Determine what elements are slowing a web page load

[John]

Hello,

I use FP 2003, and one feature is that it shows a report which tells you how
long a page will load based on 56K speed.

For instance, it will say "index.htm" will load in 48 seconds, etc.

Is there a way/ program to determine what INDIVIDUAL ELEMENTS of a webpage
are taking up the most time so that one can concentrate on whittling down
the big stuff?

Something that says:

Table or Stylesheet- 20 seconds
Page background-5 seconds
123.jpg- 10 seconds
456.jpg -10 seconds
top of page jpg 3 sec

Total = 48 seconds.

?

Surfing around, I found an online type of service, but I was wanting a
program I can download and use off-line.

Any help appreciated.

VR/

John

 

[Adrienne Boswell]

Hello,

I use FP 2003, and one feature is that it shows a report which tells
you how long a page will load based on 56K speed.

For instance, it will say "index.htm" will load in 48 seconds, etc.

Is there a way/ program to determine what INDIVIDUAL ELEMENTS of a
webpage are taking up the most time so that one can concentrate on
whittling down the big stuff?

Something that says:

Table or Stylesheet- 20 seconds
Page background-5 seconds
123.jpg- 10 seconds
456.jpg -10 seconds
top of page jpg 3 sec

Total = 48 seconds.

?

Surfing around, I found an online type of service, but I was wanting a
program I can download and use off-line.

Any help appreciated.

VR/

John

Opera gives you a bit of a hint, but, if you take steps you can whittle
it down.
1. No presenational markup. All presentation goes into a stylesheet.
2. No javascript on the page. Javascript goes into an external file.
3. Use semantic markup, the right tool for the job - if it's a heading
use heading markup, list of links, list markup, etc.
4. Make sure any images are optimized and are the size they say they are,
eg. if an image is 115x115, it better not be 800x600 on the server.
5. If you're doing anything server side, reuse, reuse, reuse. A page
that uses functions and that is 125 total lines long is going to load a
lot faster than a page that is 1700 total lines long (1000 server side).
6. If you use a database, make sure queries to the tables have been
optimized as well. If possible use stored procedures and indexed views.
Open connection, get the records, close the recordset, close the
connection. THEN write the data to the browser.

 

[TreatmentPlant]

Hello,

I use FP 2003, and one feature is that it shows a report which tells you how
long a page will load based on 56K speed.

For instance, it will say "index.htm" will load in 48 seconds, etc.

Is there a way/ program to determine what INDIVIDUAL ELEMENTS of a webpage
are taking up the most time so that one can concentrate on whittling down
the big stuff?

Something that says:

Table or Stylesheet- 20 seconds
Page background-5 seconds
123.jpg- 10 seconds
456.jpg -10 seconds
top of page jpg 3 sec

Total = 48 seconds.

?

Surfing around, I found an online type of service, but I was wanting a
program I can download and use off-line.

Any help appreciated.

VR/

John

It might not be EXACTLY what you are looking for:
http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/index.html

 

[Blinky the Shark]

It might not be EXACTLY what you are looking for:
http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/index.html

Where does that show times for various things, as he requested? Sure,
it shows sizes. But so does simply looking at the directory with ftp
or a file manager.

 

[Andy Dingley]

Is there a way/ program to determine what INDIVIDUAL ELEMENTS of a webpage
are taking up the most time so that one can concentrate on whittling down
the big stuff?

No - because it doesn't work that way.

Rendering pages is quick - always has been. It's the question of
delivering them to the browser (download time) and the sequential
dependencies between things.

If you have images and don't specify size in their <img> tag, then the
browser doesn't know how big to make them at first. It will probably
render the page once, then re-render the page (an ugly flash) after the
image has been downloaded and it does know the space required. This is
made worse if the image is a large file, thus slow to arrive. So if
you're making a site like photobucket.com, then set the explicit image
size on your pages. If you're just using small irregular thumbnails,
don't worry about it.

You might also find your page waiting for JavaScript. This isn't often
a problem, but there are some uses of AJAX and especially client-side
XML / XSLT where it can be ugly. As you probably can't stop such pages
being slow to copmplete, then make sure they look OK in the meantime -
not just an empty window.