For many websites, the loading speed can be absolutely horrible, you go to them, and leave them before the graphics are fully loaded. Some developers don’t really care, and many broadband users care even less, but I personally like fast loading websites. Much of Google’s early “geek” appeal was its simple interface and quick load times.
Another developer that seems to really care about load times is Ahmed of iBegin. His site, currently made for Toronto, Ontario Canada, has recently worked on ways to improve loading times through using CSS and cutting down on the amount of code needed to keep everything looking the same.
So we went back to the drawing board, and the design was re-sliced and the JS re-done. The net savings were roughly 1.7kb. The HTML was shrunk by roughly 1kb, the JS by 1kb, but the CSS grew 300 bytes.
I had a friend of mine do some pageload testing from Ottawa (the servers are in Toronto). The time to load went from an average of 0.560 seconds to 0.485 seconds. That comes out to roughly 15% faster.
This kind of development really makes me envious as finding these small adjustments that make things even faster, can be difficult, and time consuming. I tip my hat to him, as it takes much longer to make things work well, than just work.
If you saved 15% loading on all the sites you visited, wouldn’t you be a happier web browser?
Is 1.7kb really worth the effort? Sure, if it makes it more maintainable (ass CSS can do) then it’s a good idea, but just for speed’s sake I can’t really get enthused by…
Doesn’t sound like that was really worth it at all. Most people are using broadband now. While that is not meant as an excuse, if you look at the before and after numbers, before wasn’t bad anyway (less than 1 sec to load. You can’t wait 1 second??!!!).
Well, maybe for broadband. But eg I was checking the page over in Seoul, and that 15% can make a difference. Plus Tim it was both speed and also maintenance (just look at the HTML graphs).
Still, considering it took me less than an hour of effort (as I didn’t do the actual CSS/JS myself) and that a ton of people still use dialup, it was worth it :)
I pay attention to this, even css can be slow initially due to the lack of embedding of the file (if external) however after the first page is loaded it’s smooth sailing.
I havent heard of pair.com before but I guess the only way you are going to find out if they are fast is by actually signing up and checking their speed.
I’d love to know of a quick and easy way to test the speed of my sites as a bot or spider sees it .. anyone have a special tool or tip for that?
Yes it is important for web site Owners Thay must know about what usser want but my web site is Slow i make it fast very soon http://www.fundouble.com
Fun, Fundouble, Fun Games, Fun Quizzes, Funbrain, Family Fun, Fun …