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Every web designer knows that speed is an issue. People want their pages to load fast, if they don't, they click the next link and leave your site.
To make a page faster, it needs to be smaller in terms of filesizes. So, you trim your images, and export them at the lowest size you can get away with before you start to lose quality. But it's not just the images that have to be downloaded, it's the code too. HTML can easily become chubby by tags that arent needed. Take these out, and your page will be faster.
Firstly, spacer gifs. 1x1 pixel transparent gifs that can be resized to stretch table cells and the like. Rename it to a.gif, or at least shm.gif (shim). thisll save 3 characters every time you use it. Take off its border="0" tag (unless its part of a link) and take off the alt tag too. This'll save a lot of space if you use them as much as I do. If the table cell is already size-set, then use a , its less code.
Comment tags. Its good to use these, but keep them simple and to the point. Dont waste space.
Character entities: If youwant to do a ", do shift-2 instead of ". This may seem obvious, but it's worth checking if any of your other entities work before you resort to the code.
There are tags in HTML that do exactly the same as others, so you might as well use the one that has the less characters, as every character is adding to your file size.
Use instead of
Use instead of
Use instead of
Use instead of
Use instead of
Dont forget, that the font tag can be nested. You can specify changes to a font tag without having to type the entire font tag again. eg:
Instead of :
This bit is
red
Have this:
this bit is
Default tags: HTML tags that can have attributes have a default setting for when there is no attributes set. Knowing these can save your code from having unnecessary tags. All of the below are the defaults.
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To make a page faster, it needs to be smaller in terms of filesizes. So, you trim your images, and export them at the lowest size you can get away with before you start to lose quality. But it's not just the images that have to be downloaded, it's the code too. HTML can easily become chubby by tags that arent needed. Take these out, and your page will be faster.
Firstly, spacer gifs. 1x1 pixel transparent gifs that can be resized to stretch table cells and the like. Rename it to a.gif, or at least shm.gif (shim). thisll save 3 characters every time you use it. Take off its border="0" tag (unless its part of a link) and take off the alt tag too. This'll save a lot of space if you use them as much as I do. If the table cell is already size-set, then use a , its less code.
Comment tags. Its good to use these, but keep them simple and to the point. Dont waste space.
Character entities: If youwant to do a ", do shift-2 instead of ". This may seem obvious, but it's worth checking if any of your other entities work before you resort to the code.
There are tags in HTML that do exactly the same as others, so you might as well use the one that has the less characters, as every character is adding to your file size.
Use instead of
Use instead of
Use
Use instead of
Use instead of
Dont forget, that the font tag can be nested. You can specify changes to a font tag without having to type the entire font tag again. eg:
Instead of :
This bit is
red
Have this:
this bit is
Default tags: HTML tags that can have attributes have a default setting for when there is no attributes set. Knowing these can save your code from having unnecessary tags. All of the below are the defaults.
Any other tips? well, heres a few more for you. Images that are not links do not need border="0" You only need to set the width of a table column once. If every td in your tr is align="top", set align="top" in the tr tag, instead of repeating it for every td tag. Don't specify a td color if its the same as your table bgcolor. Most of this is commom sense. Any HTMLer will probably know most of this, but hopefully there will be a tag or two you diddnt know, and you'll say "aaah, thats a good idea". One last tip, If you use a HTML etiting suite, like Homesite, under Tools there is a button called Document Weight. Write down the filesizes of the HTML document and then do the above. You then get to see the fruits of your tidying labour. If anyone else has any other speed-increasing tips, stick them here, and we will make the Internet faster still. Thanks for reading, Slave. Page:
(g) The judges decision is final and no correspondence will be entered in to.
(h) If no suitable reviews or discussions are found, then no winner will be picked for that day. (i) Don't complain if you don't win - no-one likes a whinger. Please note (i). I rest my case. Your Honour'll be along in a minute to pass senrence.
hockey shooter wrote:
And if you put width and height tags in *all* your image > tags, you don't need to do any of that. It depends. If your images are in tables and the images are setting the width and height if the table cells, then your table could look distorted until the image downloads. Its annoying when youre reading the text while the images het there, and then all the text moves when the image comes in and you lose your place. If you set the image sizes then the page will be formatted to how you want it before the images get there.
cjh wrote:
> Sounds like quite a task to do, but if you have a lot > of text on yuor page to, it's good. People get the page > v.quick, then the images appear while they are reading. And if you put width and height tags in *all* your image tags, you don't need to do any of that. Chris.
Usually I dont get annoyed with the GAD thing, but I'm quite gutted that I diddnt get one for this.
It was a researched, informative article. I spent a lot of time writing a piece that would benifit readers, but no luck. Fair enough, the winning post deserved a win but I have yet to win from any of my posts (I have won from extra GAD comps but you know what I mean). I am not having a moan about it, but I would appreciate some input as to why my posts go unnoticed. Any advice would be appreciated.
I use an analysis tool that checks for different browsers and download speeds. Much easier.
You dont have to make seperate code for different browsers, just use standard tags that are compatible with all. IE allows you to have over 100 colours by name, yet Netscape allows 20 or so. Just dont use them, use the hex. There are loads of others, pick up a copy of "webmaster in a nutshell" (book) and it'll tell you what is what.
Writing for a 640 is a pain in the rear! 800 is fine, as most people have since left the dark ages....
One thing I have is a copy of most of the popular browsers.
I check everything in all of them.Not AOL tho cos they expect you to use tier dial up. I also have 3 different pc's different modem speeds different screen sizes for checking download times. If I have to duplicate pages for Netscape then I do. If I have to put up basic pages then I do. It's all well and good having the all singing all dancing website but if the punters can't see it the way you want them to it's pretty pointless.
I know. I always aim for 800x600, and if that's too hogh for people, I don't care. 640x480 is just too small for a website.
The best way to cut down on HTML size massively is not to use site building packages, especially with tables. Most of them make a complete mess of it and you end up needing IE5 to see it properly. Dreamweaver is the best at this but it's still not too good. Try to do all HTML by hand. I know it's difficult especially with tables but it's for the best.
Also, try (if you can) to split your site up into multiple tables instead of one big one. This way, Your browser shows each table as it arrives instead of all in one big lump, which is slower. This sounds stupid but it really does look faster. One last thing, if you're running PHP + MySQL scripts in your website, get a fast server. These discussion forums must take huge resources, and I know there's a lag between request and delievery. This lag can be very frustrating for some people, because they think the page hasn't requested and they hit "refresh" or "go" and it just makes it worse.
Turbonutter wrote:
Yes, it's best to > aim for that minimum. If you start aiming or below that you run into > trouble because a lot of tags were introduced in Netscape 3, I did a load of looking into stylesheets, but when I found out the erlier ones would support it, my boss said no. Its fair enough, we do have clients that run on that kind of spec. (ooh, its annoying! - blinkin 640 browsers!!!) Page:
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