Post in BlackBerry, Pocket PC, Mobile/Low Bandwidth View

Mar 24 21:44 UTC

We do think about the bandwidth used by the pages provided by
GroupServer. We try to keep the pages as light as practical, and try to
use progressive enhancement, so the pages are useful and usable even
while the CSS and JavaScript loads.

I often test the speed of OnlineGroups.Net, and GroupServer.Org, from
urban and rural dial-up lines. (The former is still around, albeit
becoming rare; the latter is the only way to easily and affordability
connect to the Internet.) The first page always takes a while to load,
as the CSS, images and JavaScript libraries are pulled down. However,
page is always useful and usable, so I can read the text while the page
loads. After the first page, the other pages load *very* quickly, thanks
to the browser-cache. I was comparing the speed of GroupServer to a
text-only Webmail system, and GroupServer was blitzing it!

I suspect that the browsing experience on a mobile platform may be as
influenced by the browser as the site. Just as you will never have a
truly satisfying browsing experience using Microsoft Internet Explorer 6
on a desktop, you will never have a good experience using a poor browser
on a mobile platform. Using Opera on a high-end Nokia would be quite
different experience to a low-end Windows PocketPC ☺