Banner file sizes
 

Remember the good ole days when everything was so exspensive bandwidth would make tears stream down your face every month?
Well, I do to. And back then I was a banner making fool! I was cranking our banners for friends, business partners, anyone who asked, some that didnt. I was good. Now i suck. I got worse with time how weird is that? Anyways, I was told (back then) that an animated banner shouldn't exceed, say 20-30K, that was for anything that moved ya know? didnt matter the size. So i designed a 480x60 banner today for one of my sites, and I am happy with it. Nothing that would blow anyones mind, but the file size (from imageready) is around 50-60K so I trash the dang thing. But it got me thinking, maybe my standards of file size for these are a bit outdated. What does anyone here think is about the top end of banner files sizes should be with todays market dynamics?

spaz

I try to keep mine around 40k.

You have to total up all the images on your page to get an idea of how long it is going to take to view your page.

Lots of folks still on dialup.

Thanks Cleo, that does help. I was wondering if it had gotten to the point where i could push it some, guess that will be awhile yet heh heh

spaz

Same here..... < 35K if I can...

The other thing to watch is sponsor banners... some are HUGE! 70 - 90 - 100+ K....

DD

I can remember when IEG had a naughty nurse/hospital site with banners no less than 60k. There was just no way I could use them...thank god. I never got my 32 cent check from them.

Hmmm I wonder if Dr B uses them on HARDCORE
HOSPITAL |couch|

I always try to not make them bigger than 40k

as small as possible. really.

Although there is no given answer, since its all relative to your page, etc. On a relative clean page with mostly html in it, then sure, a bigger banner size is more justified, on a page with LOTS of images already.. then you better start compressing, or in any way make sure it loads faster.

I think the main thing is to atleast try to compress it as much as possible while it still looks good.

I also try to make them as small as possible. I just checked and the largest banner I could find on my portfolio page is about 26k.
Those are all animated, standard (468x60 or x80 pix).
- and by animation I don't mean just flashing letters,
check out the banners for blacksonblondes, gloryhole or spunkmouth here:
http://www.multimoodia.net/design/banners-noframe.html
all of them have 3-4 frames made from video clips.
I think the secret to getting them ~20k is to carefully choose the colors on banners.
Less colors (or similar tones) = more frames |bananna|

banners
 

make em small enough so they load first..even if the pixs ot thumbs dont load..at least they will see the banners!! :)))