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Communications The Internet

Dial-Up Friendly Websites? 55

Posted by Cliff from the drinking-an-ocean-thru-a-straw dept.
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?"
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Dial-Up Friendly Websites? More

Dial-Up Friendly Websites?

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  • SSH (Score:4, Interesting)

    by brilinux ( 255400 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @06:51PM (#9848852) Journal
    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.

    • Re:SSH (Score:2)

      by Fooby ( 10436 )
      Of course, if you're running Linux, *BSD, or even cygwin on your home machine, then you can run links (or lynx) on your home machine and it'll be even faster.

      • It won't be faster at all. Then your home machine has to download all of the html and then render it and then display it. He is saying his remote box is doing the download(at a much higher speed) and then rendering. All that is being transferred to him is a page full of the pre-rendered fixed-width text. SSH with links is faster in his case.

        Chris

    • Umm... links [sourceforge.net] appears to be younger, less developed version of the old standby lynx [isc.org].

      In terms of sites, I recommend a local css [w3c.org] file to block things like banners, large images, and other bandwidth intesive content. You may even try a css file that strips out everything but text, links, and layout info (e.g., no images, no animations, etc).
    • Which you can use to find bandwidth intensive sites. Come on, he/she asked for a few needles, and you give him a gigantic haystack.
      • I believe the parent was referring to the fact that Google, with its simple interface and start page, is very friendly to 56k in and of itself.
        • I got it, but Google doesn't really have any content to speak of. about:blank is pretty easy on 56k too y'know...
          • Froogle, Google News, gmail, and Google Groups beg to differ. GGroups is the best of breed usenet->www gateway out there, assuming you aren't using usenet for its intended purposes (pr0n). Gmail is the smallest (not counting your homebrew squirelmail) webmail out there. Google news is good for scanning and links to more bandwith friendly AP stories than the Fox/CNN versions. I personally like Froogle as opposed to C/Net or Pricegrabber, but YMMV.
  • 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.

  • Use avantgo or palm based websites... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by bergeron76 ( 176351 ) * on Friday July 30, 2004 @06:58PM (#9848901) Homepage
    Use avantgo or palm based websites...

    Like this one:
    http://www.slashdot.org/palm [slashdot.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?

  • who still visits web pages? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    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 [mff.cuni.cz] browsers [browser.org]!

    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.

  • block the ads, cache everything! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by molo ( 94384 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @08:28PM (#9849274) Journal
    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
    • er, junkbuster only does HTTP 1.0, not HTML 1.0. sorry.

      -molo
    • It's people who think like you who are causing the whole internet to slowly become subscription based.
      • Display is up to the client. Deal with it. The client may chose to ignore your stylesheet or your color scheme or your images.

        If your revenue model doedn't work with the realities of the general purpose web technology, which do you think is flawed, the revenue model or the technology?

        And I suppose browsing with text mode browsers or by blind people rob you of your revenue too? Get real.

        -molo
    • BTW, junkbuster can be configured to use another proxy (like Squid) so you can use both together. I think privoxy will do that too.

      It definitely will. Privoxy supports forwarding to http and socks proxies -- in fact that's why I started using it (bridge between a socks proxy and an http client with problematic socks support), and the ad blocking with all the associated bandwidth is just a bonus, even on a fast link.

      -"Zow"

  • Tweak the browser (Score:4, Interesting)

    by i.r.id10t ( 595143 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @08:29PM (#9849278)
    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.
  • 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.

  • Web designers are in a lose/lose (Score:3, Insightful)

    by oldosadmin ( 759103 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @09:10PM (#9849456) Homepage
    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 [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?
    • 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
      • The first two can be done just be going through a decent proxy, though... i assume most people on slashdot have a shell account somewhere with a fast pipe, so there's really no excuse for not running your own proxy if your isp doesn't supply one.
      • There are some things the client can do to improve compression and caching. First, install wwwoffle [demon.co.uk], a caching http server which has an 'offline' mode so you can browse cached pages when not connected. If like me you really hate waiting for previously-viewed pages to download a second time, tweak the config file so it always uses cached copies when available. Then the Back button and viewing familiar sites will be lightning fast, but you'll need to hit Reload to get the latest version.

        I've also found it
        • You can actually use the latest versions of Putty as a dynamic socks5 proxy (works with most browsers, mail clients, etc), so you don't even need a real proxy server, just an SSH connection that allows tunnelling.

    • 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.

      And yet, your site uses tables for layout instead of CSS. A lot of bandwidth savings can be saved by using CSS for layout as it is cached by the browser. Additionally, it makes for cleaner code and easier separation of code from design. It also makes it easer to design a site that is ADA-compliant, since the stylesheet is ignored, you can just have it show the c

      • If you look, you'll realize my site is about Old Comptuers, so I avoid things that will make the site not work/be completely ugly in older browsers. Last time I checked, my site works perfect in 3.x and above browsers, with the exception of a couple of jscript errors caused by the google ad.
  • 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).
  • You may wanna try the PDA version of my newsbot [memigo.com]: 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...
  • Just use Lynx. There's no waiting for images or flash apps to load so you'll be surfing 500x faster!

  • Gmail (Score:2, Interesting)

    by rapjo ( 211658 )
    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.
    • I usually hate replying to myself, but I forgot to put this in my original post:

      If you are looking for a suggestion for a MUD, try out Gemstone IV (http://www.play.net/gs4/). It is by far the most fun MUD I've ever played, and it always has new content coming out. It has a monthly cost, but if you enjoy MUD's it is more than worth the monthly charge.
  • I hesitate to say so, especially on Slashdot, but I have made a deliberate effort with my site www.BadPuns.com [badpuns.com] keep the file sizes small and good for dialup. :)

    (Gad, I hate being a self-publicist... make me feel so cheap)
  • www.myway.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, customizab

  • I really appreciate when server administrators or webmasters turn on GZIP compression [webcompression.org] 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 [berkshirehathaway.com] site.

    The reactions vary, but it's never, "Well, Warren Buffet is an idiot."

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