----- Original Message ----- From: "Bob Maxey" >I tested your site on a 56 (laugh, laugh) K connection. >76 seconds for the background image to load. Running the program 'Jpegcleaner over the background image, I found the following: "Processing Emily...Cleaned 1096 bytes Cleaned total of 1096 byte(s) in 0:00:00 seconds" >One minute 40 seconds for the images to start slide-showing about. So I grabbed one random image and again ran it through jpegcleaner: "Processing Wells...Cleaned 32013 bytes Cleaned total of 32013 byte(s) in 0:00:00 seconds" another image: Processing Amorita...Cleaned 33699 bytes Cleaned total of 33699 byte(s) in 0:00:00 seconds" so far 2 images of the slide show have had 65k stripped from them - effectively if these images were ALL cleaned of superfluous data you'd lide the whole slide show in less than 1/4 of the time Emily.. >Remember that most of us do not have DSL and/or broadband. There are plenty of dial-up users still out there. Many visitors will not wait to >see what happens; all they see is the first image, so give them some help. You might consider adding a line under the images: "Please wait >for the slide show to load" so people do not leave. Or some such. Some time back I had a former student turned pro (he used to be a pharmacist!) send me his web site to check - I'll post you exactly what I sent him as I think it's applicable - I also see you've created your images with Photoshop so I eyeballed the thumbs and found them to be around 22kb. Some calculations: 15 x 22kb =330kb total thumb images, that's 66 seconds roughly on a 56k modem to download I stripped the imaged of the 17kb of Photoshop data (non image) and the images are now around 5kb each - 15x 5kb =75kb .. thats around 15 seconds to download the lot which means that for each 5kb of image, the viewer is downloading 17kb of non image data, 17x15 = 225kb of photoshop stuff or around 51 additional seconds of PS rubbish to download to see the exquisite images (take note EVERYONE who's building web pages!!) You can grab Jpeg cleaner (about 250kb) from ftp://ftp.sac.sk/pub/pc/sk_made/jpgcln25.zip which can batch clean jpegs and strip all meta data. Alternatively google for "Jpeg Cleaner" for the latest version. The quicker the page loads, the happier folks are. You can still strip those images and ftp your cleaned ones back to the site to speed the download, nothing will change except the page will load quicker - and all the other images are similarly clogged, 35 images total on the site = approximately 595Kb of photoshop saying "YooHoo, looky here, I was made in Photoshop CS!" - that's Photoshop slowing folks viewing your site by around 2 minutes! finally you may want too get a bit of Java to save your ass from the spambots harvesting your email address. AT present the code on your page have the dreaded words mailto:tim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx - a magnet for such insideous evildoers imagine instead it had some java which looked like: Email: <script language="JavaScript">var d = document;var c = {f : String.fromCharCode, a : function (t) {d.write(t)}};c.a(c.f(60,97,32 ,104,114,101,102,61,34,35,34,32,111,110, 99,108,105,99,107,61,34,106,97,118, 97,115,99,114,105,112,116,58,108,111 ,99,97,116,105,111,110,46,104,114,101 ,102,61,39,109,97,105,108,116,111,58 ,105,110,102,111,64,102,97,115,116,114 ,97,99,107,112,104,111,116,111,115,99 ,104,111,111,108,46,99,111,109,39,34, 62,105,110,102,111,64,102,97,115,116,114 ,97,99,107,112,104,111,116,111,115,99,104 ,111,111,108,46,99,111,109,60,47,97,62)) ;</script><br> b~CHING! bot's can't read that crap but it still works just like real html mailto: in many browsers :-) nice job with the site :-) k
