Does this page work in your Firefox?

[Ed Mullen]

We have done some tweaks to the site and would like to know if it is any
faster for those of you who found it slow across international servers.

http://tinyurl.com/35mwxr

Thanks in advance for any constructive answers to this specific question -
that is all that is needed, thanks.

Mika

The site still took about 40 seconds to load on a 6 Mbs cable connection
from Alpharetta, GA. To me that is ponderously sloooooow. Even if the
payoff is to my liking, and I'm having trouble liking (let alone
understanding) your site.

Comments (which are meant constructively):

Previously when I visited the page I had my sound muted. This time (by
chance) I did not, and it was set quite low, but still enough to drive
the subwoofer on my system. We are having some rather robust wind here
in alpharetta, GA right now. I can hear the leaves flying about outside
and the wind buffeting the house. As I was counting the seconds as the
page loaded I heard a terrible rumbling which I coincided with the wind
outside. I became quite alarmed as we live in an area where destructive
storms and tornadoes are not all that uncommon (in April 2006 a tornado
swept through less than a mile from my house, leaving some significant
destruction). I actually rose from my chair, swapped my computer
eyeglasses for my regular ones and was headed downstairs to go outside
and see what was happening. As I opened my office door the aural
perspective to my computer speakers changed and I stopped, thought for a
second, turned back to my PC and closed your page's tab. Thanks so much
for the scare.

Also, I doubt very much that your page's load time has little to do with
your server being across the pond from my location. I Googled:
[shopping uk] and clicked the first 20 links returned. All of them
loaded fully in 10 seconds or less. The time-to-load issue is either
because your host has dreadfully slow access anywhere outside of the UK
and/or the page is simply bloated (no offense meant) with way too much
content. Which, frankly, regardless of the likelihood of my dropping by
there to shop, is just not a good design strategy.

When you keep saying things like: "You're not our targeted customer
base ..." have you considered tourists? You know, people like me,
strangers in strange lands, who regularly travel to countries like yours
and research where they might go beforehand? You really should, you
know. I spent a bundle of money last month in Italy. And in France in
2004. And in Ireland in 2003. Next on my wife's and my agenda? The
UK. We shop a lot. We research a lot before we travel.

--
Ed Mullen
http://edmullen.net
http://mozilla.edmullen.net
http://abington.edmullen.net
Why do they call it the Department of Interior when they are in charge
of everything outdoors?

 

[Mika]

If I turn off caching in Firefox and reload the page it is 20 seconds
before all hourglass activity ceases.

Thanks, it sounds like it is getting faster. That is what we are aiming
towards.

 

[Mika]

The site still took about 40 seconds to load on a 6 Mbs cable connection
from Alpharetta, GA. To me that is ponderously sloooooow. Even if the
payoff is to my liking, and I'm having trouble liking (let alone
understanding) your site.

That is too slow. It should be under 10 seconds. Could you report the
results of a tracert to superhigstreet.com?

Sadly there is little we can do about delays on your hops towards our site,
aside from relocating the server to the USA, and then we lose our majority
audience which are UK based.

 

[Mika]

When you keep saying things like: "You're not our targeted customer base
..." have you considered tourists?

Thanks for the constructive comments.

In an ideal world we would love for everyone to be able to access the site.
We do try to attract tourists, in the hope their route to our server is
decent. But it is predominantly a shopping site, and that is the
prerogative we have chosen to target it. However on a secondary level we do
have tourist related content which search engines pick up, particularly
street names like Oxford Street, London.

The thing is, to load the page fully and see the streetscape is under 300K
(not 6MB as someone reported). If someone has trouble downloading 300K via
broadband, and it is not down to our servers or page size, then it is down
to the route their hops take to get to and from us.

It seems some people get lucky, others don't, but we still feel we have done
all we can really by getting it down to 300K and using robust servers.
Sure, that size isn't recommended for dial-up, but then neither is our site.
But for broadband, it is nothing. Your connection should blitz through that
in seconds.

A tricky one to solve really for overseas visitors unless anyone here is
able to contribute a workable solution that does not involve going back to
the drawing board (which would be unrealistic).

 

[andrew]

[...]

The thing is, to load the page fully and see the streetscape is under 300K
(not 6MB as someone reported). If someone has trouble downloading 300K via
broadband, and it is not down to our servers or page size, then it is down
to the route their hops take to get to and from us.

Using the 'Information -- Document Size' of the web developer tool bar
the following page:

http://www.superhighstreet.com/George-Street-Richmond/index.shtml

weighed in at an extraordinary:

Total 1902 KB (2089 KB uncompressed)

and loaded very slowly and sluggishly on Firefox. I have read the
discussion about broadband / traceroute / bandwidth / geographical
locality but surely if you are publishing on the /internet/ you are
obligated to serve content that is useful to /all/ possible readers of
your site?

Certainly if you have some sort of closed system such as an intranet
you could do as you please but the Internet implies a world market for
your site with all the problems of variable access, lack of plugins,
different browsers, operating systems etc.

Andrew

 

[Mika]

[...]

The thing is, to load the page fully and see the streetscape is under
300K
(not 6MB as someone reported). If someone has trouble downloading 300K
via
broadband, and it is not down to our servers or page size, then it is
down
to the route their hops take to get to and from us.

Using the 'Information -- Document Size' of the web developer tool bar
the following page:
weighed in at an extraordinary:
Total 1902 KB (2089 KB uncompressed)

That is misleading. To the initial load point, it is under 300K then it
stops there. However once you start strolling/scrolling, and only then, it
loads additional tiles of the image *on demand*. In other words, if you do
nothing but load the page, it is less than 300K. The toolbar must be
looking at all elements that eventually can be loaded. That is not what
people are testing here - they are reporting the time until the initial
street finishes loading.

I have read the
discussion about broadband / traceroute / bandwidth / geographical
locality but surely if you are publishing on the /internet/ you are
obligated to serve content that is useful to /all/ possible readers of
your site?

It would be impossible to be innovative to this degree by doing so. If you
want to show realistic medium size streetscapes, not puny little ones like
those at a competitor site, at some point whether by Flash or JS or AJAX,
you need to load those images of that size into the user's browser. You
can't get them on the screen in that quality by magic. We use highly
compressed JPEGs and load the tiles on demand.

We had three choices really:

A) Do it for UK broadband users, and those with good routes to the UK,
using a good quality image and sound that can recreate the sense of being on
a real street, to blur the divide between the High Street and Super Highway.

B) Do it using low quality images which would load fast for everyone, but
be unimpressive, and just copying a competitor who we noticed after we
devised the idea.

C) Don't do it at all.

If you are saying we are the only UK-oriented website out there, well no.
The USA is even worse. We are forever finding websites that are written as
if there are no other countries in the world.

At least we have written all the text on our site 'region free', i.e. not
obviously prejudiced towards one country or currency - you'll notice that if
you look around. We were very conscious of this.

Another reason we target the UK as because it has the highest broadband
rollout in the world - over 84% of online homes use broadband. We have to
choose 'a market', somewhere, and so it is our home country predominantly.

The rest I'm afraid is down to the luck of the overseas visitors route. We
simply cannot control that *and* provide decent quality images. Flash
cannot get a 50K image across the pond in anything less than 50K. AJAX
can't either. As time goes on and server technology evolves, the situation
will only get better.

 

[Mika]

Previously when I visited the page I had my sound muted. This time (by
chance) I did not, and it was set quite low, but still enough to drive the
subwoofer on my system. I became quite alarmed as we live in an area where
destructive storms and tornadoes are not all that uncommon
Thanks so much for the scare.

I hope once you can look back and laugh at this you may be able to come back
and say it was unreasonable of you to blame us for not thinking of subwoofer
users living in tornado regions.

For a number of reasons we have defaulted the sound to 'off', as well as
removing what people thought were 'waves on a beach'. A beach that had
lorries on it.

We have now made several major changes based on constructive feedback at
these groups, and it is welcomed when made in a friendly way, so thank you.

Mika

 

[andrew]

[...]

We have now made several major changes based on constructive feedback at
these groups, and it is welcomed when made in a friendly way, so thank you.

I for one was impressed with the mostly good humour you have shown
when some have given you what I believe the English call 'a right good
bollocking'

Andrew

 

[Mika]

[...]

We have now made several major changes based on constructive feedback at
these groups, and it is welcomed when made in a friendly way, so thank
you.

I for one was impressed with the mostly good humour you have shown
when some have given you what I believe the English call 'a right good
bollocking'

Thanks, it took some doing. Yes we have been well and truly bollocked.
Wait you weren't saying they were talking bollocks were you? (Joke!).

Mika

 

[Bergamot]

Yes, the background colour is rarely changed by anyone - most people can't
even find that setting! Font size however is commonly changed, so we have
to have some control there.

Um, if people change their browsers font size, dontcha think there's a
good reason for that? Like, maybe, so they can actually *read* text? If
your design cannot accommodate variations in your visitors' settings,
it's a flawed design. If it breaks easily, then it's seriously flawed.

 

[Bergamot]

The online sites we
link to are UK shops and designed for UK visitors as they won't ship
overseas

Really? When did Miami, Beverly Hills, San Francisco, and New York
relocate to the UK? They are listed bold as day on your home page.

 

[Mika]

Really? When did Miami, Beverly Hills, San Francisco, and New York
relocate to the UK? They are listed bold as day on your home page.

*Sigh* it's like spoon feeding a baby this. Reread what we said, then work
out why your comment is pointless.

 

[Bergamot]

*Sigh* it's like spoon feeding a baby this. Reread what we said, then work
out why your comment is pointless.

I reread it. I quote:
"...The online sites we
link to are UK shops and designed for UK visitors as they won't ship
overseas unfortunately (this is out of our hands). If you are in the UK
the page should load in a few seconds."

In another post, replying to rf:
"Oh dear you are ready to be offended... but no, it is not our choice,
it is the choice of the shops. 99% of them do not offer International
delivery you see, so unless you live in the UK, there is little point
shopping at UK online shops. Do you understand now? Is that okay?
Shall we rewrite all their websites and convert their delivery depots
for you? This is a UK site featuring UK streets on a UK server. Is
that unfair? Do you want us to move Oxford Street to Pakistan perhaps?"

Your statements insisting it's strictly UK is obviously false. BTW, if
it were true, you wouldn't have a .com domain name, but a .uk domain.

 

[rf]

Your statements insisting it's strictly UK is obviously false. BTW, if
it were true, you wouldn't have a .com domain name, but a .uk domain.

Don't worry, Berg.

They have hived off to c.i.w.a.site.design to conduct a download time
survey. One is not allowed to comment on anything other than the download
time, though:

We would appreciate your testing the following pages and responding with
*only* the following information for each of the pages. Please copy and
paste *just the following* into your reply for each page.

There are some !important caveats to the use of the site though:

NB:
! The site is designed for Broadband so please do not test using dial-up
! JavaScript must be enabled
! Designed for IE, FF and Safari only so please do not test elsewhere
(Opera
limitations on div widths prevent it working currently)
! Please familiarise yourself with the home page first to understand the
concept: http://tinyurl.com/...

I particularly like the Opera limitations. So, now not only must we live in
the UK but we are prohibited from using other than the authors designated
browsers.

It gets more amusing all the time

 

[Jonathan N. Little]

I particularly like the Opera limitations. So, now not only must we live in
the UK but we are prohibited from using other than the authors designated
browsers.

It gets more amusing all the time

It's called "Focused Web Design" ;-)

 

[dorayme]

It's called "Focused Web Design" ;-)

Why are there two Boots pharmacies next to each other? Is that a
bus stop outside one of them and they decided to move next door
after an unsuccesful protest to council?

Do the notices in the window of the Boots that is smaller in
width have signs in the windows outlining their protests to
Council?

Why can't I read them? I could if I was there shopping in the
street.

I like picking fights with strangers passing by when shopping.
Why can't I do this?

I like window shopping better than actually handing over my
dough. Why can't I see stuff in the windows clearly. 6953 x 290
is too small for the pic, it is an insult to my incredibly fast
ADSL connection. Mika, please make much bigger and allow me to
bump into innocent people and argue with them, ask Travis for
help with games and Flash.

 

[Blinky the Shark]

Don't worry, Berg.

They have hived off to c.i.w.a.site.design to conduct a download time
survey. One is not allowed to comment on anything other than the download
time, though:

And will anyone be joining them? Perhaps they could use...uhh...an
escort.

There are some !important caveats to the use of the site though:


I particularly like the Opera limitations. So, now not only must we live in
the UK but we are prohibited from using other than the authors designated
browsers.

It gets more amusing all the time

 

[Ed Mullen]

That is too slow. It should be under 10 seconds. Could you report the
results of a tracert to superhigstreet.com?

Sadly there is little we can do about delays on your hops towards our site,
aside from relocating the server to the USA, and then we lose our majority
audience which are UK based.

Tracing route to superhigstreet.com [208.69.32.130]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 * * * Request timed out.
2 * * * Request timed out.
3 12 ms 18 ms 19 ms
ge-1-5-ur01.n1alpharetta.ga.atlanta.comcast.net [68.86.109.217]
4 21 ms 25 ms 12 ms
te-9-1-ur01.n2alpharetta.ga.atlanta.comcast.net [68.86.106.222]
5 13 ms 13 ms 11 ms
te-9-3-ur01.g1norcross.ga.atlanta.comcast.net [68.86.106.226]
6 13 ms 11 ms 11 ms
te-9-1-ur01.d9chamblee.ga.atlanta.comcast.net [68.86.106.142]
7 12 ms 11 ms 12 ms
te-9-1-ur01.d8decatur.ga.atlanta.comcast.net [68.86.106.146]
8 12 ms 11 ms 12 ms
te-9-1-ur02.d1stonemtn.ga.atlanta.comcast.net [68.86.106.150]
9 10 ms 38 ms 11 ms
te-9-1-ur01.d1stonemtn.ga.atlanta.comcast.net [68.86.106.154]
10 14 ms 12 ms 11 ms
te-9-2-ar01.d1stonemtn.ga.atlanta.comcast.net [68.86.106.158]
11 14 ms 14 ms 14 ms
te-9-1-ar01.b0atlanta.ga.atlanta.comcast.net [68.86.106.1]
12 21 ms 21 ms 21 ms COMCAST-IP.car1.Atlanta2.Level3.net
[4.71.252.6]
13 20 ms 22 ms 33 ms te-3-2.car1.Atlanta2.Level3.net
[4.71.252.5]
14 22 ms 34 ms 35 ms ae-31-53.ebr1.Atlanta2.Level3.net
[4.68.103.94]
15 46 ms 21 ms 32 ms ae-68.ebr3.Atlanta2.Level3.net
[4.69.134.50]
16 47 ms 53 ms 39 ms ae-2.ebr1.Washington1.Level3.net
[4.69.132.86]
17 36 ms 50 ms 38 ms ae-71-71.csw2.Washington1.Level3.net
[4.69.134.134]
18 36 ms 35 ms 35 ms ae-23-79.car3.Washington1.Level3.net
[4.68.17.69]
19 46 ms 39 ms 39 ms xe-7-2.r04.asbnva01.us.bb.gin.ntt.net
[129.250.9.113]
20 40 ms 47 ms 40 ms ae-1.r21.asbnva01.us.bb.gin.ntt.net
[129.250.2.180]
21 228 ms 219 ms 240 ms po-3.r05.asbnva01.us.bb.gin.ntt.net
[129.250.2.87]
22 90 ms 255 ms 235 ms fa-0.opendns.asbnva01.us.bb.gin.ntt.net
[129.250.12.114]
23 35 ms 38 ms 35 ms nxdomain.guide.opendns.com [208.69.32.130]


--
Ed Mullen
http://edmullen.net
http://mozilla.edmullen.net
http://abington.edmullen.net
If a pig loses its voice, is it disgruntled?

 

[Ed Mullen]

I hope once you can look back and laugh at this you may be able to come back
and say it was unreasonable of you to blame us for not thinking of subwoofer
users living in tornado regions.

I'm not angry with you and I didn't "blame" you for anything. I merely
pointed out an actual scenario of how defaulting sound to "on" could be
a very unwelcome thing for a user.

For a number of reasons we have defaulted the sound to 'off', as well as
removing what people thought were 'waves on a beach'. A beach that had
lorries on it.

Very wise and much appreciated. Fewer surprise sounds on the Web is a
good thing.

We have now made several major changes based on constructive feedback at
these groups, and it is welcomed when made in a friendly way, so thank you.

Mika

HTH.

--
Ed Mullen
http://edmullen.net
http://mozilla.edmullen.net
http://abington.edmullen.net
Are there seeing eye humans for blind dogs?

 

[dorayme]

I'm not angry with you and I didn't "blame" you for anything. I merely
pointed out an actual scenario of how defaulting sound to "on" could be
a very unwelcome thing for a user.

As it happens, I had an experience right at the start that sort
of alarmed me with this sound. Had come back into the room when
it was loaded and playing and I first thought something might be
up with my tower, my HD, I was worried a bit. Took me a mo to
realise it was the speakers and the website. I would not blame OP
for not thinking of beings on the other side of the planet who
dash in and out to grab cups of tea and stuff and have paranoid
thoughts about their hardware <g>