How to determine load time w/JQuery?

[J_Walsh]

With load time being a primary concern, how can I estimate the visitors load time with a WordPress 3.0 website that uses a s3slider image rotation? Some tools show html at only 10k, but I know each image can be upwards of 100k. Suggestions on how to test and optimize greatly appreciated!

~ John

[tedster]

Well, you're right that the html size is far from the only factor. Every http call made by the browser (external css, scripts, images, etc) will affect the true load speed.

Google has a resource page that includes many page speed tools [code.google.com], both their own and from third parties.

<added>
Also note that load time is not really much more of a concern now than it has ever been - so it doesn't pay to go overboard unless things were alread really bad. Some related discussion here [webmasterworld.com]

[tedster]

Google's Maile Ohye gave a very specific detail for how Google measure page speed that might help:

One of the ways we measure a page's speed incorporates both download and render time — we pay attention to the time taken from the moment the user clicks on a link until just before that document's body.onload() handler is called.

[maileohye.com...]
Note that this measurement starts with a click on a link. So if there are any redirects in the stream, they all add to the total. Also note:

...studies by Akamai claim 2 seconds as the threshold for ecommerce site "acceptability."