Atlantic Busy with "Possibilities"..RE: S2K HOMEPAGE

[chadtm80]

All FOUR invests up on our homepage in a new layout you all should enjoy..

http://www.storm2k.org/wx

[gerrit]

All FOUR invests up on our homepage in a new layout you all should enjoy..

http://www.storm2k.org/wx

With all due respect, it takes forever to load with all those graphics, even on a broadband connection.



You might consider reducing the number and size of pictures on the page to reduce loading time.




Also on screen widths under 1280 pixels, horizontal scrolling is needed to view all contents...

[CajunMama]

I didn't have problem whatsoever. It loaded up within a couple of seconds. Check your computer settings.

[gerrit]

That's because you don't understand how caching works. If you have some of the graphics in your cache, because you visited the page before, you don't have to load them again.
If you have none of the graphics in your cache, you need to load every single picture.

The total size of the page is around 6.5 Mb. That takes over 20 minutes to load on a dial up connection.

It doesn't have anything to do with the computer settings.

[chadtm80]

Thanks for the input gerrit.. I created the homepage and do so to cater what our "average" member has on there end.. And our average member has high speed connections, and 1280 pixel settings. I did go in and remove some non essential items however

[southerngale]

I guess I wouldn't recommend dial-up users opening the homepage then, since it does have a lot of graphics. I just opened it for the first time though, before seeing this thread, and I didn't notice it taking a long time. All of the images were there as I scrolled down and looked at them.


Thanks, Chad... I know it was a lot of work.

[CajunMama]

Anything takes over 20 minutes on dialup

OK...i cleared my temp files. 16 whole seconds. Wow! That might make me late for something!

[RattleMan]

Code: Select all

   Documents (2 files)   102 kb
   http://www.storm2k.org/wx/   100 kb
   http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/ftp/pub/forecasts/discussion/MIATWOAT   2 kb
   Images (67 files)   3748 kb
        http://storm2k.org/wx/images/invests/94/95l.png   596 kb
   http://storm2k.org/wx/images/invests/94/96l.png   586 kb
   http://storm2k.org/wx/images/invests/94/94l.png   566 kb
   http://storm2k.org/wx/images/invests/94/97lb.png   565 kb
   http://www.storm2k.org/wx/images/aug07/dean/eyeloop.gif   411 kb
   http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/goes/flt/t3/avn-l.jpg   113 kb
        ...
        ...
        ...
   Style Sheets (1 file)   3 kb
   http://www.storm2k.org/wx/themes/Helius/style/style.css   3 kb
   Scripts (3 files)   26 kb
   http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js   14 kb
   http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/gtwo/main.js   10 kb
   http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/gtwo/style_atl.js   3 kb
   Total   3880 kb

The invest images are what composes a great percentage of the size. I suggest converting them to JPG.

[stormchazer]

My cache was clear and it loaded in less then 10 seconds.

[angelwing]

Cleared the cache, reloaded page, took about 2 minutes, not bad for this high speed connection at work.

[SkeetoBite]

We're still on smoke signals here. Next week we get our dial up modem thingy!

[gerrit]

It's alll about choices..

Even when a majority of your visitors has a screen that's 1280 pixels or wider (which I doubt by the way - I'd bet 1024 pixels is closer to the truth) and when they're on broadband connections, there are still many people around who don't have broadband connections and use 800x600 screens.

I own and manage a web site design studio, so I deal with these issues on a regular basis.
The times that a site should be 30 K or less are gone, but a page that is 3.7 Mb is too big in my book, even when many people have broadband connections. My internal rule of the thumb is that no single page should be bigger 300 kb.

Like RattleMan showed, many of the pictures are png files and close to 600 kb. With a little effort those can be converted to jpg files with file sizes of around 50 kb.

But then again, it's a matter of choices..

[JonathanBelles]

I have no problem opening the homepage.

[gilbert88]

It takes about 20 seconds here...

[HenkL]

I agree with Gerrit. A frontpage of a site should have a minimum access time for all users. It could include a link to a page with "overview of all that's going on" (warning: large files).

[Frank P]

took six seconds to load on my puter....

[PhillyWX]

If you saved the invest graphics as .jpg instead of .png it would load much more quickly.

If you have paint.NET it will let you change the file type.

[gerrit]

I agree with Gerrit. A frontpage of a site should have a minimum access time for all users. It could include a link to a page with "overview of all that's going on" (warning: large files).

Bedankt, Henk

[mf_dolphin]

While I understand that the front page may present some challenges to our bandwidth contrained users I could say the same about most of our site. That's just the way it is with the core topic of our site. High resolution images and heavy graphics are not for low bandwidth connections and the normal guidelines for web site development just don't apply here. Three years ago we switched from 800x600 and quite frankly we don't plan to go back.

As to the png vs jpg that some have suggested. If you have your browser's cache setup correctly, the images referenced should be cached after you load them the first time. You also lose a lot of options and resolution quality by using a lossy format like jpg.

[Coredesat]

Took me about a minute. It might help to remove the 95L stuff, since 95L is gone.

EDIT: 97L too.