You can provide clearly defined headings. But it is not enough. The concept of breaking down pages stemmed from research where users complained of too much text in one page. A usable factor of breaking down a web page into multiple pages is bookmarking. The reasoning of multiple pages is not only down to the fact of slow connections.

I don’t particularly see how Ajax will work as it will break the search facility. It is the duty of of web designers and developers to produce sites with accessibility and usability in mind. Despite what you think, money is not the reasoning behind this, but usability.

Seriously, though, I think what an earlier poster said applies: it depends. Not only on the content, but on your audience. The worst experience I’ve ever had was trying to look up a product on Amazon.com from my phone. It would be faster to drive home, turn on my computer, find it there, then go back to wherever I was before.

Pages shouldn’t be designed for low-bandwidth users, but they should allow themselves to be ADAPTED to said users. How that’s done — server-side filtering, alternate URL, mobile proxy server — is less relevant.

Keith

I think some of the “break up the page” conventional wisdom developed during the days of dial-up. You could have the user wait forever for your long article to download and risk them hitting the Stop button. Alternatively, you could break up the article and get them hooked on some of the article quicker. With broadband, this isn’t as big of an issue.

Often you can improve SEO by chunking a long article into multiple pages.

If you are selling CPM ads, more pages equal more money.