I would love to hear what everybody thinks about download speed, and its correlation with getting and keeping visitors.

You can actually have an 12 second (on a 56k) site that loads in a certain order giving the appearance of a fast load. This usually means that some worthwhile content is presented to draw the attention and to keep the eye there for a few seconds at a time. While they look at it for a good 3 seconds the rest of the site is loading in the background.

Am I making sence?

Is there a trick to choose what content loads in what order? Is it strictly a matter of how you structure your code?

Yes, Alex you do make a lot of sense.

My target audience is US TV watchers, and I think that at first until I am able to build a good amount of repeat visitors, the site should load as fast as possible.

My thought was always that Yahoo was able to gain a huge advantage because of their speed of download, how that may have been due to modem speed at the time, but I still think Yahoo gets such good traffic because of their download speed.

Is there a way to compact your graphics so they download faster. My current thought is to have a graphic in the top left of the page, and the rest of the page be content and links. My graphic is about 12K, is there a way to lessen the size of the graphics without sacrificing the quality?

Thanks in advance

Optimizing your images is a biggie. There are a gazillion tools that let you do it but one of my favorites is web based (nothing to download) from Adobe. http://webservices.adobe.com/save4web/main.html

maybe we can link to each other once my site is up since we both are serving the tv audience.

Also, load order has to do with the position of the graphics within the code and the image size (in bytes not pixels). Obviously the lighter graphics are theoretically going to start popping up first. Unless they are buried within large table or some other factors that slow the load. What I always try to do is make them look like a chain reaction so it gives the illusion of a fast load on a slow connection.

Is there a difference in download speed with the browsers or is it just based on connection speed?

As for delegating which graphics from your server load first, second, third: you cant. The server that sends them prioritizes them based on its own load at the time the request is made. If the server is handling its load properly, it could choose the same order every time. However, it wouldn't necessarily happen the same way twice.

.swf frames load in order (frame 1 loads first), and you can further dictate whether the layers of each frame load from top to bottom or from bottom to top (in order).

With flash files, you can have a quick loading first paragraph load instantly while the rest of the frames are loading, or similar quick loading first pages to keep people "occupied" to take their mind off of the rest of the graphics loading.

And before you all step in and proceed to rip me to shreds by claiming that flash should be carted away to the nearest dump because of SEO issues and other stuff, I am only correcting Lisa where she said that the loading order of graphics cannot be dictated. Within .swf file they can.

Let's not bash flash now, let's be fair, it seems like flash is a pincushion here at jimworld.

As for the P-90 with 8 megs of ram, you may be right Lisa but even my secondary 'backup' Pentium 500 is like a dinosaur, even I am beginning to dig a nice grave for it in my backyard. Heck, it's almost fossilized, I don't think anybody has a P-90 these days.

[This message has been edited by I am illiterite (edited 07-21-2001).]

Yes, Flash does have negatives for SEO, but its not the flash that bothers me per se, its the pointless use of it. Splash pages were (thankfully) becoming a thing of the past, suddenly flash versions start popping up all over the place. I have an entertainment site, so I frequent a lot of (studio/promo) movie sites. There almost all flash these days, many without an HTML option. Yeah, they look cool, but half the time the content is paper thin and doesn't take advantage of it. I can't tell you how often everything you click opens a new window with plain HTML in it (like pics, "behind the movie", etc.). So why did I have to wait 5 minutes to get plain HTML content?

I've seen plenty of good flash designs too, its the "abuse of flash" designs that bug me!

As for P-90s and other slow old computers, there are many out there. I have one, myself. Luckily for me, its not my primary workstation. Schools, libraries, and many non-profit organizations use them because they either bought them from limited funds and cannot afford to upgrade, or received them as donations from friends who could upgrade. I recommend re-filling that hole, and donating your "almost buried" P-500 to a school or other organization that might really need it.

{Never mention old computers to a teacher - sore spot }

[This message has been edited by lisasmiles (edited 07-21-2001).]

I know that nowadays the most used monitor resolution is 800x600, but what is aol, isn't it smaller?

http://gethighforums.com/Forum7/HTML/000276.html
http://gethighforums.com/Forum7/HTML/000305.html

[This message has been edited by xelA (edited 07-22-2001).]