6 Different Ways To Decrease Your Page Load Time
A typical Webpage loads in less than 8 seconds on a 56k speed modem. The following things are all ways you can speed up your page load time.
1. The bulk of WebPages that contain JavaScript load them in at the beginning of the document. The content cannot be seen until the JavaScript has loaded in. Put any JavaScript at the bottom of the document and it will load after the main content has finished, thus diminishing the loading time of the page. Even when the user can see the page it will still be loading but they won’t see this.
2. Loading in external documents such as style sheets or JavaScript files can also increase a page’s load time. Including them in the html file reduces the readability of the code for a program mer but does lessen the load time of the page significantly. When you’ve got your website working correctly, take some time to copy paste external code into the main document.
3. There are several different image formats, the most common are Portable Network Graphics (png), Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) and Graphics Interchange Format (gif). Making sure you use a format that retains the quality of the image at an optimal size is vital when it comes to page load time. If your image only makes use of a few colours then a gif file type would be appropriate. JPEGs can be manipulated to vary in quality, you should target the lowest quality possible without compromising the quality of the image. PNGs have the greatest file size of the three and should only be used for high quality images with transparent backgrounds. Another image format is Bitmap (bmp), which are very large files that retain the full quality of the image. Fast loading webpages shouldn’t contain any images of this file type.
4. The use of images, in particular animated gifs, increase page load time and should be used sparingly. An animated gif is made up of numerous different images and will have a substantially bigger file size than a regular graphic. The lower the file size of the externally loaded graphic, the quicker the page will load. The quantity of images being loaded is also worth noting as it also effects page load time.
5. Animated gifs are fast being replaced by swf files or Flash animations. Swfs are a siginificantly greater size than that of animated gifs. They should be used in moderation on a page and only where necessary. If your animation is brief and doesn’t require any user involvement it might be worth considering using an animated gif instead. However if your animation requires audio a gif won’t be up to scratch. You need to keep in mind whether the user has a flash player installed when using swfs and ask them to download one if not. This requires further coding and is another motive to only use Flash files where necessary.
6. More often than not combining two images together where possible will decrease the overall page load time. Two separate graphics will have a greater overall file size than one. Also with only one image the page needs to make less http requests, which is another determining factor of page load time.
Filed under: Web Development