how big should my pages be???

wiccanwonder · 08-04-2004, 11:21 PM

Im new to webdesign

Im trying to create a basic looking site consisting of a homepage and 3 other pages linking from it.
At the moment the pages are empty apart from a simple navigation bar that appears on each page and each page's background is an image that is used as a tile effect.
I have broadband and my pages load quickly when I open them but I tried to access them on someone elses PC that used a dial up connection and they were incredibly slow but I thought it might be down to their PC being old...
Also I used FrontPage to publish them and all the pages are listed as slow, one taking as much as 2 1/2 minutes to load.

How do I make my pages faster considering there is no content yet added?

Is there a 'size' that is normally used as a gauge?

Id appreciate any reply. Thanks.

FiveseveN · 08-05-2004, 12:59 PM

The total size of the files needed to display a document, (or weight) is the most important, but not the only aspect that influences download speed. There are other variables that need to be considered:
:arrow: Bandwidth (of course), both user's and server's.
:arrow: Location - the closer the server is to the user, the less routing is involved, reducing the time it takes for packages to reach their destination.
:arrow: Performance - requests take longer to process on slow servers (obvious for dynamic pages) and pages are saved and redered slower locally on very slow computers. This should not be a problem these days, but you do need to think about it.
For and average size, I really don't know what to say. Connections are getting faster and faster as the Internet evolves. Here are 2 examples:
140 KB on Macromedia's index page
200 KB on 2AdvancedNet's (the hosting branch of 2A) index page
These are high-quality pages, mid-sized I'd say. They benefit from the best hosting solutions, so that's as fast as you can get, unless you go plug a LAN cable directly into their servers.

A few pointers:
:arrow: Drop MS FrontPage.

Use Macromedia DreamWeaver. It even has code optimization, so you don't need to worry about futile code.
:arrow: If you use a tiled background, make the tile as small as possible. Optimize it for 1024X768 or 800X600 screen rez. (depends on the kind of people that view your site.User statistics are A MUST.)
:arrow: Use CSS and HTML effects whenever possible instead of graphics (you may think a 5KB image isn't much, but if you allow yourself to use 10 such images, you just added 50KB to the website). Don't insert a graphic unless it NEEDS to go there.

Good luck.

**Alexandru Ungur** · 09-15-2004, 12:37 PM

Excellent mini-tutorial FiveseveN

just one correction though:

Originally Posted by FiveseveN

:arrow: If you use a tiled background, make the tile as small as possible. Optimize it for 1024X768 or 800X600 screen rez.

Do not make the tile as small as possible, because if you do the browser could spend too much time recreating the bigger picture (especially if its name is IExploder

oups I meant I Explorer...). Make it only reasonably small (around 100x100 pixels should be just fine).

Alex

**capmexbiz** · 10-22-2004, 02:45 AM

I wrote something about fast loading websites. Hope it'll help.

From my experience, a big ecommerce company here in Mexico had a constraint of 35kb on all its catalog pages and 25kb on its index page. They optimize their graphics to high levels.

Edgard Durand

Webmaster Resources

**Paul_KY** · 10-22-2004, 11:59 AM

Whoa!

Very nice read, indeed. Thank You

Welcome

**Paul_KY** · 10-22-2004, 12:02 PM

Dumb question here. What does, "Use external Script files" mean?

I place scripts between the <HEAD>. That's, "Internal", correct?

novocaine · 10-22-2004, 01:50 PM

external scripts as: external css files, .js files..

OMG.. my homepage has about 150Kb but a lot of graphics on it.. and at a good jpeg quality

I think the size of the site depends on your business and your target audience.

Darksat · 12-10-2004, 09:49 AM

External files like javascript and CSS are held in seperate files and pulled into the head of each page.

Code:

&lt;html>&lt;head>
&lt;title>AAI Technologies Forum&lt;/title>

&lt;link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="default.css" media="screen" title="default" />
&lt;script type="text/javascript" src="styleswitcher.js">&lt;/script>

&lt;/head>
&lt;body bgcolor="#F1F1F1" text="#000000" link="#000000" vlink="#000000" topmargin="0">

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