ADSL and Dial-up Connections:
and Bandwidth Problems

Depending on where you are in the world, ADSL may not be available.  Even so, you can still design and put up websites - though slower ADSL speeds can certainly slow you down.

I live on an island in Thailand and have ADSL and dial-up in my home.  The dial-up is a back up for the somewhat and sometimes unreliable ADSL.

Don't assume that everyone who might want to see your website will have high-speed Internet connections. This is a good reason to avoid Flash and other bandwidth consuming programs.  Many people don't want to wait for Flash programs to load and will just close the page and head off somewhere else - and you've just lost some business.

Some people use alternative lighter weight browsers such as FireFox to get around the bandwidth problem.  At this time, less than 10% of people on the Internet use FireFox, but it is gaining in popularity.   So . . . make sure you look at your website in both IE and FireFox to see what it looks like - as it won't always look the same in both browsers - in fact it will usually look differently. 

As you develop your skills, you'll want to make sure your site is functional in both types of browsers.   For quite some time some of my sites had problems when viewed with FireFox.  Now I double check every page in both browsers - and also on different monitors (that makes a difference too).