Well, it depends on a number of factors. Generally, 25 seconds is a good max time. And no longer than 30, for sure. When trying to reduce clutter on your page, think to yourself "what don't I need?". Having cute little animated GIFs and JavaScripts are two types of things notorious for taking up bandwidth and increasing load times.
Adam Oberdorfer posted this at 00:49 — 24th February 2001.
Compressing your images and saving them in correct formats is the real key. There are tons of sites that use intensive graphics, scripting, and even multimedia, which load fine on a dial-up. When it comes to animations, scripting, and multimedia the visitor's computer performance is almost as important as connection speed.
I usually test all of my sites on an old notebook (233MHz MMX with 32MB RAM), my desktop (700MHz PIII with 512MB RAM), my other desktop (400MHz Celeron with 64MB), and a Mac or two. I then test with a 56K (48K actually) and a 1.5Mpbs DSL line.
Netscape's Web Site Garage tool is also fairly good. It compensates for a lot of factors and is usually about right. DreamWeaver's calculation however is completely based on the file size of all assets.
mairving posted this at 13:57 — 24th February 2001.
Thanks for the replies. By 25 seconds, I assume that you mean on a 56K modem. I despise animated gif's in general. Actually I don't really like anything that is moving on a page (especially shock the monkey banners, etc). I have learned that there is a fine line with functionality and beauty.
I have seen where some people will chop a picture up and load the pieces in a table to improve load times. Anybody ever use that technique?
Here is what I generally test the site on:
IE 5.5 on Windows T-bird 900 w/cable modem
Opera 5.0 on T-bird
Netscape 4.7/Mozilla 0.8 on Linux P200
I need to add a 56K connection to all that. The load times that I see are by using Homesite.
Mark Irving I have a mind like a steel trap; it is rusty and illegal in 47 states
Large images are the leading cause of slow loading Web pages and you most probably have to optimize using some graphic image optimizer. After optimizing you can also slice the image and it will load faster.
From experience, a web page(code and graphics images) of approx. 100kb should download to users browser pretty fast in 30-45 secs using a 33.6kbps modem and 20-30 secs for a 56kbps modem speed.
It doesn't matter much whether you are using the fastest computer, the most important is ..... a fast connection speed and how your web site is configured on the Host server.
If your web site uses a shared IP and your host uses that IP to share it with some 200 web sites on their server, then you are a dead duck as far as your site is concern.
Try to host your site on a single static IP. It may cost more but it's beneficial in the long run.
Quoted above 'After optimizing you can also slice the image and it will load faster'.
No it won't. The total size of all of the files that combine to make the big picture will be larger than the single file that is the big picture, since each file contains more inforamtion than 'just' its own image data. And there's overhead associated with every http request, so more files equals more request equals more time spent.
But .. how slicing can be used effectively is to slice the original image into multiple parts and then optimize each part separately. That way, you can use the maximum compression and optimum image type for each fragment of the whole image, i.e. a mix of high and low compression jpgs and some gifs where appropriate.
The most worthwhile 'trick' is to be sure that everthing in the top 250-300 pixels of the screen appears quickly - then your visitor has something to look at while the rest of the page comes in, and they think the page loaded faster.
Adam Oberdorfer posted this at 22:56 — 24th February 2001.
Quote: Originally posted by NSS It doesn't matter much whether you are using the fastest computer, the most important is ..... a fast connection speed and how your web site is configured on the Host server.
I disagree. Computer speed is a major factor particularly when it comes to client side scripting, graphics, and multimedia. CPU, memory, available system resources, and graphic cards play a fairly large role in the speed in which a site can load. Not everyone has a PII or higher these days. There are plenty of people who still have good old Pentium Pro systems. Finding a decent host is a major factor, but the difference in IP and name-based hosting is only an issue when the network or server is not setup correctly.
Image optimization is an art. While web software based programs make it easier there is still a complex array of ways to compress and optimize images way beyond what these point-an-click programs can do. There is a great article that talks about this in detail and shows examples of large corporate sites such as Microsoft, CDW, and Adobe. If I can find it I'll post it.
Slicing images is a waste of time unless there is a major difference in color depth (as Andy pointed out) or if you need to add special effects. For example gvsnet.com is one image cut up into an array of images to allow for the mouse-over and textual effects. Otherwise it could be one image with an image map. GVS is not a great example for compression as this client decided that they'd rather make their site larger in file size and keep the image quality top notch. The only reason this works for them is that their entire market is on DSL or better connections.
There are a lot of factors that play into how fast a web page loads for a visitor... Including the speed of the computer itself, and also the speed of the connection.
Andy made a good point that splitting images up CAN be beneficial, if done correctly. Also beneficial could be breaking the site up into multiple tables (e.g. one table for the header, one for content, the other for the footer). The reason for this is that some browsers will not display a table until all the contents of the table have been loaded... breaking the page up into multiple tables will allow the visitor to have something to look at while the page is loading.
NSS- as far as a shared IP vs. a dedicated IP, it does not really make a difference regarding the speed of your site. If you're given a shared IP (123.456.789.000/~user/) on a web server and a dedicated IP (123.456.789.001) on that same server, and you upload a copy of the same web site to both accounts, the load times should be nearly identical.
While the speed of the server (and, possibly more importantly, the connection of the server) certainly does matter, a dedicated IP/shared IP should not affect load time. What would affect load time is if the connection to the server was slow (e.g. a cable modem), or if the server had too many resource intensive processes running (this is where the number of users per server would come into play, but 200 domains per server would not be an uncommon number... nor should it affect server performance- assuming you have a good quality server).
It's an excellent reply and I am sure all of us will learn from our mistakes and be a better webmaster.
First of all, I would like to thank mairving for bringing up this topic.
Lastly, thanks also to AndyB, Adam, Marc for sharing their views and knowledge to TWF members so we all become better webmasters and design great sites for ourselves and customers.
You can't really go by load times because any number of factors come in.
The load on the server, and the quality of the server.
General internet traffic, surfing 2 hours before rush hour will be slower than surfing during the rush hour.
Type of browser, and how it's configured.
The quality of the clients phone line.
And of course the connection type, although for small pages this is less of an issue than you would think.
Better to go by total file size. 90k is a reasonable size for a web page. You also have to consider who is the client audience. I've had jobs were file size is not a large consideration.
Also there is going to be some penalty for additional file references. In other words a 100k page with one 90k image will load faster than a 100k page with 90 1k images.
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mjames posted this at 23:31 — 23rd February 2001.
They have: 2,064 posts
Joined: Dec 1999
Well, it depends on a number of factors. Generally, 25 seconds is a good max time. And no longer than 30, for sure. When trying to reduce clutter on your page, think to yourself "what don't I need?". Having cute little animated GIFs and JavaScripts are two types of things notorious for taking up bandwidth and increasing load times.
Adam Oberdorfer posted this at 00:49 — 24th February 2001.
They have: 383 posts
Joined: Sep 2000
Compressing your images and saving them in correct formats is the real key. There are tons of sites that use intensive graphics, scripting, and even multimedia, which load fine on a dial-up. When it comes to animations, scripting, and multimedia the visitor's computer performance is almost as important as connection speed.
I usually test all of my sites on an old notebook (233MHz MMX with 32MB RAM), my desktop (700MHz PIII with 512MB RAM), my other desktop (400MHz Celeron with 64MB), and a Mac or two. I then test with a 56K (48K actually) and a 1.5Mpbs DSL line.
Netscape's Web Site Garage tool is also fairly good. It compensates for a lot of factors and is usually about right. DreamWeaver's calculation however is completely based on the file size of all assets.
mairving posted this at 13:57 — 24th February 2001.
They have: 2,256 posts
Joined: Feb 2001
Thanks for the replies. By 25 seconds, I assume that you mean on a 56K modem. I despise animated gif's in general. Actually I don't really like anything that is moving on a page (especially shock the monkey banners, etc). I have learned that there is a fine line with functionality and beauty.
I have seen where some people will chop a picture up and load the pieces in a table to improve load times. Anybody ever use that technique?
Here is what I generally test the site on:
IE 5.5 on Windows T-bird 900 w/cable modem
Opera 5.0 on T-bird
Netscape 4.7/Mozilla 0.8 on Linux P200
I need to add a 56K connection to all that. The load times that I see are by using Homesite.
Mark Irving
I have a mind like a steel trap; it is rusty and illegal in 47 states
NSS posted this at 14:19 — 24th February 2001.
They have: 488 posts
Joined: Feb 2000
Hi,
Large images are the leading cause of slow loading Web pages and you most probably have to optimize using some graphic image optimizer. After optimizing you can also slice the image and it will load faster.
From experience, a web page(code and graphics images) of approx. 100kb should download to users browser pretty fast in 30-45 secs using a 33.6kbps modem and 20-30 secs for a 56kbps modem speed.
It doesn't matter much whether you are using the fastest computer, the most important is ..... a fast connection speed and how your web site is configured on the Host server.
If your web site uses a shared IP and your host uses that IP to share it with some 200 web sites on their server, then you are a dead duck as far as your site is concern.
Try to host your site on a single static IP. It may cost more but it's beneficial in the long run.
Regards,
NSS
[Edited by NSS on Feb. 24, 2001 at 11:55 AM]
AndyB posted this at 21:32 — 24th February 2001.
They have: 344 posts
Joined: Aug 1999
Quoted above 'After optimizing you can also slice the image and it will load faster'.
No it won't. The total size of all of the files that combine to make the big picture will be larger than the single file that is the big picture, since each file contains more inforamtion than 'just' its own image data. And there's overhead associated with every http request, so more files equals more request equals more time spent.
But .. how slicing can be used effectively is to slice the original image into multiple parts and then optimize each part separately. That way, you can use the maximum compression and optimum image type for each fragment of the whole image, i.e. a mix of high and low compression jpgs and some gifs where appropriate.
The most worthwhile 'trick' is to be sure that everthing in the top 250-300 pixels of the screen appears quickly - then your visitor has something to look at while the rest of the page comes in, and they think the page loaded faster.
Adam Oberdorfer posted this at 22:56 — 24th February 2001.
They have: 383 posts
Joined: Sep 2000
I disagree. Computer speed is a major factor particularly when it comes to client side scripting, graphics, and multimedia. CPU, memory, available system resources, and graphic cards play a fairly large role in the speed in which a site can load. Not everyone has a PII or higher these days. There are plenty of people who still have good old Pentium Pro systems. Finding a decent host is a major factor, but the difference in IP and name-based hosting is only an issue when the network or server is not setup correctly.
Image optimization is an art. While web software based programs make it easier there is still a complex array of ways to compress and optimize images way beyond what these point-an-click programs can do. There is a great article that talks about this in detail and shows examples of large corporate sites such as Microsoft, CDW, and Adobe. If I can find it I'll post it.
Slicing images is a waste of time unless there is a major difference in color depth (as Andy pointed out) or if you need to add special effects. For example gvsnet.com is one image cut up into an array of images to allow for the mouse-over and textual effects. Otherwise it could be one image with an image map. GVS is not a great example for compression as this client decided that they'd rather make their site larger in file size and keep the image quality top notch. The only reason this works for them is that their entire market is on DSL or better connections.
NSS posted this at 03:03 — 25th February 2001.
They have: 488 posts
Joined: Feb 2000
Thanks guys,
Hmmm it seems that we all have our own views and opinions in creating the best solution.
Anyone else would like to share their views and experience?
Hehe, I sure like to compare notes.
Regards,
NSS
Brian Farkas posted this at 06:16 — 25th February 2001.
They have: 1,015 posts
Joined: Apr 1999
There are a lot of factors that play into how fast a web page loads for a visitor... Including the speed of the computer itself, and also the speed of the connection.
Andy made a good point that splitting images up CAN be beneficial, if done correctly. Also beneficial could be breaking the site up into multiple tables (e.g. one table for the header, one for content, the other for the footer). The reason for this is that some browsers will not display a table until all the contents of the table have been loaded... breaking the page up into multiple tables will allow the visitor to have something to look at while the page is loading.
NSS- as far as a shared IP vs. a dedicated IP, it does not really make a difference regarding the speed of your site. If you're given a shared IP (123.456.789.000/~user/) on a web server and a dedicated IP (123.456.789.001) on that same server, and you upload a copy of the same web site to both accounts, the load times should be nearly identical.
While the speed of the server (and, possibly more importantly, the connection of the server) certainly does matter, a dedicated IP/shared IP should not affect load time. What would affect load time is if the connection to the server was slow (e.g. a cable modem), or if the server had too many resource intensive processes running (this is where the number of users per server would come into play, but 200 domains per server would not be an uncommon number... nor should it affect server performance- assuming you have a good quality server).
I hope this helps!
Brian Farkas
NSS posted this at 11:02 — 25th February 2001.
They have: 488 posts
Joined: Feb 2000
Wow! Brian,
It's an excellent reply and I am sure all of us will learn from our mistakes and be a better webmaster.
First of all, I would like to thank mairving for bringing up this topic.
Lastly, thanks also to AndyB, Adam, Marc for sharing their views and knowledge to TWF members so we all become better webmasters and design great sites for ourselves and customers.
Regards,
NSS
doren posted this at 07:10 — 10th March 2001.
They have: 100 posts
Joined: Sep 1999
You can't really go by load times because any number of factors come in.
The load on the server, and the quality of the server.
General internet traffic, surfing 2 hours before rush hour will be slower than surfing during the rush hour.
Type of browser, and how it's configured.
The quality of the clients phone line.
And of course the connection type, although for small pages this is less of an issue than you would think.
Better to go by total file size. 90k is a reasonable size for a web page. You also have to consider who is the client audience. I've had jobs were file size is not a large consideration.
Also there is going to be some penalty for additional file references. In other words a 100k page with one 90k image will load faster than a 100k page with 90 1k images.
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