Subject: Responsive Webpage Design
According to statistics gathered by the HTTP Archive the results shown in the below graph show the average web page grew in size 14.6%; about 2 megabytes in the past year. In previous years, 2013, and 2012, the rate at which the ‘average’ webpage grew annually, were at rates of 30%, and 32% respectively.
What were the factors associated with the increases in average size? CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), a typical portion of web page source code, grew 23% in size compared to 2013’s average webpage. Also the amount of and size of images used on the average webpage also expanded by 20%. Javascript was more prevalent too with a 7% increase, but the use of Adobe Flash in web pages decreased around 4%.
Although at home internet surfers are experiencing a richer page viewing experience, this is also a drawback for those surfing on portable devices that rely on slow cell phone network data connections. A solution would be to design mobile-friendly-pages perhaps utilizing a mobile sitebuilder ; and using a javascript function to decide if a regular sized webpage or a more compact mobile version should be sent/downloaded to your website visitor.
