Recently, I have been dealing with the long load time of my newly revamped website, http://robobugs.net I switched from tedious hand coding to the easy Xara way, but I quickly noticed the pages took ALOT longer to load. This is largely due to the graphics I can now include in my site compared to the strict CSS styling I used before.

Here are a couple tips I use to make my site load quicker. These deal primarily with how Xara exports various graphics, and images. Some of these are observations about the export engine used by Xara Software, so keep these items in mind when designing your sites.

1. Grouped objects export as a single file. Soft Groups do NOT. Many times, these "hard" groups can be exported in JPG format with a reduction in filesize compared to the PNG type. Xara likes to export all graphics groups as PNG, so be sure to compare the filesize difference when exported in the different formats.

2. Shadows applied to photos slow load time considerably. This is because Xara exports the image with the shadow as a PNG. By using Web Properties and changing the Image Export As function, you can export as a JPG. I had a single image with shadow that went from 116K down to 15K on export. This is very significant during page loads over the internet.

3. It seems that copied or cloned objects will export as a single image file that is used repeatedly wherever it is used. NavBars come to mind here. If each item is different in size in Xara, it will export as a seperate graphic file and will slow load times. Prevent this by copying or cloning 1 main block to create your whole NavBar. Then apply text to each block, but DO NOT group the text to the blocks. Xara will usually export fewer (or sometimes a single) images and will use it multiple times instead of having a unique image for every link.

4. If you use a main rectangle or set of shapes as your page background, consider including all unchanging objects with it. Then group them together so they export as a single image. This can reduce the size of the exported background by creating a single exported file instead of many larger ones. This requires some experimentation with JPG and PNG exports, but can help reduce overall file mass (in Kb) for your page.

I hope you find these tips helpful.