To make your web site usable you need to understand what will work well on your users' systems, and hence the common limitations of users' systems.
Written by Philip Chalmers who is based in the Medway area of Kent, England, United Kingdom.
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Jakob Nielsen thinks we have to live with slow connections for a few years. So we have to design pages which load quickly, otherwise users will leave.
And even when most people have faster connections, there will often be bottlenecks somewhere in the Web!
It takes about an hour to download a new version and install it if you have an average connection.
Older browsers have fewer facilities, more bugs and more incompatibilities.
So the latest web page technologies are useless to many visitors.
Take a look at Charles A Upsdell's statistics.
Many browsers are too old to work with the latest
plug-ins
.
Users don't want to spend time downloading plug-ins - they're impatient!
The best screens cost more than a fast desk-top computer with a huge hard disk and fast CD-ROM.
Text appears slightly fuzzy on any screen, so users don't want to read a lot.
The variation in screen capabilities will increase enormously when mobile devices can access the Web - with smaller, fuzzier screens.
Of course there are exceptions:
They're exceptions - but they might be your exceptions!