I have no internet connection at home at the moment (one of the perils of relying on a free wi-fi service) so I'm having to access the internet in the local library. And this is causing one or two problems. The first is the pressure to work within the constraints of an hour's computer access at any one time; I'm using that as an excuse for the mean-spirited nature of my first edit for this post, which I've now rewritten in it's entirety.
There’s a very enjoyable blog I like to visit regularly; however this is taking anything up to a quarter of an hour for the home page to download. The blog currently displays the last 50 posts which include a lot of photographs, so this is not surprising.
So I left a comment, asking if the number of posts displayed on the home page could be reduced. The blog owner very reasonably responded by saying that she had no problem on her computer, and liked to keep a large number of posts showing as she wanted to give first time visitors a full sense of the range of her blog. She then asked if anyone else was experiencing the same problem. Two of her regular visitors quickly responded, saying that they had very quick downloads with no problem whatever, and one suggested that I was unreasonably expecting downloads 'at the drop of a hat', which is not what I am expecting at all.
They fail, of course, to appreciate how browsers and html actually work. So let me explain. When anyone visits a webpage, their computer stores that webpage in it’s ‘internet cache’. This means that when they return to the page they only download the elements of the page that have changed since their last visit. First time visitors though have to download the entire page and on this particular blog that is very large at 6.2 MB. And because I work on a public terminal, the internet cache is cleared every time I log out. If I visit that same page more than once in any single session, I experience the same quick download (around 2 seconds) as the other regular visitors.
There is also the issue of html. Blog owners who upload pictures are placing them on file sharing sites where each individual image is given it’s own webpage. When you view a blog the images themselves do not download as part of the page; rather the html script that downloads provides links to each of the webpages where the images are stored and they each download separately. I would estimate that there are around 200 - 250 images displayed on the homepage of the blog in question (it’s too large to count) and this means that my browser is attempting to make a large number of simultaneous downloads, way beyond the processing abilities of all but the most powerful computers. This causes the computer to slow, and extends the download time far further. And I know that a surprising majority of internet users are still using quite elderly computers; the stats for my own blogs show that around 5% of my visitors are using IE5 as their browser, which means that their PCs are more than 12 years old.
There is a further complication in that blog owners tend to upload photos in considerably higher resolution than they are displayed on the blog. This means that the images require scaling down, and a further delay in downloading, when the page is being opened.
Unfortunately, a large homepage does not enhance the experience of the first time visitor. The download time is such that they are not even likely to complete it, let alone read the blog. And if they do actually sit it out they are entitled to feel aggrieved that the blog owner has presumed that they wish to make such a large download to view a blog that they may or may not enjoy. People on broadband contracts that restrict their monthly download can easily find themselves pushed into penalty charges if they visit too many pages of such size.
My advice to blog owners is simple – the more images you display on your posts, the more you need to limit the number of posts displayed at any one time. After all, that is the reason blogger set their default display at 10 posts.
So I left a comment, asking if the number of posts displayed on the home page could be reduced. The blog owner very reasonably responded by saying that she had no problem on her computer, and liked to keep a large number of posts showing as she wanted to give first time visitors a full sense of the range of her blog. She then asked if anyone else was experiencing the same problem. Two of her regular visitors quickly responded, saying that they had very quick downloads with no problem whatever, and one suggested that I was unreasonably expecting downloads 'at the drop of a hat', which is not what I am expecting at all.
They fail, of course, to appreciate how browsers and html actually work. So let me explain. When anyone visits a webpage, their computer stores that webpage in it’s ‘internet cache’. This means that when they return to the page they only download the elements of the page that have changed since their last visit. First time visitors though have to download the entire page and on this particular blog that is very large at 6.2 MB. And because I work on a public terminal, the internet cache is cleared every time I log out. If I visit that same page more than once in any single session, I experience the same quick download (around 2 seconds) as the other regular visitors.
There is also the issue of html. Blog owners who upload pictures are placing them on file sharing sites where each individual image is given it’s own webpage. When you view a blog the images themselves do not download as part of the page; rather the html script that downloads provides links to each of the webpages where the images are stored and they each download separately. I would estimate that there are around 200 - 250 images displayed on the homepage of the blog in question (it’s too large to count) and this means that my browser is attempting to make a large number of simultaneous downloads, way beyond the processing abilities of all but the most powerful computers. This causes the computer to slow, and extends the download time far further. And I know that a surprising majority of internet users are still using quite elderly computers; the stats for my own blogs show that around 5% of my visitors are using IE5 as their browser, which means that their PCs are more than 12 years old.
There is a further complication in that blog owners tend to upload photos in considerably higher resolution than they are displayed on the blog. This means that the images require scaling down, and a further delay in downloading, when the page is being opened.
Unfortunately, a large homepage does not enhance the experience of the first time visitor. The download time is such that they are not even likely to complete it, let alone read the blog. And if they do actually sit it out they are entitled to feel aggrieved that the blog owner has presumed that they wish to make such a large download to view a blog that they may or may not enjoy. People on broadband contracts that restrict their monthly download can easily find themselves pushed into penalty charges if they visit too many pages of such size.
My advice to blog owners is simple – the more images you display on your posts, the more you need to limit the number of posts displayed at any one time. After all, that is the reason blogger set their default display at 10 posts.
