Page loading times in FrontPage

[laura]

My mother and I both design pages for websites and we have an ongoing
argument about the loading time in the bottom right hand corner of
FrontPage. It says it takes 30 seconds to a minute to load using a 56k
modem. I tell her that it doesn't matter because almost everybody now has a
high speed connection. She says there are still a lot of people using dial
up and that they will not wait an enitre minute to let a page load. Who is
right and what should the loading time be?

Thanks.

 

[Thomas A. Rowe]

There are still a lot of folks using dial up.

--
==============================================
Thomas A. Rowe (Microsoft MVP - FrontPage)
==============================================
If you feel your current issue is a results of installing
a Service Pack or security update, please contact
Microsoft Product Support Services:
http://support.microsoft.com
If the problem can be shown to have been caused by a
security update, then there is usually no charge for the call.
==============================================

 

[Murray]

Not only are you not right (I think that it's still at least 40% not on
broadband) but your mother is also right when she says people won't wait a
minute for the page to load. The magic number is 10 seconds (according to
usability experts who study such things), and the typical 56k dialup is able
to chunk about 4K/second, which means you get a page weight budget of about
40-45K total (code, images, externally linked files, Flash, everything).

Give your mom a beer from me!

 

[Bill]

Believe me, there are plenty of people out there still using dialup, and they can be
very impatient.

The best thing to do for them is to have something up top that will appear immediately,
something like a header, with a short horizinatal navigation, that either does not use
tables, or uses one table and does not nest another table inside of it.

All the smart, best websites are optimized for dialup. Just remember to optimize your
images, don't ever nest tables, and make plenty of use of style sheets (no FONT or
formatting tags anywhere).

 

[Tom [Pepper] Willett]

"don't ever nest tables"

I disagree.
--
===
Tom [Pepper] Willett
Microsoft MVP - FrontPage
---
FrontPage Support:
http://www.frontpagemvps.com/

About FrontPage 2003:
http://office.microsoft.com/home/office.aspx?assetid=FX01085802
===
| Believe me, there are plenty of people out there still using dialup, and
they can be
| very impatient.
|
| The best thing to do for them is to have something up top that will appear
immediately,
| something like a header, with a short horizinatal navigation, that either
does not use
| tables, or uses one table and does not nest another table inside of it.
|
| All the smart, best websites are optimized for dialup. Just remember to
optimize your
| images, don't ever nest tables, and make plenty of use of style sheets (no
FONT or
| formatting tags anywhere).
|
|

 

[Thomas A. Rowe]

I disagree regarding not nesting tables, and the use of font tags, etc.

--
==============================================
Thomas A. Rowe (Microsoft MVP - FrontPage)
==============================================
If you feel your current issue is a results of installing
a Service Pack or security update, please contact
Microsoft Product Support Services:
http://support.microsoft.com
If the problem can be shown to have been caused by a
security update, then there is usually no charge for the call.
==============================================

 

[Murray]

Nesting tables is not the problem. Nesting tables that are filled with col-
and rowspans is a problem and can lead to horrendously long render times.

Using <font> tags can usually lead to increased page markup, particularly if
you, like many font tag users, often note that something didn't work quite
right and so you do it again only clicking harder. This leads to such
grotesque code strings as -

<font ...><font ...><font ...><font ...><font ...><font ...><font ...><font
....><font ...><font ...>whatever</font><font ...><font ...><font ...><font
....><font ...><font ...><font ...><font ...><font ...>

There is no doubt that using CSS instead will reduce the dowload err load.

 

[Thomas A. Rowe]

I have never notice FP (2000) font tag after font tag when selecting text that already has a font
tag applied.

--
==============================================
Thomas A. Rowe (Microsoft MVP - FrontPage)
==============================================
If you feel your current issue is a results of installing
a Service Pack or security update, please contact
Microsoft Product Support Services:
http://support.microsoft.com
If the problem can be shown to have been caused by a
security update, then there is usually no charge for the call.
==============================================

 

[Bill]

...
"don't ever nest tables"

I disagree.

I've found this to be true:

http://www.netmechanic.com/news/vol4/load_no19.htm
"With all the opening and closing TR, TD, and TABLE tags, nested tables take you longer
to code and maintain. They're hard on the browser too: it has to slowly work to figure
out the table structure working from the inside out. A browser can't display the inner
table until it knows what the outer table looks like and it can't display the outer
table until it has the inner table figured out."

Bill.

 

[Thomas A. Rowe]

Is the following site slow to load:
http://www.ecom-data.com

As it uses nested tables and font tags, very little CSS formatting and no CSS positioning or layers,
etc.

--
==============================================
Thomas A. Rowe (Microsoft MVP - FrontPage)
==============================================
If you feel your current issue is a results of installing
a Service Pack or security update, please contact
Microsoft Product Support Services:
http://support.microsoft.com
If the problem can be shown to have been caused by a
security update, then there is usually no charge for the call.
==============================================

 

[Murray]

I've found this to be true:

Not really.

They're hard on the browser too: it has to slowly work to figure
out the table structure working from the inside out. A browser can't
display the inner
table until it knows what the outer table looks like and it can't display
the outer
table until it has the inner table figured out."

This only comes into play when the tables contain lots of col- and rowspans,
i.e., split and merged cells. Even a few can transform a 5 nested table
arrangement that renders lickety split into a browser's worst nightmare.
The culprit is NOT the nesting, it's the spanning.

http://apptools.com/rants/spans.php

 

[laura]

Thank you Murray and Thomas A Rowe for your answers!
Laura