The reference to a 15k page limit was written by Brett some years ago in a paper about site design/building.

Even today, you still want to try and keep page size to a minimum. Heavy graphics, Flash, bulky code using tables, etc., will likely push your file size past this number.

While file sizes over 15k are acceptable, anything between 10k - 15k is optimal.

From a search engine point of view it makes sense to keep code tidy, that used to (and in many case still does) mean that the code would also be compact.

The other factor in pagesize used to be the major concern about connection speeds, this problem is declining but is still a problem for those on dial-up or slow corporate connections (shared by too many).

FYI the breakdown of connection speed of (UK) visitors in June to the sites we run is roughly 70% DSL/Cable, 20% Dial-up, 10% unknown. Most of the traffic is from Google and the site attracts a diverse cross-section of general web users.

It's worth mentioning that the file size (15k) BT refered to was for the code, and did not include things like the size of image files.

Inbound,

Do your users volunteer their connect speed?

that is, can you code to detect this or do you ask them to tell you,

I've now got my default pages down to 15k, pages that require tables an graphics, even text, canna get below 15k

The figures were taken from Google Analytics, hence they may not be 100% accurate but seem to be a reasonable representation of the traffic for the site in question (peak traffic during office hours).

As for 15K, you CAN get code and graphics into that space (and some nice but simple designs too) but you have to be sensible in how far you go.

By chance the homepage of the site in question is just 7.5K in code & 12K in graphics (O.K. not quite within the 15K overall but it does have a large map on it which is 7.6K on its own)

If you make the code nice and slimline AND remember to include all of the information that a browser needs to leave 'spaces' for the images then you have catered well for slow connections.

Before adding this post, getting info on this page reveals it's size to be 21.86 KB (22,388 bytes).

"All things being relative" - compose your slowest Internet access sutuation, either through emulation or for real, and check out your pages. Although page size may vary, load time is still a constant, if it's taking 30 seconds to load using your lowest common denominator you're pushing your luck. :-D