Speed times

How to best check a page's load time

[TRACEYR]

Im tired of my boss keep saying that our web site is slow, i have made the first page of the site, preload all images that are used in the other 20 pages preload...., I have check all missing tags, added ALT TAGS, WIDTH, HEIGHT to all tables, check with DOCTOR HTML etc etc and compressed all my images to small sizes....

Ok it seems to be faster, but how do you measure this performance on a web server,

[martinibuster]

I just use a dial up and check it. Also, I may preload some things (like first couple pics on a photo gallery page), but not ALL the graphics.

If the site in question is the one in your profile, I would consider shrinking that main image down by half, chopping it up into slices (big chunks are hard to fit into a skinny data pipe) or eliminating it altogether.

Another thing that I use is tiling to make the bars that the navigation buttons sit on if it's a fancy gradient bar, or just use html color if it's a plain block of color.

Blurry photos download way faster (smaller file size) and can look cool as a design element.

Shrinking the logo always helps.

If you want to get your code positively anorexic, eliminate white space in your code(this is easy if you have dreamweaver, get the extension). I think there's standalone software that can do it for you, or you can get macho with it and just do it by hand.

And my main advice, try not to mix gif type images with jpeg types, cuz that's what you got going on that page, and that makes for a bigger file size.

A few ideas...

[The Contractor]

We had this brought up but under another subject a week or so ago. I find the following to be the most accurate for page load time.
Run the slow pages through the simulator at the following:
[hitboxcentral.com...]

scroll down and choose "hitbox doctor"

[piskie]

Try WebSpeed Simulator to visualy see your pages unfold on the screen at whatever speed you select. It is also good to check the order that a browser will display each element on the page.

[brotherhood of LAN]

save your webpage from your browser on to your desktop, and check out hte source code size (the ie file) and the folder size (all the graphics taking a while to load)

[keyplyr]

You can get an relative server response time by using the ping utility at Cnet.com. [webservices.cnet.com] It adds up ping response times from various locations around the country, then averages them together and compares them to similiar hosting services.

[keyplyr]

Ooops, it appears the Domain Checker feature is no longer offered, just the ISP connection speed test. Oh well...