This page is part of the WebCom Web Publishing Guide . It discusses limitations affecting the design of HTML documents and provides tips on working around them. The way images are made available can have a significant effect on the usefulness of a page to people with low speed connections. Whether an image is displayed within the page itself, is available through a hotlink , or by clicking on a smaller version of the image can significantly affect the usability of a page.
Pages containing large images take a significant amount of time to transfer on a slow connection.
Even if the images included are small, a page may take a while to transfer completely if there are a significant number of them, since each image is transferred by a separate connection to the WWW server . This can render a page inaccessible to people unwilling to either wait or turn off their automatic display of images by their browser. The method most people use to access the Internet is dialing up to a remote computer system and connecting with a modem. Workarounds Use only small images within pages themselves, and provide users with a choice allowing them choose whether or note to transfer them. Text formatting Limit the length of a page to two or three screens at most and avoid long unbroken blocks of text.