[skyhigh007]

Hi

My question is Does your whole web page reloads everything even though you are using the same background for all the pages?

Ex: If I'm on my home page and a user clicks on the "About us" or "contact us" page, does it mean everything reloads for " About us" or " contact us" page ?

I'm trying to figure out a way to save some bandwidth.


Thank you

[tomdkat]

Items like graphics will be cached and shouldn't be downloaded again unless the browser cache is disabled or there are HTTP headers instructing the browser not to cache that item. Of course, as you change pages the new pages will be downloaded but then they will be cached.

Depending on how the browser is configured, it will check more frequently or less frequently to see if any of the cached content has changed so it can download fresh copies, if necessary.

A GREAT way to save bandwidth is to scale images down to their desired display size instead of using HTML to scale the image for you. Use GIFs or JPEGs and stay away from PNGs unless you can keep the PNGs small in size. PNGs can get LARGE in size. Keep the DPI of the images around 72. Keep the file sizes of images small.

Another way to conserve bandwidth is to put common CSS and JavaScript in external files that are shared across pages instead of embedding CSS and JavaScript in the HTML files themselves.

Lastly, use CSS for page layout and ditch HTML tables for page layout to reduce page size.

Peace....

[skyhigh007]

thanks for the reply. I did everything that you have mentioned in the above regarding how to set image, css, and javascript. But I still see my whole page gets reloaded. By the way, how do you check the http headers instructions to see the cache?

[tomdkat]

Those will be "pragma" directives in the HTML files themselves. If you aren't aware of these already, chances are they aren't being used at all.

Something else to consider, the browser displaying a blank page as the new page loads doesn't mean it's downloading everything again.

Peace...

[skyhigh007]

When you click on the button, I can see it loads the whole page. It gives a quick blink. Any other areas I might need to look at? EX: coding ?

[tomdkat]

Originally Posted by skyhigh007

When you click on the button, I can see it loads the whole page. It gives a quick blink.

That's what I mean. By virtue of seeing the "blink", that doesn't mean images and other stuff is actually being downloaded again. Of course, the new page will load (at least the first time) and subsequent times you'll get cached versions. Different browsers will cache differently so you might be different behavior.

Without seeing the site in question, it's hard to comment on anything specific that could be changed. I checked out your gallery in the other thread and outside of the first loading of the images, the content loaded quickly.

Peace...

[skyhigh007]

I know that you have to load int he first time, but it keeps on reloading it every time it goes to those pages.

[tomdkat]

I don't think it is. I've experienced what you describe on THIS forum. Sometimes the techguy header at the top will stay in place as I switch forums and sometimes it will disappear and re-appear but it isn't being downloaded.

Without seeing anything, it sounds like what you're describing is an image being "painted" as the page is rendered, which is indicative of a LARGE image being dynamically scaled down to a smaller resolution.

Peace...

[Mudley]

how much traffic does your site get?

[skyhigh007]

I'm just testing my site on the server. Is there anything that i can do on the server site? Ex: cache control or stuffs like that?
So, I should reduce the file size?

[tomdkat]

Without being able to see the content we're dealing with, it's hard to provide better advice than what we've done so far. We've got no idea how large the images and HTML files are. We've got no idea how images there are per page. We've basically got nothing.

Peace...

[Mudley]

Originally Posted by tomdkat

Without being able to see the content we're dealing with, it's hard to provide better advice than what we've done so far. We've got no idea how large the images and HTML files are. We've got no idea how images there are per page. We've basically got nothing.

Peace...

what he said

i'm glad you're thinking ahead about your site though!

[skyhigh007]

What do you mean by "Of course, as you change pages the new pages will be downloaded but then they will be cached." So, they will be cached in the browser?
Or I have to set the cache control for the web server?

[Mudley]

browsers cache images, css files, and js files

if you provide a link, we can likely save you a lot of wasted time and confusion

[tomdkat]

Originally Posted by skyhigh007

What do you mean by "Of course, as you change pages the new pages will be downloaded but then they will be cached." So, they will be cached in the browser?

Yep. If you have Firefox installed, fire it up and type "about:cache" in the URL bar and you will see how much of your browser cache is utilized. If you install the CacheViewer extension, you can see what is in the cache easily.

Peace...