erratic response

[duncan drennan]

BTW what speed connection have you got. 1 min 7 sec for a page load is slooowww.

I think you missed me there, IE took around 1 minute to load the entire page (i.e. everything was finished and loaded correctly), Firefox took about 7s (again everything loaded). I'm on iBurst and regularly get speeds of 80kB/s (but not ever below 25kB/s).

I understand the differences in the layout engines (it's what I mentioned at the start of this).

Both browsers have erratic load times (and it is definitely something in the right hand column). How about removing everything except for the Navigation bar, then slowly add things back and see what happens?

I think it is really important to resolve (or remove) this issue before tonight's post party.

[Dave A]

The only thing that is pulling from off-site in the right hand column is the second box down. I could comment it out as a trial, but I've been examining the page load quite carefully.

The threads essentially have a big HTML payload which has to be delivered first before the right hand column content starts coming in. Payload wise the HTML content of the right hand column is pretty small, but coming in at the end it causes the IE viewing pleasure problem.

The intermittent big delays last night were due to SAIX - international connectivity issues that seemed to affect most services, apparently. Came and went. Certainly a poor night to do comparitive benchmarking and probably the reason for the 1 min 07 page load.

[duncan drennan]

I just want to pick up on this IE problem again - I really feel it is a big issue and will cause people to think that the site is borked.

I think there are a couple of things at play here, I realise that there may be specifics on my side causing things to be amplified, but I don't think that is the root of the problem. There was a definite point in time where things changed.

If you hold shift and press reload and roughly measure the time for ALL elements to load it is approx 1 (one) minute for both IE and Firefox. Firefox wins from a user perception perspective because it displays elements as it loads them, IE just sits around until everything is loaded (except the top navbar etc. show quickly...??).

Firefox also wins when a page is loaded after the first load due to its aggressive caching policy, so the next time you go to the page it will only download the main content, instead of all the elements, resulting in even faster download times.

I truly believe that that type of behaviour is driving people away from using this site - imagine how it is over a modem line!

Can admin possibly try taking out the adverts in the right hand column so we can try to fix the load time issue? I believe it is really critical.

[I Robot]

The problem is at its worst when viewing threads - so I've disabled the column in threads.

Let's see how the browsing experience is now before we look at disabling it elsewhere.

[duncan drennan]

Okay, insteresting result. It is certainly loading the main content faster, but to finish loading everything still takes quite a while. Maybe the culprit lies elsewhere....

The way I test is to refresh (holding shift) a link which goes directly to a post. When the browser "jumps" to the correct post I accept that all the content is loaded.

I'm using this link, http://www.theforumsa.co.za/forums/s...=2733#post2733

For now the content is loading faster - big plus

[duncan drennan]

Okay, I did an interesting experiment.

I logged off and did some page loads and I would estimate that the load times are about 2x as fast for a non-member. Try it out and let me know if you get the same.

[Dave A]

A big part is all the colourful graphics. If we went with a bare bones text only setup it would load faster. But no avatars, minimal smilies, no graphics in signatures It just wouldn't be the same.

There are some pieces of code that load every time that I question anyone is using. One is the forum jump menu at the bottom right hand corner. If we take that out the forum rules on the left hand side at the same level, I don't think anyone would miss it.

Another fairly big piece of code that loads with every thread is the quickreply box. It is very easy to disable and that would stop that bunch of code loading every time. However, I suspect many of us use it.

[Dave A]

Okay, I did an interesting experiment.

I logged off and did some page loads and I would estimate that the load times are about 2x as fast for a non-member. Try it out and let me know if you get the same.

Sorry - I missed this post in my earlier reply.

As a member you get a lot of extra functionality - and it all takes extra code!
More options on the top menu bar. More options on the bottom menu bar. And lots more in between. Like the info on who's also viewing the thread. And the quickreply box (it really is a lot of code).

[duncan drennan]

Just a question here....are you having any kind of bad user experience when working with IE7? Or is it just me?

[Dave A]

I was suffering with that right hand column in threads - definitely an IE7 related experience. My only other complaint is the "temporarily allow scripts" issue when making links in posts. Otherwise it's pretty peachy.

I think the time to download the total page issue is an ISP / speed of connection challenge. My testing gave me a worst case of about 10 seconds on a long thread. I've scanned some of the sites that give feedback on page load speed and they're all happy - we're classified as fast. For example Google reports the slowest page it's crawled as a 1.2 second load with an average page load of 0.34 seconds; admittedly that does not include the CSS. Given that Google is crawling an average of over 300 pages a day here, a pretty good indicator. I think South African hindernet connections just tends to be a little slow by international standards

Is there something else that is bugging you?

[duncan drennan]

No.

The long download times were for a TOTAL refresh, i.e. nothing from cache. That means every picture, every icon, alles was downloaded. When browsing normally a page load is MUCH faster, like under 10s.

It's a pity that the right hand column is causing that issue in IE - I found IE practically unsuable (I was use it when I'm using my wife's laptop so that I don't have to log her out).

It was just niggling away at me because I felt that people might come to the site and have things take really long and think that it was either broken, or a crap site - of which it is neither. It is a great and cool site, I just want people to experience it that way

[I Robot]

I've disabled quickreply and the forum jump menu menu to reduce the HTML hit.
/Waits for feedback

[bullfrog]

I've disabled quickreply and the forum jump menu menu to reduce the HTML hit.
/Waits for feedback

nooooo, my fav quick reply is gone

[duncan drennan]

I've disabled quickreply and the forum jump menu menu to reduce the HTML hit.
/Waits for feedback

This is just my thoughts, but I'm not too sure how much pure HTML will really impact on the download times. I'm on a fast link, so there shouldn't be any significant delay if it is just text (i.e. html). The things that I would be suspicious of (particularly with IE) are scripts and any type of java. The total load time is just toooo sluggish for it to just be the html (well, that's what I think).

This whole thing still bugs me, and for some reason I don't think it was inherently the side bar (although maybe, who knows).

BUT, we've messed around with it quite a bit (sorry I've been scratching), so no need to spend too much more time on it. I seem to be the only one that it bugs, so if no one else is seeing long load times, it might be time to put it to bed.

[I Robot]

nooooo, my fav quick reply is gone

Seeing as bullfrog has boycotted posting since filing this post, I have caved under the pressure and re-enabled quickreply.