I have poor connection and I use this setting.
JP

If no one objects, I'll remove this feature from the next version.

The option is still there, over three years later, and over ten years since the original request.

I don't think progressive mode JPG's hurt anything - I don't think there's any skin that gets thrown for a loop by them. In fact, I think that with some of the expander scripts being used in current skins, it is ineffective, even with limited bandwidth. But I'm always in favor of removing options that aren't needed, just to keep the UI stripped down.

And I've long suspected that people choose Progressive mode because they think it's more modern and forward-looking than the alternative, which must be regressive mode.

Done - on the list.

I did some tinkering with this. It's tough to test when you've got 110mbps download speed, but I put some grossly oversized images on jalbum.net, where the transatlantic hop introduces some slowness. The "progressive" effect was barely noticeable. On a totally non-responsive slide page, it still "painted" the image from top to bottom, but with some mild pixellation, and then quickly sharpened it up. But the difference between that and a baseline JPG loading on the page was almost undetectable. It would probably make some difference on a dial-up line, but I haven't seen a Hayes modem in ages.

And with some image expander scripts, the script probably doesn't display the image until it's got the whole thing, since it often wants to apply things like transition effects. In that case, there would be no difference between progressive and baseline.

I've read some recent posts online about how progressive JPG's speed page loading, but most of it sounds like theoretical nonsense, stuff that doesn't reflect real-world experience. There is also a theory that the appearance of a pixellated image followed by sharpening, while it may be a few milliseconds faster, is actually perceived by site visitors as being slower.

It's called "Responsiveness" :-D