Text-Only pages can be loaded quickly, but their content is often difficult to skim and sometimes even absorb. The worst example of such cases are usually done with shockwave, and while it is a useful plug in for visual responsiveness to interaction, its files are huge and the plug-in requires too much memory. Images are the largest use of bandwidth, and in this area I have saved loading time by implementing block oriented imagery through the use of tables. Please see the bottom of the HCI project page or the Block organization paragraph on this page. Use of tables further reduces use of bandwidth by avoiding the multiple file problem associated with the use of frames.
Graphics are notoriously large.
So as I've stated they have been avoided in part and minimized otherwise. My own picture is small and limited only to my face, shoulders, and hair. The banner graphic is larger but by making it a JPEG I have actually saved space over GIFS while retaining color depth. By reusing these bars, the arrow bullets, and the banner graphic within and across pages I save bandwidth by calling on the reader's local cache rather than the network. Further, by always specifying an image's size in the html IMG tag, the text may always be layed-out and displayed as soon as the html is downloaded.