to all those sites but microsoft.com definately needs a re-write. just too slow

your calculations are based on perfect conditions which rarely exist so always overestimate how long things will take to download

you can design pages that are big but load well but this is very rare.

Too many designers IMO work on fast networks or using local hard drives and forget that the average surfer has a crap connection.

I know that I am impatient with slow/heavy sites and just go somewhere else. Same with other annoyances like pop-ups

[ultimate]

i took a look on your site 2 second to load to whole page
i and i have cable sometime cable is as slow as 14k4

[Ozy]

People might get pissed off but they will still wait a little bit for a known website (yahoo, amazon etc) to load because most probably they visit that site for a reason.
But if people are just surfing around and they find your link at a search engine or something, I don't think they will wait for long. They will just click on the next link.
So we can not compare the "big guys" with us.
Your site should load in less than 4-5 seconds. Sometimes you can make your page load faster without making it smaller. One way is slicing the big images.