Web Design School Teaches a Lesson about Bandwidth

by Ellen Foster
Web Design School Review Columnist

Oftentimes Web designers don’t want to think about bandwidth. It can be an ugly term when it implies under-performing technology and sluggish download speeds. A user’s low bandwidth capacity means a Web designer’s cluster of graphics will load at a snail’s pace, and that usually means trouble.

Let’s Do the Numbers: Web Design for Varying Bandwidths

It’s fairly safe to assume that these days most Web users are accessing the Internet from their home or office via an Internet service modem providing 56 kilobits per second (KBps). Since there are eight bits in a byte, this means the download rate runs at seven kilobytes per second (KBps). To a Web designer, this means a simple 54 KB graphic could take more than seven seconds to download. Granted, load times will vary depending on several other factors, but overall, it’s worth it to recognize the glut you could create for your user by indiscriminately populating your Web design with high KB graphics.

Go at Graphic Designs with a Strategy

Site users are reasonable people. If you’ve wooed them into your Web page with solid design, good information, and shorter load times, they’ll give you some leeway; slip in the larger file on occasion, but warn your user that they’re about to embark on a graphics-heavy page with a longer download time.

Web Design School Provides a Foundation

If all this talk of kilobits and kilobytes sounds like Greek to you, it’s probably time to consider laying the foundation of your Web design career at Web design school. You can learn the ins and outs of Internet technology from the ground up when you enroll in a Web design program. Many of these programs are offered online—a great place to practice your skills as you hone them.

About the Author

Ellen Foster is a freelance writer and teacher. She has worked with students of all ages.

Source(s)

“Graphics and Network Bandwidth,” Web Style Guide

Posted at 2:15 PM on July 2, 2007

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