HI......i have a very limited system. a basic digital set-top box, which allows open internet, but of course i cant do LOADS.
For example even downloading some sites which are over 70k can be impossibly. The limit used to be approx 100k. these sites were obviouslt strictly beyond my means, but lately i am seeing a new thing. sites that are well OVEr 100, all the way past 200 etc. why is this? what has happened for this to be so........obviously this fuks me off even more, but i'm still curtious.....?

These days more and more people have broadband internet connection, so they have no troubles to enjoy multi 100K websites.
(Fancier, better quality graphic design, more design, flash, video/audio streams, better quality photos, etc
For instance, in my website's photo gallery section most pages are at ~250-500kB, main page is 64kB)

It's unfortunate that it takes so long to load sites. It reminds me of the dyas when I was a part of the first family in my hometown to get internet many years ago on a 14.4k modem. A year after that when we got a 56k modem, it was considered to be "fast". I suggest you upgrade your connection if it's too inconvenient. If you live in a city, fast connections can be cheap due to competition from smaller internet providers, check out them.

well finally we can get 256k satellite out here, but until i can afford a satellite, i'll continue to freeload off my friends connection

It's away's been known by decent webdesigners that Set-top boxes and imfamously "WebTV" could deal with either large sized pages or half the scripting that people would put on their pages not to forget only being able to deal with a resolution of a particular size and not over or under. (Thats why there are a few awful looking websites from a computer angle on the net, which were intended for view by webTV)

The influence of Broadband and alot of different governments legislating to increase available bandwidth to people as apart of globalisation is the main reason for the size change to content and of course the lack of limits being applied to webpage making tutorials.

Ontop of that some people use some Webpage creation programs that "Bloat" the pages, rather than being clear ASCII text files they become littered with escaped characters and other traits (Steer clear of MSPublisher & MSFrontpage)

Web creation *use* to suggest:
If a page in total is more than 75kb it will take time to load (About 20 seconds on a 56K modem) so it was suggested that people should try not to go above that figure (admittedly images could be added as extras, if you allowed your HTML code to have Width/Height entries so the page doesn't have to justify after the image loaded)

Most people with broadband take broadband for granted, so thats why they bloat their pages a little too much.

Note:
What use to annoy me on the 14.4k/28.8k/56K modems was webpages with imbedded Midi files that were over 1Mb in size.... absolutely pointless.

I feel your pain. Being stuck on in a little town in the state of Alabama, it took FOREVER to got 1mb service out here. I don't see how I lived with 56k as long as I did.

dnt like things when they get too elitist....what also pisses me off...theres a certian kinda text that shows up weird on my monitor...sort of like verical rectangular boxes....and "&mdash" after every fukin sentence etc.....i realize that it is the latest newest shiniest gasgetry the gentry one got showing us little trashies up...right ...hehe

also. some advice. but i think only people from UK may be able to help. as even though we share-ish the same lingo vocally, our technology doesn't work in each others' countries

what i am wondering (the digital box i got is a £10 per month...ok) is THe cheapest way to get onto the Internet? broadband is out. they wanna up to £18 per month.......

so?....

Why are sites so big...well, no one reads it if it ain't flashy and opulent. Content is mostly secondary. Some even take long to load when you are using a 1Mbit connection, just because all those flash animations, pictures and whatnot.

Anyway, I got broadband for 9.99 Euros a month, alas, I have a download limitation of 1500 Mbytes, so for the bigger things... I need the connection in I can access in university. But even when I am only surfing the web, I manage to reach my download limit now and then, crazy how fast things progress sometimes.

It doesn't take much to burn up bandwidth, I've mentioned before that when Sciforums.com use to allow Signatures I had a few images servered on a free server that allowed 3Gb per month, it was guaranteed that within 10 days of the beginning of the month, my images would be being blocked because the bandwidth limit had been met. This is only through a couple of JPG images and the number of people searching/reading sciforums at the time.

It's also dependant on if you are "always on" and if you ever tell your computer to disconnect (or router for that matter).

I feel your pain. I still have 56K dialup. Lately it's been connecting at only 42K for some reason.

you lucky bastard, i wish my 56k got that fast, although i had the fastest in 19 months last weekend when i managed to get a south park vid at 12kbps

56k will only DL at 15 or 16 K maximum...

uh,,no 56/8 = 7