http://www.aptivate.org/webguidelines/TopTen.html
Ten Rules for Designing for Low Bandwidth
1.
Design your pages to load within 10 seconds over 20kbps connections, which means 25kB is the maximum page size. If you do one thing, do this. Read more...
2.
Good design is possible without lots of images. Use CSS for layout and rollovers, instead of images. Make sure your site is usable if images are turned off in the browser. Optimising the images you do have can make them a fraction of the size. Read more...
3.
Provide easy navigation. Don't make users load unnecessary pages which are annoying for all users but really frustrating for users with low bandwidth connections. Read more
4.
Using style sheets (CSS) is more efficient. Don't use tables for layout. Avoid using JavaScript. Avoid embedding style rules within the page. Read more...
5.
Every image, CSS file, JavaScript file and HTML page requires a separateHTTP request. Too many requests will add delays to page loading. Read more...
6.
Enabling compression on your web server could shrink your pages to half the size. Read more...
7.
Allow browsers to keep a local copy of, or "cache", your pages. Read more...
8.
Avoid using PDFs. If you use them, optimise them for low bandwidth. PDFs can be optimised by using vector-based graphics and minimising the number of fonts. Read more...
9.
Put main navigation items at the top of each page so they load and display first. Make your pages useful even before they finish loading. Read more...
10.
Don't force the user to download large things, always link to them, and if they are over 75kB say how large they are going to be. Read more...
