Sometimes it can be easy to forget your audience when designing a Web page. You forget that there are people out there who are using a 28.8 Kbps modem to connect to your Web page, or are using an older browser that doesn't have all the latest plug-ins and capabilities.

If you want your Web page to be seen by the widest audience possible, you need to be aware of download times, or how fast your page loads in a user's browser window. If you use Flash or Shockwave in your page, you need to make sure users without the plug-ins are either directed to a non-Flash page or are prompted to download the plug-in. There are several simple steps you can take that will allow your Web page to be seen by a wide audience.

Checking download times for your page

Dreamweaver includes a Download Indicator on the status bar at the bottom of the Document window.

The Download Indicator displays the file size of the page, followed by the seconds it will take to download at a particular modem speed. It is generally a good idea to keep the file size to around 30K at the most.

You can set the modem speed for the download time in Preferences. If you are creating a Web page for the general audience, it's a good idea to set the modem speed to 28.8 kilobits per second (Kbps).

To set modem speed:

1. Choose Edit > Preferences, then select Status Bar.
2. Click the Arrow button next to Connection Speed to select a modem speed.
3. Click OK.

Optimizing images in Fireworks

Each image you add to your Web page increases the file size of the page and the download time. It's important to optimize your images, which means decreasing the file size. If you have Fireworks installed, you can optimize an image from Dreamweaver using Fireworks.

To optimize an image in Fireworks:

1. Select an image, then choose Commands > Optimize Image in Fireworks.
2. Click No if a dialog box appears asking if you would like to use an existing Fireworks document as the source.
3. In the Optimize Images dialog box, you can adjust the settings under the Options tab on the left. After each adjustment, check the file size and download time that appears above the Preview pane.

Tip: The best setting to adjust is Palette. Try setting it to Adaptive, then reduce the number of colors. Reduce the colors with the pull-down menu beneath and to the left of the Palette menu. Try different color setting and see how each setting affects the image preview. Choose the lowest setting you can before the image starts to lose quality.

4. Click Update when you are done.