Do you still keep track of the how many kilobytes, or even megabytes, your web pages are delivering to the customer? Back in the day of dial-up modems your minimized files sizes or perished. But not that we all have speedy cable/dsl connections does it matter anymore? I think so, and here’s why:
Adobe PDF files can be particular problems (especially when they come from print designers). The Reduce File Size tools in Acrobat can help. But I find that just taking the PDF and printing it to a PDF file can work wonders — and often reduces the file size way past what the Acrobat tools do. For web page monitoring the Firefox extension FIREBUG is the tool for you. Just because I believe in eating my own dog food, I ran a before and after on some download testing here on Rodeworks — I got myself down from 233 kilobytes and 2.5 seconds of download (lag from the external links to flickr/linkedIn/facebook and twitter) to 89 kilobytes and 1.1 seconds. Just doing my part…
Firebug and Network Monitoring
Some of your web pages are taking a long time to load, but why? Did you go crazy and write too much JavaScript? Did you forget to compress your images? Are your advertising partner’s servers taking a little siesta? Firebug breaks it all down for you file-by-file.
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Randall Rode's online home for thoughts, notes, and experiments with a wide range of technology topics. Visit the about page for info on my recent projects and professional background. I welcome your comments!
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