Dear Waiting in Kigali,

We have all had the experience of sitting at a computer and drumming our fingers on the table while waiting an eternity for a Web page to be displayed in our browser. Bandwidth, the amount of data that can be passed along in a given period of time, is precious in Africa and tends to be less than we need. If you can't afford a high speed satellite link, Mimi recommends using loband.org to simplify Web pages before downloading them, turning off pictures in your browser, and having pages e-mailed to you later using a web-to-email gateway.



Have you ever had the experience that Google loads quickly when other sites seem to take forever to appear? The file size of the Google homepage is remarkably tiny - 1.28 KB (you could put 1000 times more on a diskette!). By contrast, the Kabissa homepage is nearly fifteen times bigger at 22.88 KB. News site pages are even bigger, with Allafrica.com clocking in at 75.53 KB. This very small file size is the reason that the Google homepage loads faster than Allafrica.com.

Option #1: Loband.org

Loband.org is a free nonprofit service that simplifies Web pages by taking out the advanced formatting and graphics that make Web site files big - and slow for you to access. To use it, open http://loband.org in your Web browser and follow the very simple instructions. We used loband.org to access the Kabissa homepage, and it reduced the size of the file - and the time for it to load in our browser - by nearly 80%! Keep this in mind next time you're sitting in a very busy cybercafe, paying by the minute and waiting 10 minutes for a Web page to load up!

Loband.org won't work well on all pages, however, and sometimes trims away pictures and formatting that you might actually like to see. It also doesn't work at all on sites you need to log into, like Webmail or shopping sites.

Option #2: Turn off the pictures in your browser

Alternatively, when you find that it takes too long for a page to load up, you can change the settings in Options or Preferences of your browser to turn off the pictures when viewing Web pages.

Steps for doing this will vary depending on the browser you are using, so you may need to get help. In Internet Explorer, turn off pictures by clicking on "Tools", then "Internet Options". On the window that pops up, click on the "Advanced" tab. Scroll down the list of options and uncheck "Show Pictures". Then click "OK" to save the changes.

Now as you browse the Web, pages will load up much faster, with icons representing pictures where they would normally appear. You can still display pictures individually by clicking on the icons with the right mouse button and selecting "Display Picture".

Option #3: Have web pages sent to your e-mail to read offline

When all else fails, and you have a Web page or document you have tried and failed to download from the Internet because the connection is slow, try having it e-mailed to you! This option requires that you are able to download e-mail messages to read them offline later. To obtain instructions on how it works, send a message to getweb@usa.healthnet.org or www4mail@wm.ictp.trieste.it with the word 'help' in the body of the message.

Mimi hopes these little tricks help to make surfing the Internet on lower bandwidth connections easier and quicker for you. Keep thinking about file sizes whatever you are doing on the Internet - for example, if you want to send a letter to someone as a file attachment, you can save time for everyone involved by sending it as a plain text (.txt) formatted file instead of a Word document (.doc). And when you start creating your own Web site, remember to keep the file sizes of your documents and pictures down so that everyone can benefit from them.