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- DrummerGirl, on 10/12/2007, -3/+49There are still a lot of areas where any form of high speed Internet(other than overpriced satellite) are still unavailable. I am one of the poor people who is stuck with dial up, and it would be so nice to come across websites that would be easier on my modem, but I seriously doubt anyone will be accommodating me anytime soon. I can't say it bothers me though, so until I get my broadband connection I'll just have to find something to do while I load hefty web pages...
- Ionik, on 10/12/2007, -2/+37@ DrummerGirl
I totally feel your pain. I live like 35 miles from any sort of large town and the cable companies simply refuse to run cable all the way out here to accommodate just one customer. Yeah, satellite is a available but, as stated earlier, its not worth the cost. So yes modems still matter because they are lots of people who still depend on them to connect to the Internet with, but most of the modem users have come to accept the fact that we'll just be waiting awhile to visit some of the sites we go to.
But I will say, for the most part the main sites that I visit are all fairly modem friendly, ESPN, Yahoo, Google, even Digg all load pretty quick on a modem connection. - Technopundit, on 10/12/2007, -9/+44On vacation, I still use dial-up on my laptop.
Dialup is also useful when the neighbor turns off his WiFi router :-) - superal1394, on 10/12/2007, -3/+26well, broadband seems slow for some of the websites being put out know (Myspace for example).
- mapkinase, on 10/12/2007, -0/+22No, they do not have to accomodate modem users, but they do have to accomodate people who do not want to download megacraps of macromedia.
- Akira, on 10/12/2007, -1/+21I still use dialup because I cannot get broadband in my area. It sucks! So please have pity for us.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -7/+23You program for the lowest common denominator. Sucks, but true.
- ShaolinTiger, on 10/12/2007, -2/+17With Malaysian broadband, accessing US content, I may aswell be using dialup, a good 56k would be faster.
So yeah, sites need to be friendly to dialup/limited bandwidth users, remember US isn't the whole world.. - thushan, on 10/12/2007, -2/+16myspace is the benchmark for the most shocking websites ever created, sure there are some crafty ones, but most are too full of crap its not worth the download... when will people learn that streaming two clips of media + having yellow text behind a white image is just not going to work?
- itsallgeektome, on 10/12/2007, -2/+16It all depends on who's using your site and what your site requires. If a significant portion of your users have dial-up and it's important to you, that might mean making the site dial-up friendly, or at least having a "Dial-up" section.
Other times your site requirements might be such where dial-up speeds just aren't that practical (think streaming video).
To sum it up:
Know your users
Know your site requirements - Silencer7, on 10/12/2007, -3/+16It comes from the old days when companies were purchasing in bulk, and the supplier would ask, "How many mo'dem you want?"
(ducks) - Angostura, on 10/12/2007, -2/+15Apple does supply a external USB modem for $45 or so, so I think it's a fair move on its part. Don;t forget Apple has always been like this - it caused quite a furore when it dropped floppies from its machines ages ago.
But then it was premature in including a web cam as standard. It does what it has to to excite its potential customers, while keeping the price down. - zetsurin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13I think a web developer should not be able to bloat out their sites just because bandwidth *on average* is higher. There are still plenty of people who use dial-up globally and there is also a rise in mobile device use for accessing websites. For example, if a site takes too long to load or uses too much memory on my Nokia 770, I won't return. Likewise, as a developer myself, the web browser is just one of many apps that I have open at once, so I don't want some super-massive website sucking the life out of my memory etc. I oppose anything that leads to bloat or lazyness. It's the same irritating mindset with software these days: ie. 'if our stuff doesn't work, get a faster computer or connection'. Optimisation and careful design leads to a better use experience irrespective of the amount of resources at hand!!
- ThankTheCheese, on 10/12/2007, -2/+13I think so, but then again,I guess someone at some point has to take make the jump first. They did the same thing with floppy disks
- corey4tw, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11Assume we're all on dial up, as it will lead you to designing simpler, more user friendly pages.
**Unless you're considering posting multimegapixel images of naked women, then by all means let me make good use of this 10Mbps connection. - OrangeTide, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12Most hotels I've been to have free WiFi. some of them have pay ethernet. Denny's and Starbucks almost always have free WiFi.
- wthnow, on 10/12/2007, -3/+12Set "don't load images" for quicker browsing on dial up.
- spindrift, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11Computer tech for a retail corp here. Yes, a large percentage of my clients are still on dialup. Yes, it sucks. Yes, we try to get them to DSL or cable if possible and feasible. And yes, webmasters should still make every effort to create bandwidth-conscious sites.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -10/+19Yes, I believe they still make them out of matter.
- ignition, on 10/12/2007, -5/+13You wouldn't believe how many people have modems. Unfortunately about 90% of them are...AOL users :( I think modems will still matter for a while.
- AlexApetrei, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10if there are still people out there using them , then yes they matter.
with xhtml and css you can make 2kb pages that look good and download in seconds. Sure your not going to be streaming the latest episode of 2 and a half men or watch live news but U can still blog, send an e-mail and buy stuff. That's prety good.
i on the other hand love my 4mbs conection. - venom8599, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Willing to pay the cost is only half the equation. Some people aren't able to pay the cost. (Not talking about in the "don't have enough money" sense.) In some areas, you still can't get a high speed connection.
- electromagnetic, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6When a site takes 30 seconds to load on a 2Mbps I still feel the pain of when I used dial-up. I remember first getting broadband and all the adverts saying things like 'never wait again', well all I have to say to that now is - Like ***** no waiting times!
- donatj, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6I had dial up, freakin' 28.8 until several months ago when dsl became avalible in my area... I had come from a cable connection too which made it worse.
- Zane, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6I don't know if it's because I live in Mississippi or what, but there is a large area in my town that just can't get high-speed internet unless they get satellite (as previously mentioned), it seems like it'll be a few years before dial-up is completely on it's way out.
- scstraus, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7To agree with the first comment, I'm glad that people have to code for a least common denominator, because so many sites can't even make a site that runs well over my 2 mbit connection. I shudder to think the flash shockwave messes I would have to deal with if they didn't have to think about people with slower connections.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Webpages tend to have too much bloat in general. Instead of reducing the clutter we just bought ourselves time with bigger pipelines. And then developers started making sites with even more overladen with bloat so it doesn't even matter what connection speed you have, the latency is on the server side ie Myspace.
Dial up modems aren't going away just yet so it would be in the best interest of developers to continue to accommodate them.
A great example is Google's homepage. - manfesto, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6From here http://www.ip97.com/november_2005_bandwidth_report_with_internet_broadband_statistics_by_web_site_bgbi.aspx In the United States, broadband penetration is up to 63%.
Which means that about 4 in 10 people accessing the internet in the USA are using dial-up modems.
So yes, dial-up still matters at least here in North America.
//until a year ago, cable internet and DSL weren't available in my area, and I'm a suburbanite
//it only gets worse for people the further they are from the city unless they can afford satellite - goffy59, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Like many have said i do think its important for web developers to make there sites compatible with lower connections because even if i have a fast connection i dont want to visit websites that take awhile to load. Even some websites made for broadband are still a pain to load. Look at myspace, biggest peice of *****, but this could be because of all the databases they have; if you ever noticed when it says "we are having problems with the db, please try back later" type crap. Hope you all get what im saying. Heh. Making a site for lower connection only makes sites better because broadband will load the site twice as fast!
- tybris, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5"With broadband adoption at an all-time high in the United States"
errr...has it ever not been at an all-time high? It hasn't exactly been shrinking lately. - szembek, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball.
- monkeyleader, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5For sure - its not just modems but developers need to be aware that more and more people will be accessing their content from mobile devices which could be connected over GSM, GPRS or 3G ...
- venom8599, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I'm stuck on dialup too. I may be able to get DSL soon though I can't at the moment. The local cable company won't run 2 miles of cable for 3-5 potential customers in my general vicinity, and I'm not gonna plop down the outrageous installation and monthly fees for an inferior satellite connection.
Most sites are fine on dialup, except those that heavily reliant on Flash. No streaming video or fast downloads though, which blows. - ihate2regist, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5need a modem for when adelphia decides not to work
- venom8599, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4For the 56,000th time, yes--people still use dialup. People with no choice.
- venom8599, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6As does cable. *gasp*
All a modem does is modulate and demodulate a signal from analog to digital and vice versa. Contrary to advertising campaigns and hype, high speed broadband connections are still carried over the wires as an analog signal. - shakin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Interestingly, it stands for MODulate and DEModulate. Cable 'modems' are all digital and don't modulate or demodulate anything, so they're not really modems.
- DASH, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Yes it does for a year and a half I held out on getting Highspeed cable I didnt want to pay the devil I mean Comcast. I was on dial up and hated every minute of it. I LIVE IN A MAJOR US CITY (Baltimore) and coun't get DSL to my house I had only 3 options Satelite WAY to expensive, Dial up slow as hell but I wasn't paying the man. Or CABLE, I had to finially get cable because I got my wife a laptop and whats the point of having one with out highspeed internet?
- inveterate, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Ask that when your broadband goes out and you have to send an urgent email
- macfanboi, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5@OrangeTide "Most hotels I've been to have free WiFi. some of them have pay ethernet. Denny's and Starbucks almost always have free WiFi."
Starbucks WiFi is provided by Tmobile which is not free. - kenok, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Dial-up does matters, even when you have a broadband connection.
Having a high-speed connection does not warrant the developers to cram you heaps of data to just view a simple slide-show with all the bells and whistles in animations. - 15charmaxwtf, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Of course they matter, they are useful during a power cut :) That's one good thing about windows -- being able to find a easy dial up service on short notice. It was a stupid omission on the macbook I thought -- who the ***** is going to buy a usb modem if they don't have power cuts regularly?
- DiscoLoke, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I still use the modem to transmit faxes.... I have biz cable, maybe one day I'll ask you digg users how to transmit a fax to a landline via the internet. lol I probably just made skype 40 million dollars putting that out.
- Hurricane, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I still know many people out here in east tennessee who don't have access to broadband.
I only got DSL 18 months ago and before that I was beginning to get pissed that webdesigners were starting to ignore us DUNners.
Ignoring low speed connections would effectively alienate 60% of the users in the US, that would be really stupid. - tylerni7, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Starbucks does have free WiFi.... at least the ones that I've seen. And now even McDonalds is starting to have WiFi ( http://www.mcdonalds.com/wireless.html ). Also, if you spend that much money on a Mac, you probably already bought high speed internet.
- delvach, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Keep in mind that us web developers are still only half the equation. Most of the time we've got projects managers and designers telling us what to do (or at least trying to), and when you try to explain that using 45 different gradient graphics will make the site take 60 seconds to load, they tend to assume users would rather admire their beautiful layout than be presented with a quick, lightweight site.
Designing light is always a good idea, but it takes more skill. Add to that the complication of trying to accomodate people who are still running IE, and it gets pretty depressing. - Demagogue, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I have a few friends who live more out in a rural area and he's about a mile away from where he could get any type of broadband. Satellite just doesnt cut it for online games.
So no, you cannot assume everyone does quite yet. - szembek, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2trejkaz: how about the people who want to have some land to go with their house? Or don't want to live in some filthy city? I don't expect to have high speed internet where I buy my next house, if I happen to be in range for dsl then that's a plus.
- nurall, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2i live in a "poor" area of the country and can not get high speed Internet (other then expansive sat)
- ADR3099, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4Personally, I'd like to see an HTTP Header for connection (dial up, always-on etc.) so that sites could be designed dynamically to work best for which ever type of connection the user has -- that way a broadband user could be sent to a bandwidth-intensive site whereas your dial-up user isn't forced to wait ages for a fancy page to load.
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