Web Site Usability

Chapter 8 - Trim and Fit

Techniques to make your sites run faster

Leaping Tall BuildingsSerious dotcommers spend days trimming every last Kilobyte from their file sizes, making sure that no milliseconds of their audience's microscopic attention spans are wasted. The least we can do is to respect our audience's time, and do our best to trim the wait time.
  1. Optimize your images
  2. Avoid certain design complexities
  3. N-tier code
  4. Psychological vs. Real Time
    • Content which is useful is perceived as faster than content which is not
    • Break up large tables so that the top loads quickly
    • Use lowsrc images if necessary
    • Flash encourages clever "loading" schemes

Discussion: What makes a download worth waiting for?

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