Does it make my pages slow?

[Aloha Kay]

Sorry for my million and one questions, but I was wonding if my use of CSS makes my pages slow. I'm half thinking it may be the adds since I'm on a free site (will get my own domain when I graduate). All my pages seem to load slower than they should but all at pretty much the same speed.

Here's the page I use the most CSS on: http://www.angelfire.com/journal2/kay_writer/beegeescorner.html

But as I said, all the pages seem to load at that same speed.

How can I make them faster?

[tech_support]

It's 99.99999999% more likely because of the free hosting.


How can I make them faster?

Don't use free hosting. Or... you could use a HTML Compressor.

[Aloha Kay]

Where do I find an HTML compressor?

Yes, I will be upgrading to a paid account soon, but in the mean time . . . lol

[codeexploiter]

CSS actually improves the page loading compared a layout which is based on HTML tables.

Excess usage of images may increase the time while loading the page.

You can download a free HTML compressor from here http://www.trustmeher.net/freeware/htmltools02.htm

[djr33]

Compressing html is just plain silly.
Sure, it makes it faster, but... how much?

HTML is JUST text. Unless you've got a page that is a book, it'll be only a few kilobytes. A very complex page might end up being 30k, and that's with a TON of text (well over 1,000 lines). Let's say 100k, even. That's still incredibly fast to load, compared to ANY images.

The connection time (for it to start serving the page) and the time for any media will far outweigh the html.

Your pages, on average, will be about 2-3k. That's so little in terms of speed that if anything is slow, it's the server connecting to the browser and starting the process, then any additional content.
CSS might slow the processing of the page, but the CSS itself is, like html, just text, so loading that would not be a problem.
And CSS is common and rarely so complex that it would slow things down too much. Unless you have trouble on your computer with CSS in general, you can rule that out.

Specifically about your page--
1. The music slows it down. A lot. That's almost surely the answer.
2. The images are big, and that doesn't help.
3. More images (background, banners, etc.)
4. The ads could also be slowing it down. Frequently, ads load much after the rest of a page, and cause what appears to be (and basically is) a lag.
5. Any javascript activity hidden in the background could also cause a processor lag, but this would usually be after it loads and only noticable when you try to do something (like scroll).

Ads will be solved by moving from a free host, and the free host will likely be slower than a paid host, so that'll speed it up a bit, but that won't fix the fact that you have large images and especially that you have a large music file. That will, no matter what, take time to download. Music on a page is very annoying anyway, to the average browser, so you might want to make that optional, on a secondary page, etc., so that they can load it if they want, rather than slowing down the main page. You could also compress the images and/or audio more, at some quality loss, depending on the level of compression.

Simply put, you need to decide if having that audio there is worth your time downloading the page (and that of your visitors).

[Aloha Kay]

Cool. Will definately switch to an upgraded site and take of the audio. I like the large images though, but if it is suggested I downsize how many pixels would be best?

[mburt]

Use .png image extensions, with pngcrush. It compresses the png images, but keeps the quality.

[Aloha Kay]

OK. So one last question and then I think I know what to do. Where do I find pngcrush?

[Aloha Kay]

I found several places wehre I could download pngcrush but to be on the safe side, is there a site which any of you could suggest? I would hate to get it from an unsafe source.

[boxxertrumps]

Download.com... im betting its there...
now im going to look for it,
aaaaand:
Sourceforge PNGCrush. (http://pmt.sourceforge.net/pngcrush/)

Download dot com never failed me before...

[djr33]

Actually, I'd suggest jpg at about 30% quality. Photoshop would work, the GIMP, or any other image editor that supports JPG (even MS Paint, but that doesn't allow you to choose the quality).

You don't need to get rid of the images, but they do slow it down some. Take off the music and see where that leaves you. That might make it just as you want it.

[thetestingsite]

Also; on an added note, a pretty good Website Optimization Speed Test is located at this page:

http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/

Simply enter the URL (or the code) in the forms on that page, then click submit query. This will tell you how much time it takes to load your page and suggestions on how to make the page load faster.

Hope this helps.