Can web "paging" be optimized?

[Contours]

I've built a 15-page website based on the Serenity template. Some are simple pages and others are complex — 300 to 400 elements in the mouse-off layer.

I observe a vast difference in the way individual pages display when previewing website — particularly the header area with the Nav Bar and its associated "on all pages" elements. My question is this: can the elements be either arranged or grouped to make the page displays more uniform? I'd like the top part of each page to come up instantly ... and then see the remainder of the page fill out according to how many elements are on it. Can this be done?

Thanks in advance for any help.

[pauland]

It's always better to include a link in these cases, but I'm very doubtful you will get the solution that you want. The browser determines how components are loaded and that depends on the page markup and the size of the graphic and whether it's in the browser cache or not.

3-400 elements? Sounds overly complicated to me. Give us a link and wiser heads than mine will be able to make some suggestions. The more elements on a page, the slower it will load.

In general, common header elements are likely to load the fastest after the first access, because they have already been loaded in another page and should be in the browser cache.

[Contours]

Thanks for your reply. I don't have a link to offer at this point. I'm trying to sort out the allocation of content to pages ... which is why I'm becoming aware of these considerations.

The browser determines how components are loaded and that depends on the page markup and the size of the graphic and whether it's in the browser cache or not.

That's really at the core of what I'm seeking: how do the elements get "ordered" in the html. I've sometimes clicked View Page Source for a web page and am at least aware of the underlying language. So, does the order of elements in the tabular layer definitions have anything to do with how Xara generates the html? Or is there some unseen method?

BTW, having the header elements in browser cache (i.e., after the first page is loaded) doesn't seem to speed things up.

[pauland]

You won't be able to fine tune this using Xara - I would look at simplifying your pages than trying to manipulate the underlying technology. Chances are that any page constructed with as many assets that you have will not load as you wish.

Using non-Xara technology, designers might attempt to do what you want using Javascript to control the load sequence by careful structuring of the HTML and manipulation of the DOM using code.