Re: Attention David F

Hiya Mike,

I do have a 56k modem, but because of the distance from the switching
station, bad phones lines, bad breath...who knows, I connect at only 31.2.
And yes, it does make it a form of torture to wait for some websites to
load. It has taught me how to multitask...

Both of your home pages load relatively quickly for me, and more importantly
load as I would expect and hope. By that I mean, the text loads quickly and
it is only the images that take time. This fits the general rule that the
more images you have the longer it takes for a page to load. I was concerned
that the text was waiting for images, and that is not the case in your sites
at least. It seems to me that if the visitor has some text to read very
quickly, then that will keep them on your page while the rest of the images
load.

I did notice that Christiann's site was all PNGs and also wondered about
that. I had noticed PNGs in a few examples you had provided before and
wondered if that contributed to the problem. My experience has been that
JPGs generally are a smaller file size than PNGs for equal quality images. I
am glad to hear you do have the option in WP. I also have noticed that I can
get more legible maps with GIF files and can really crank down on the file
size by using only 64 colors or even less sometimes. The small writing
almost always is easier to read in a GIF version and the maps that
Christiaan uses seemed easier to read as GIFs in his Publisher version of
his site. Anyway, the *excess* loading time of Christiaan's page is
apparently not because of WP as much as it is because of the reasons you
cited. Thanks for the clarification.

Wow...thanks for the garden update. It sounds like your potato tire garden
idea is working well. All that physical work will keep you young and sane.
;-)

DavidF

"Mike Koewler" <wordwiz@xxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:92dd9$4834886f$42a1a679$21152@xxxxxxxxxxx
David,

I had no idea you were on a 33.6 modem, I figured it was at least a 56K.
Also, I notice if I use Explorer to check a site it always takes
considerably longer to load than Mozilla does. And I notice sites that use
Google Analytics (or Serif's analytics for that matter) also seem to take
a while longer.

www.stjamesotv.com is one site that has more stuff on the Home page than
most the sites I build, although www.tinkscafe.com has a few more images.

One thing Christiaan can do, and I just noticed it now, is to change his
preferences so the images are not saved as png files. In WP, if you place
a photo as its same size, WP exports it whatever it is named. However, if
you resize it and you don't change the defaults it gets converted to the
png. Just changing to a jpg would make his site a lot smaller.

I've transplanted all but six (out of 50)hot peppers. I have another dozen
or so upstairs in the germinator. If you want to see a plant that produces
the world's hottest pepper, see www.valleycat.net/Bhut.jpg Another very
hot one is www.valleycat.net/7pod.jpg

My potatoes are doing great - I have six of them that are over three feet
tall. Four of them have been growing about eight inches a week in the last
two weeks. I'm hoping to get them to at least six feet high and get 40
pounds of spuds from a 4.4 ounce seed potato. I planted 57 cucumbers but
very few of them are up yet - it's been mostly cloudy or raining plus
chilly the last few days, and the basil has not sprouted either. My
lettuce and Mizuna love the weather, though.

I'm waiting for the tomatoes and eggplants to get large enough to
transplant. They have not grown as fast as would have like, though I
probably should have started them about a month earlier.

Bought a LED light panel yesterday. I had bought a smaller one last week
and stuck it over a tomato plant upstairs. The plant thrives under it.
Alas, it only covers about two square feet. The one I bought yesterday is
supposed to cover 6.5 sq.ft. But get this, it uses only 43 watts of power.
I can run it 16 hours a day for a little over $2.00 per month. Plus, it
produces only red and blue light which is what plants use in
photosynthesis.

It's strange how I hated working in the garden when I lived at home but
now am addicted!

Mike

DavidF wrote:
Hiya Mike,

I hoped that you would drop by and see this thread. Christiaan is a happy
camper! You are an expert with WP and I have always appreciated and
valued your perspective, but it was very interesting getting his
perspective.

I am curious though. I connect at 31.2 and my real world results were at
least twice as long as indicated by his report. Why do you suppose that
is? Also, is Christiaan's load time "typical" of WP sites with comparable
number of images, text and page size?

How is the garden going?

DavidF

"Mike Koewler" <wordwiz@xxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:d249c$4831bb27$42a1fb54$31873@xxxxxxxxxxx

David,

Interesting reading his report. :-)

From websiteoptimization.com:
Download Times*
Connection Rate Download Time
14.4K 297.46 seconds
28.8K 151.43 seconds
33.6K 130.57 seconds
56K 80.50 seconds
ISDN 128K 28.40 seconds
T1 1.44Mbps 7.40 seconds

Mike

DavidF wrote:

Christian,

Thanks for the report. It is interesting and educational to hear the
comparison from a person that had built a 200+ page site in Publisher,
and then switched to Web Plus.

Don't put much weight on my comment about the African print...that has
nothing to do with function, and I was just saying that I did like your
old design with that print. It is not saying that your new design is not
ok...and perhaps better.

As to the load time, I did notice a lot of errors being thrown on the
status bar while it loaded, and it seemed associated with the Google
analytics or other scripts running, but that may not have had anything
to do with it. I get by with a dial-up connection at my home because I
have broadband at my office...too cheap to pay for high speed both
places. But this does afford me the opportunity to text how fast my
pages load for all those people that have dial-up. Perhaps that is not
as important as it used to be. MSFT sure seems to think so, and I think
many designers have just given up on the dial-up user. Perhaps you have
gotten no comments from the Serif forum because no one is using dial-up?
Perhaps you can find someone else with dial-up to test your site.

My estimate of load time was a rough estimate as I just counted in my
head as it loaded. However, that is what I always do when I try to
assess the relative load speed of pages submitted to this group etc. I
did find a site that gives you some more "objective" data on the
loading. You might use it to get at least a relative comparison against
other pages and sites:
http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/
I don't know how accurate it is, but you can try it.

Thanks again for the report. I think I will stay with Publisher 2000 for
my site for now, but I could see why other Publisher users would want to
switch. Web Plus does seem to offer a lot of features that you don't
find in Publisher. Good luck to you.

DavidF

"Christiaan" <Christiaan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:E2E78AE8-B778-4301-9A5A-B8E6FF599F32@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


Hi David,

I must admit, I am working on three sites at the moment so yes I have
been
busy. I also think that the extra green background is killing the
African
print a bit so I will rectify that. I have read through the serif forum
and
no one is complaining about the loading times and WP does the
compresion of
images automatically. My home page has got a lot of code on it but I
will see
what I can do about the loading time.

Managing a large site with WP is a hell of a lot easier than with
publisher.
You click on publish to the web and you tick the pages you want to
upload. If
you are doing an update, you tick the pages that you want to update and
then
you click on incremental publish. WP verifies the files and updates the
changes you have made. I updated 4 pages this morning and the file
verification and the update took about 2 minutes.

What do I like best about WP, hell where should I start.

With the drop down menus on my provincial pages, I managed to decrease
my
site with about 70 pages. I made the drop down menus with codes that I
got

from dynamicdrive.com.

Almost every shape that you create with WP can be reshaped with nodes
and
the colour tools for filling, lines and backgrounds are great. You can
create
and add your own colours as you wish.

You can decide whether you want to preview a single page or your whole
site
in IE or in FF which I installed recently. There is no limitations on
form
design and you have access to serif web resources that provides objects
like
RSS feeds, e-commerce and blogging that you can insert to your site for
free.

WP also provides quite a few website and e-mail templates that really
looks
great and insert functions for java script and flash objects. The
design and
layout checker is also really great. I can go on and on but for $40 you
should try it. I downloaded the WP10 and it works perfectly. WP also
brought
down my site size from 20megs to 1.8 megs.

I did pick up a small problem though, my program crashed soon after I
downloaded it but I downloaded it through a download manager so I could
just
repair it and the problem seems solved. I think you will enjoy WP
because it
is still a bit of a challenge to work with.

Regards,

Christiaan

"DavidF" wrote:



Hi Christiaan,

Thanks for posting the link. You have been busy...

Nice new design, though I must admit that I really liked the "African
print"
that you used in your Publisher built site.

For what it is worth, I would work on the loading time. Your home page
took
more than 4 minutes...almost 5, to load on my dial-up connection. If I
was a
first time visitor, I doubt that I would have stayed around while it
loaded.
You might ask the WP experts in their forum about how to speed it up.
Is the
slow loading typical behavior for a Web Plus site?

One of the main reasons you switched was it had become very difficult
for
you to manage your large Publisher site. Have you found it easier to
manage
with WP? Does WP allow you to do incremental uploading? Having
switched from
Publisher, what do you like best about working with Web Plus?

Thanks again.

DavidF

"Christiaan" <Christiaan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:BAD9732A-7C20-4588-ADEE-E4EE44CF9275@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


David,

I have downloaded the Serif Web Plus program and rebuilt my site but
I am
not finished though. My online booking system isnt working and I have
added
drop down menus when you mouse over the towns. Look for the thin blue
line
on
my provincial maps and mouse over them. If I remember correctly I
promised
that I will let you know when I have published so have a look please.
Please
allow for the home page to download properly.

www.siyayasa.com

Christiaan






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