10 replies to this topic

[rudy]

Has anyone else been experiencing slow and sometimes non-responsive Cartotalk (not the members, of course, but the pages of the forum)? Or is it just me? It seems like there's much time spent waiting for pages to come up.

[Hans van der Maarel]

Has anyone else been experiencing slow and sometimes non-responsive Cartotalk (not the members, of course, but the pages of the forum)? Or is it just me? It seems like there's much time spent waiting for pages to come up.

Yeah, I'm noticing that too.

Another thing I'm seeing is that sometimes when I click on a link, my browser (Firefox 2.0) tries to download the .php file instead of simply opening the page. Not sure what's causing that, but I only have it with Cartotalk.

Then again, according to the web developer toolbar, this page (i.e. the one where you type your reply) features 519 kb of data, compressed! This includes no less than 84 images.

[MapMedia]

Yep. I also have to login each time I post. (is that a cookie thing?)

[Derek Tonn]

Then again, according to the web developer toolbar, this page (i.e. the one where you type your reply) features 519 kb of data, compressed! This includes no less than 84 images.

Preach it, Brother Hans!

519KB for a chat forum is a TON of bandwidth being chewed. I've offered to at least strip a lot of the graphics on the site down to a flying tin can (without anyone noticing a difference visually), but I know Nick has had 101 things going on of late...so I'm just thankful I have a place like CartoTalk to come and hang out a few times per day. It's a great site/service! That said, if we could get this site down below 150-200KB on many of the pages, it would be even better.

[Hans van der Maarel]

519KB for a chat forum is a TON of bandwidth being chewed. I've offered to at least strip a lot of the graphics on the site down to a flying tin can (without anyone noticing a difference visually), but I know Nick has had 101 things going on of late...so I'm just thankful I have a place like CartoTalk to come and hang out a few times per day. It's a great site/service! That said, if we could get this site down below 150-200KB on many of the pages, it would be even better.

The main culprits are the 2 ads that are on the page. There's 3 being rotated now (NACIS, Avenza and Maps.com) and one of those files is rather big: 600-something kb. If we could just tone that one down a bit, it'd save a lot.

[frax]

The question is how much is really downloaded per request - I would assume most of the javascript and images are cached, and then there is http compression... (the uncompressed size is not relevant for trying to assess the lag and slowness in downloading, but you knew that )

[Derek Tonn]

The main culprits are the 2 ads that are on the page. There's 3 being rotated now (NACIS, Avenza and Maps.com) and one of those files is rather big: 600-something kb. If we could just tone that one down a bit, it'd save a lot.

Aah. All I have to say then is "Thank goodness for Firefox and the Adblock Plus extension!" I don't see any ads on 99% of the sites I visit...INCLUDING CartoTalk. I can see they are there if I want to....but why would I want to?!

That said, I'm sure those banner ads could be placed on a substantial diet without affecting their quality on-screen. I haven't seen the ads, but in the VAST majority of cases, there is always a lot of bits and bytes that are being wasted related to imagery and the internet.

[rudy]

Aah. All I have to say then is "Thank goodness for Firefox and the Adblock Plus extension!" I don't see any ads on 99% of the sites I visit...INCLUDING CartoTalk. I can see they are there if I want to....but why would I want to?!

Wow! What a difference!

[Nick Springer]

As Derek pointed out I do have a million things going on, but I have a visual redesign in the works for Cartotalk that will reduce the graphics load somewhat. I will also look at the size of the ads.

[Nick Springer]

I did some analysis and one thing that was slowing my browser down was all the flags at the bottom of the home page. They are tiny files but because there are 80+ of them now, that is a lot of HTTP requests. I have changed it to a text list for now. If people don't see a big speed improvement on the home page or really, really liked the list of flags we can put them back.

[Hans van der Maarel]

I did some analysis and one thing that was slowing my browser down was all the flags at the bottom of the home page. They are tiny files but because there are 80+ of them now, that is a lot of HTTP requests. I have changed it to a text list for now. If people don't see a big speed improvement on the home page or really, really liked the list of flags we can put them back.

It's definately loading faster. The flags were cool, but 80+ http requests do slow things down, so I'd prefer the text version.