[thelist] Speed and Flash Problems

[Stuart Young]

On 07/02/07, Hershel Robinson <hershel at galleryrobinson.com> wrote:
>
> Client says:
> > The pages load very slowly. I have had this checked by 4 other people
> and they all have the same issue.
>
> For me it loads fine. Can anyone confirm or deny that there is a speed
> issue on this site?


the HTML loads instantly, but yes the swf file took ages to load, it seems
like it is a big file. How big is it?

Have you run the size report option (part of the swf export) that will tell
you what parts of the flash file contribute most to the filesize. Moving and
scaling bitmaps in Flash makes the filesize much bigger, it is fine to
include lots of photos as a slideshow, but avoid moving them around and
zooming into them.

perhaps you see the page loading fine because you have the swf file cached?
use a different browser to look at the page, one that hasn't looked at it
before, or clear your cache and look at the page again

you are using a javascript function to load the swf file, but if js is
turned off there is no swf, only a blank space, it is better to load a
normal image in the plain old HTML of the page and then if js is present the
script runs and it replaces the image with the swf file. The benefits of
this approach are that

   - those without js get something, and
   - even if the swf file takes a while to download, at least the image
   has loaded to give the user something to look at

cheers

-- 
This is the gmail account of Stuart Young
Pt Chev, Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand