[ 60K ] RE: [thelist] File size limit?

[Lauri Watts]

On Sunday 03 June 2001 13:00, you wrote:

> I've done time trials between sliced and unsliced images, and
> found that sliced images occasionally have a little advantage, but
> most of the time, the unsliced image won hands down.
>
> The differences are small enough that you won't see the difference
> on a T-1 line. Like most of America, though, I cannot buy DSL,
> cannot buy cable, and I get a 24K-28K connection most of the time
> using a rockwell-chip v.90 modem.  Instead of taking the time and
> the extra HTML to slice an image, spending the same amount of
> time shrinking the image gives much better results.

The difference is purely in appearance.  If the image is big enough 
(dimension wise), then pieces will start to display quicker than the entire 
thing will render and the brain is tricked into thinking the image is 
displaying quicker.  There are still browsers out there that don't render any 
of the image until the whole thing has arrived, even if you use progressive 
jpegs and interlaced gifs.

User perception, even if it's mind games, is worth considering.

As an example, a project I work on has a product which takes quite some time 
to load up, and it doesn't make sense to start showing parts of the GUI until 
it's progressed to where it's interactive.

Some user testing with 
a: a splash screen, with no feedback
b: a progress bar, with status text, marking off what was going on,
c: some little icons, and status text, marking off what was going on,
had nearly unanimous results.  

Application a took the longest to load, followed by b and c being about the 
same.  Application b and c merged (some icons, that blink as the operation 
they symbolise loads, plus a progress bar, plus some status text saying 
things like "loading foo" and "preparing bar"), well, that one loads the 
fastest of all, and is in fact what we use now (and it nearly *always* gets 
mentioned in reviews, that there is a nice splash screen... I guess it's yet 
more proof that other peoples priorities are different than yours and mine!)

The application of course, is identical in all respects, and might actually 
load a fraction slower with all that going on in the splash screen.  To the 
*user* though, something is happening, something is seen to be happening, and 
that impatient streak that everyone has is stilled just a little bit 
longer.

So... cutting up images in no way speeds up the loading process, and might 
well slow it down.  It might just *seem* to some users that it is loading 
faster, and that might be the hook that keeps them on the site.

I certainly couldn't recommend it be used on every image, or even most, but 
the technique maybe should be considered, where appropriate (ie, a large 
splashy image on a front page, large image maps which could easily be diced 
up and made into separate images with their own links, things like that.)

Sometimes being seen to be actively doing nothing or "busy waiting", is the 
most useful thing to do :)

-- 
Lauri Watts