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Dial-Up Friendly Websites?
rinkjustice asks: "I'm one of those unlucky souls damned to dial-up internet access. I've been trying to make the best of the situation, however: I use the stripped-down Slashdot homepage, and my kids are slowly acclimatising to dial-up friendly gaming fare ala Games.com, Yahoo! Games instead of bandwidth clotting MMORPG's like RuneScape. What other fun, interesting websites cater to the 56k crowd? Are there any websites specifically 'optimized' for a lo-bandwidth audience?"
I too have a dial-up connection, and one of the things that I do a lot online is read documentation and manuals that I do not want to buy/print/download because of cost/too much paper/size, etc., but one thing that is useful is SSHing into my college account and running "links" to read it. I cannot see pictures, but who needs them? As for sites, Slashdot normally loads fairly fast on dial up without toning it down, and once I am used to the slow speed, even flash-intensive sites do not bother me much; however, I do use Yahoo! games on occasion, and there are quite a few sites that have lighter versions.
google.com
I've only just left the dial-up world myself and I don't recall websites being that much of a problem. One thing that can't hurt though is a good ad filter. I use proxomitron.
It's actually pretty good. Quick loading, nicer interface than Yahoo! and with lot's of traditional games (checkers, chess etc) to play against others.
Use avantgo or palm based websites...
Like this one:
http://www.slashdot.org/palm
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
http://www.gnu.org/
...that many webmasters/webdesigners don't care about dial-up users (anymore)! I personally don't need high resolution images just to navigate a website but rather visit websites which load fast. What do I need a high speed internet connection for if nice and colorful thingies eat up my bandwidth and I end up with the same experience as with a 56k modem?
I'm on dialup. I read all my news via RSS feeds. Web sites without feeds just don't exist (except maybe when I have to buy something and I have to delve into the sea of slow bloated incompatible crap).
Yeah, RSS is a "buzzword", whatever, but being able to put all this content in *my* choice of format, arranged by *date* rather than website, with no flash or ads or junk is just great.
I have a program download the feeds and prepare a static HTML file using XSLT.
...text browsers!
It may not be the #1 choice for your kids, but using it to just read stuff like news, it really saves your time, and the information is displayed surprisingly well.
If you greatly want to decrease page load time, I suggest blocking the advertisements. They are often in an iframe, resulting in at least 2 GETs per image (not to mention html parsing). They are also kept on different servers usually, so you can't reuse your current HTTP session, you have to start a new one, with a TCP 3-way handshake that can take upwards of half a second on a modem (especially one with the bandwidth already saturated loading the rest of the page).
Use a proxy like privoxy or junkbuster (outdated, only does HTML 1.0, try privoxy first). Or, get a browser plugin to do the same (for example, AdBlock for FireFox).
Then setup a Squid caching proxy to keep you from repeating DNS lookups and retrieving the same page or image. This gives a huge boost, since images can be loaded from memory or disk instead of a network roundtrip. The more disk and memory you throw at Squid, the more cache hits you get.
BTW, junkbuster can be configured to use another proxy (like Squid) so you can use both together. I think privoxy will do that too.
Oh, one last thing.. if you know any web site admins, get them to turn on apache's mod_gzip compression. It compresses pages for http transmission and saves oodles of bandwidth. Most popular sites use it. Browsers like IE and Mozilla support it. Any decent cache (squid) will support it too.
These kind of changes make browsing over modem much more tolerable. Good luck.
-molo
Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
Hey, 56k used to be faster than most :)
Anyway, I think it is a shame website designers are forgetting about you... if it helps, I do test most all of what we produce at work on a 28.8 modem. Of course, we also test for ADA compliance...
Anyway, try using Mozilla/Firefox with that plugin that launches Flash, etc. only when you want it. Also, use the userContent.css file to block ad servers, images that have "ads" in the path, etc. Perhaps get a copy of that hosts file that kills ads, counters, etc. as well. - http://www.everythingisnt.com/hosts.html
Also, set your browser cache to a slightly larger size (10-15mb maybe?) and set it to check for new stuff only once per session.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
er, junkbuster only does HTTP 1.0, not HTML 1.0. sorry.
-molo
Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
I used to surf the Web in Netscape, IE, and Mozilla without images downloaded. I can only get up to 3 KB/sec during dial-up days.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Tell someone that you're tired of 56k.....
Just remember that these aren't online man pages...
I hear all these posts saying "why do you not care about 56k users, webmasters, boo hoo"... well, the bottom line is, it's a lose/lose situation.
I run the site www.oldos.org, and I moved to a layout which loads probably about 4 times faster than the old layout, just to get fussed by a ton of people saying they hate it.
Make up your mind! Do you want fast or dancing babies?
Jay | http://oldos.org
Hey, my little brother has devoted countless hours to Runescape while on sub-56k dialup. It's really not all that bandwidth intensive save for updates. The actual gameplay portion can easily be had with a 28k modem. Just have a little patience (and hope they don't do a slew of updates in a short period of time).
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
You may wanna try the PDA version of my newsbot: not only it's light-weight itself, but you can customize it to link to light-weight versions of news articles only --plus it's personalized to your interests. Give it a shot...
It's people who think like you who are causing the whole internet to slowly become subscription based.
Jay | http://oldos.org
There are plenty of things you can do that aren't lose/lose:
1. Use mod_gzip (or equivalent) to compress text pages. It's a small cpu hit on the server (less if you cache the gziped output), but it pays off in reduced bandwidth costs for you and faster page loads for users.
2. Use properly compressed PNGs rather than GIFs for line art/text graphics. If at all possible, use actual text with styles instead of graphics.
3. Use proper (X)HTML and CSS. They'll compress better if they're valid, and if you use external CSS files, users can cache them.
4. Set correct expiration headers on pages/graphics to let the user's browser know how long it can cache them.
Google doesn't index user sigs, so stop trying to "Google Bomb" with them.
http://pgl.yoyo.org/adservers discusses many different ways of blocking adservers.
I use a Windows version of the Squid proxy cache server to proxy everything (HTTP, HTTPS), I think I save around 15% bandwidth on average when repeating visits to web sites (most major websites are not cache-friendly); using the above site's blocking list in "dstdom_regex" format is very effective in speeding up browsing further by preventing ads from being fetched in the first place.
I've been engrossed in Memigo for some time now... very cool. I'm not a news junky but this is great :)
SEO Copywriter. Just Say ON
Does that mean it contains Flouride?
4 out of 5 dentists recommend ADA compliant websites.
Unknown host pong.
Just use Lynx. There's no waiting for images or flash apps to load so you'll be surfing 500x faster!
From my own experience on broadband and what my friends who are stuck on 56k have told me, Gmail is quite awesome, even on a 56k.
With a modem only connection, try games that are designed with the modem in mind. As geeky as it sounds, if you've got a modem you can always introduce them to a MUD. I have yet to meet the modem user that can't play one of those.
It's geeky, yes.
It will stimulate your childrens minds though.
If they are in an enviornment that makes them think they absolutely need CS or any FPS then a cable modem/DSL are always available.
"Well kids, you tried your best, and you failed. The lesson is, never try." -Homer Simpson
I hesitate to say so, especially on Slashdot, but I have made a deliberate effort with my site www.BadPuns.com keep the file sizes small and good for dialup. :)
(Gad, I hate being a self-publicist... make me feel so cheap)
(Spudley Strikes Again!)
here's one: http://emptywebsite.com/
Their tagline says it all: "No Banners, No Popups, No Kidding".
You can customize a home page there very much like Excite (my prior favorite layout of the "portal" pages), and they carry Reuters, AP and CBS news feeds, among others.
On MyWay, I've seen text links to various features and programs that I don't trust to be free of spyware, such as a "speedbar" and "popswatter", but it's not like they try to auto-install anything or show a deceptive banner link.
Clean, simple, customizable and fast-loading. You can't get much better for dial up access.
MUD = not-quite-massivly-MORGP. Text based Everquest you could say
I play over at Valheru and can reccommend it even for younger players (people playing there are from 8 to 38, with most people being in their teens. You can connect with telnet, with a mud-client or through the java-interfact on the website.
I really appreciate when server administrators or webmasters turn on GZIP compression for all pages. Sometimes, it can reduce the amount of transferred data tenfold, or more! This is really nice, especially when your charges $0.2 per megabyte - but even on usual, pay-per-minute dialup helps save a lot of time and money.
What other fun, interesting websites cater to the 56k crowd?
When someone tells me that successful corporate sites have to be flash-heavy and 56k intolerant, especially business types, I like to show them the Berkshire Hathaway site.
The reactions vary, but it's never, "Well, Warren Buffet is an idiot."
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
http://aminaked.com/fast