Web development is a collaborative effort, and most devs I know always put performance and speed up at the top. It’s extremely easy for folks to look at the massively fat pipes and deep pockets of the likes of Facebook and Bing, who have done a fantastic job of making delivery of the hi-res, shiny features look extremely easy. But for the average web dev shop with limited time and resources, the best way to get the best product out to the customer is to use multiple libraries. Often times, designers and business parties become extremely uninterested in bandwidth costs when estimates for time and cost rise. I would say the major issue here is technical education to the tune of bandwidth usage.

I guess the web has become more media based and image conscious… and corporates duplicate content over all the channels too. I was an advocate of accessible web design but gave up when iPhone et al came in – it just got too hard to slim down and test everything and site owners demanding more bandwidth hugging bellls and whistles with no care for speed.

Broadband has led to the rich media we all like but is also means that many care less about trimming sites down… So yes websites are now bingeing on bandwidth like they just discovered a virtual fast food joint on the information highway (very old phrase LOL )

Despite our best efforts, it’s near impossible to get our pages below 500kb nowadays.

@TCertain – that site needs a lot of work.