Forum Moderators: not2easy
[edited by: jatar_k at 6:31 pm (utc) on Oct. 3, 2005]
[edit reason] no urls thanks [/edit]
Welcome to Webmasterworld :)
You can't stop browsers acting this way unless you use propriety software like flash or a script that would 'hold' the page until all of it is downloaded. Personally I don't think you should worry too much about the page downloading like this, serving up content as quickly as you can should be your main concern, optimise your graphics and use css as much as possible for layout - this will improve your download times and if your slices are cached the next load will be improved so any lag will be negligible.
You change the menu and wind up having to edit multiple pages. That was what you did in 1998.
Dreamweaver attempted to fix this problem with their library feature, but instead of calling a single file, you wind up generating pages that have duplicated code in each page, and then you're married to Dreamweaver to regen the pages. Ugh! The first thing I do on a Dreamweaver site is to start stripping out all the duplicated code.
Learn "when to say when" when you design a page's length. Nothing is more annoying than visiting a site with pages that seem to run on forever.
Shakespeare said "brevity is the soul of wit" - simplify your content, and don't make your pages any more than 500 - 700 px in height. It's ok ... this is what links and menu systems are all about - getting to other sections of content - it's ok to continue your content on another page.
Smart designers quickly find out how to use SSI (Server Side Includes) or php include calls and build pages out of modular components.
You build one file for a menu, a common header, a common footer, and you 'call' those pieces together around the uniqueness of each page. Thus, when it comes time to change the menu, or the keywords, you only have a single file for these components that all the pages use in common. I use a single header file which has the meta tags for the site in it, change one file and the entire site is updated on every page. One menu file called by all the pages by an include statement.
This also makes pages load much faster because the browser already has the common pieces in cache, and only needs to download the unique content for each page.
Also, if you generate pages with Photoshop, it's nice to see your pages as JPGs, but the smart thing to do is once you see how you want the text laid out, take the text out, regen the pages without the text, and then add back the text as plain text floating over the images. This makes the site search engine friendly.
Another trick to page design is to watch your page build and see which sections load the slowest. Do you really need that weather link from some other site that takes forever to sync up? Drop it if it slows your page down. They don't deserve your link.
And now it's time to "say when" since I am rambling ...
