Slow menu speed on Mac IE 5.1

Poster: Wansford
Dated: Wednesday July 21 2004 - 15:41:54 BST

Hi,

Would someone mind taking a look at our menus in IE on a Mac? I've been told that they're really slow on OS 9.2 and IE 5.2.

http://www.spotlightom.com/hyperia/index.aspx
(this is just a temporary url)

Is there anything I can do to speed them up?

Thanks,
Lee

Poster: John
Dated: Wednesday July 21 2004 - 22:00:42 BST

Not in any way trying to be a jerk here, but I'm curious why the concern for a browser that is no longer supported or developed for the Mac. Even CERT has recommended dropping IE completely (see http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/06/28/cert_ditch_explorer/.

Sorry, but I don't have a Mac here at work to check your problem. One of the other folks will take a look.

Poster: cubefree
Dated: Wednesday July 21 2004 - 22:37:00 BST

Yes, IE for the mac is a dying browser, while certainly hundreds of thousands potentially still use old systems... at some point you have to draw a line in the sand ... as with Netscape 4.x.

You could of course, add an alert box, telling them your site isn't going to display well and they should upgrade.

Poster: stephen702
Dated: Wednesday July 21 2004 - 23:35:42 BST

I raised this question with Maz last year, and she said to make the menu as lean as possible--cut down the number of images, remove unnecessary code in the menu_js file, compress the file using this site's compression utility. It helped, but as has been stated already, there's only so much that can be done with a flawed interface (Mac/IE, not Milonic!)

Poster: John
Dated: Thursday July 22 2004 - 4:49:45 BST

Finally got a chance to look at it on my Mac. 5.2.3 definitely crawls. Safari is faster by a fair piece.

However, in both cases the menu was the first thing rendered. What took the time was the rest of the graphics on the page. I don't have time to look at your code right now, but it would seem to me the problem is not in the menu.

Poster: Wansford
Dated: Thursday July 22 2004 - 14:33:08 BST

Thanks. Need to support Mac IE because although it may be defunct there are still a significant number of people using it, in the UK anyway. I know there's a lot of graphics on the page but the menu is still sluggish and unusable compared to the PC. My only option is to either limit the menu to just the first level of options for IE on the Mac or try some other menu components.

Thanks anyway.

Lee

Poster: John
Dated: Thursday July 22 2004 - 15:17:27 BST


Not trying to pick a fight, Lee, but that's not what I observed...

Poster: Wansford
Dated: Thursday July 22 2004 - 17:02:47 BST

Sorry, I've just been told it was IE 5.1 not 5.2

Lee

Poster: John
Dated: Thursday July 22 2004 - 17:14:19 BST



Even worse! 5.2.3 was the last OS X version, not sure about Classic.

Poster: Wansford
Dated: Thursday July 22 2004 - 17:17:56 BST

Yeah, he's using OS 9.2. Personally I think all Macs should be burned

Poster: John
Dated: Thursday July 22 2004 - 17:28:22 BST


Careful. You're treading on very dangerous territory with them thar words...

Poster: Wansford
Dated: Thursday July 22 2004 - 17:32:18 BST

...to be taken with a pinch of salt of course

Poster: John
Dated: Thursday July 22 2004 - 18:05:06 BST


Well, if you talk to the other Team Members you'll find that, along with that pinch of salt, there will probably be a .45 loaded with some very nasty stuff...

Poster: Maz
Dated: Thursday July 22 2004 - 18:08:46 BST



Ouch that stings, going to get that mosqito.

John, try bug spray

maz

Poster: Wansford
Dated: Friday July 23 2004 - 9:34:16 BST

OK I relent! All joking aside does anyone have IE 5.1 on their Mac that could try our menus to confirm what the speed is like?

Cheers,
Lee

Poster: Maz
Dated: Friday July 23 2004 - 16:46:29 BST

Hi,

I have 5.2 I don't even like opening that browser.

Your problem is the special offers, I'm assuming that's the menu.

If you really want it to display well on the mac you need to shorten the list, what you could do is split it into a subdirectory so certain products are in a group and prevents the scroll bar from comming up everytime.

So instead of having one long list, have like a dozen that will open quicker and then a submenu to those rather than one long list that ie can't handle in a timely way.

Hope this helps.

maz

Poster: Wansford
Dated: Friday July 23 2004 - 17:13:59 BST

Maz,

There should be two menus, special offers & products. Special offers has about 25 menu items. Products, which should be just above it (below the credit card logos), has about 50 menu items and most of these have submenus coming off them. It's the products menu that's causing the most problems, due to it's size I guess.

Is it possible to use different menu data for different browsers? I suppose you could use the same technique as is used to load either the DOM or NS4 code.

Regards,
Lee

Poster: John
Dated: Friday July 23 2004 - 18:25:28 BST

Sorry. I only have 5.2.3, and I keep it locked up so it doesn't disturb the other foks on the drive.

Poster: Maz
Dated: Friday July 23 2004 - 21:57:36 BST

I don't blame you John, its a big security risk.

Lee,

Yes, that is what I'm saying, but why try to work around it for the browser, I think that would be making more work too?

I didn't look if these are being served via php or something.

Surely it would be easier for everyone if you listed such as clothes, gear, tackle, or whatever it is, as your submenu, then items after that?

Then the first set of submenus never change, only what's after that.

It would reduce the long list four fold and probably better all round.

maz

Poster: Wansford
Dated: Saturday July 24 2004 - 11:19:11 BST

Maz,

The first submenu is a list of categories already. They just have a lot of them! The submenu for each category lets you choose a particular manufacturer or all products within that category. The customer has around 1500 product lines and they're happy with the structure of the menus so I'm not sure if they'd want to change it anyway.

By the way, the menus are built dynamically with ASP.NET but are cached on the server.

Lee

Poster: Maz
Dated: Saturday July 24 2004 - 18:16:29 BST

Sorry to say, it looks like you need a better system of cataloging if you really want them to come up nicely. The menu can handle it but the time it takes to load them on the first encounter is what's holding you up.

Even if you split it alphabeticaly would help.

I suppose if someone knows how to preload the data before the menu is opened, but then that will probably take longer for the initial page to load in some browsers. I don't remember anything like that, but you could search around.

I don't know backend so I'm no help there. Its usually quiet here around the weekends.

maz