Visitors complain menus are slow

Poster: Aaron
Dated: Monday March 8 2004 - 13:40:52 GMT

Some of my visitors have complained that the menus are slow on http://unattended.msfn.org

I've tested them on 3ghz and 1.2ghz, in both Mozilla firefox and IE6, and they seem fine to me. What could the problem be?

Poster: John
Dated: Monday March 8 2004 - 15:01:03 GMT

Looks like the initial load of all the graphics you have in the menus is slowing things down. After that everything works fine.

Please don't forget to add your license number to the "License Number:" area of the comments in milonic_src.js.

Poster: Aaron
Dated: Monday March 8 2004 - 15:39:39 GMT



Oops, didn't know I had to do that. All done

Poster: Andy
Dated: Monday March 8 2004 - 17:35:24 GMT

Hi Aaron,

I think the menu itself is fine it's probably the images creating a heavy download.

You could try caching the images but this may make matters worse on initial download.

Once the images have loaded though it all seems fine.

See what connections your users are experiencing trouble with, you might find they are all on dial-up.

Cheers
Andy.

Poster: Maz
Dated: Tuesday March 9 2004 - 3:39:00 GMT

Good idea to get the latest release, 5.4 has a border problem on main menu.

If you find its slowing down on IE you could try background color instead of bgimage, its easier.

maz

funny, looks like 2 smileys played truant

Poster: fredlongworthhighschool
Dated: Tuesday March 9 2004 - 12:06:42 GMT

What size (in Kb) are your icons? Have you made sure that you resized them and reduced the quality of the pictures before you use them in the menu system?

Poster: John
Dated: Tuesday March 9 2004 - 13:51:32 GMT

Good questions, Andy. However, I'm seeing generally 1K icons already sized down (not being resized by the browser).

I did notice, in the Unattended menu anyway, the first time it opens up (slow version) there is additional white space at the bottom of the menu - one or two lines worth. Open it up again and the opening speed is good and the white space is gone.

Think maybe Andy needs to look at this one again.

Poster: Maz
Dated: Tuesday March 9 2004 - 21:27:03 GMT

Since we don't have an active bug section, I'll add my findings.

Image align right will go right off a subimage not right of subimage-text (Safari).

Image padding does nothing (Safari).

image background in a 100% horizontal main menu still has a tendency to cover the whole page on first load (in older IE's or is it just mac). So I avoid a background in main menu because there is nothing worse than someone arriving at a site and seeing nothing but a background color on first load.

That's all I can remember for now, it was a late night.

maz

BTW I took down the under construction, you can now see it at
http://www.mercuryexposure.org

Poster: John
Dated: Tuesday March 9 2004 - 22:04:59 GMT

Love your 'rating' section! Nifty.

Poster: Maz
Dated: Wednesday March 10 2004 - 4:20:56 GMT

Thanks, works good now.

I wanted the canary as the top item but it threw out the width, I don't know why because its smaller than the menu width.

So I put the canary in a div position:fixed, background.

Fixed align=left (its was centering)
I don't know if its the css or menu but the right edge is misbehaving in Firebird. It works fine in other browsers, its just a right margin in px's with the menu and canary on top.

maz

Poster: John
Dated: Wednesday March 10 2004 - 14:06:52 GMT

Is Firebird really that popular? I see the name tossed around once in a while, but that's about it. Point is, is it worth the effort? You can't cover everything.

Poster: Maz
Dated: Wednesday March 10 2004 - 15:59:03 GMT

I think more people are using Firebird because its more standards compliant that IE. You are liable to infected viruses via IE. And it has excellent tools for designers to validate etc.

Anyhow I fixed the problem. All I have left is an IE bug on the forum page.

maz

Poster: John
Dated: Wednesday March 10 2004 - 16:05:14 GMT

Sorry, I've been letting you down. Between things being nuttier than usual around here, and trying to get the new site/store going, etc., I'm getting a bit snowed under.

Poster: Aaron
Dated: Thursday March 11 2004 - 11:56:00 GMT



All the icons in total are 25kb.

I know I'm on a fast host, but I don't know why it took a friend on ADSL 2 minutes to wait for the menu to load. I'm on 56k and it loaded a lot faster than that.

Poster: Andy
Dated: Thursday March 11 2004 - 12:06:04 GMT

ADSL does occasionally have connection problems.

Yesterday I had a transfer rate of 1.2kb/s that's about the equivalent of a 9600 modem.

When ADSL is good, it's good but when it has problems, sheesh it can be really bad, like worse than dial-up.

It was probably a glitch in the Matrix

Cheers
Andy.