Slow Loading Navigation Bar

[Bret Williams]

I guess you figured it out. It loads in less than a second for me in Safari on a cable connection. The rollovers are loaded faster than I can move my mouse to them.

[Jay Lee]

Good evening Bret,
Thank you for taking the time to write.
NO…….I haven’t changed a thing. My comments based on the performance I am witnessing on my system (PC) with IE and Mozilla. I thought my connnection was screaming fast??? Is your system “typical”?

Cheers,
J

[Curtis Thompson]

hello…

nope – works fine here as well (mac/pc and a variety of browsers) and the mouseover images i sampled were all under 1kb, so it’s likely not a network issue even for people on a modem…unless perhaps he rest of your page is still loadiing for you – loading takes priority over rollovers, so they could be a bit jerky if you are still loading a large file, but that didn’t seem to be a problem.

but i doubt that is an issue (unless you’re on dial-up?) – do the rollovers work once you go over them once or are they slow each time?

2 other things:

1. in answer to your original question – no, browsers don’t give priority to image types (so rollovers won’t load for you first) – you have image preloaders, but you are also redundantly loading the non-rollover images there. try removing those from that preload call in your body tag, as they will get loaded down on the page anyway – you only need to preload the rollover images

2. try removing the redundant onmousedown and onmouseup actions in your links – onmousedown you’re already on the rollover so switching it does nothing, and onmouseup you’re leaving the page anyway so it won’t render

i don’t think either of these are the culprit, but they are unneeded code, and #1 will definitely hurt people on dialup…

sorry to not have a clear answer, but both bret and i can’t see any rollover slowness from here! did you try other computers yet?

sitruc

[Jay Lee]

Excelent suggetions Curtis…..shall strip some of that preload code and if nothing else it will make the page leaner.
FYI I am testing on my system which is a screaming Windows machine with high speed DSL. It indeed would be interesting to test on others.

Thank you for your continued interest.

Cheers,

J

[Bret Williams]

High Speed DSL. DSL is actually so far behind cable now. Cable is easily 4mb/sec these days with DSL sticking around 2. But here in Atlanta they’re starting to advertise 7mb/sec and I’ve heard of testing 11mb/sec in some areas.

None of this would make a difference on your page. I think your page might load instantaneously on a cell phone. Almost.

Check your speed at bandwidthplace.com – my favorite speed test. But you can only do it 3 times a month for free.