Webpage with photos downloads slow!

**Yannis XLS** · 13 February 2013, 09:59 PM

Hello to all! I'm a newbie here and as a Xara software user too!

I've designed my first site just a few days ago where in one of my pages I have about 20 photos of 500x330px (optimised). The thing is that this page downloads very slow.

In IE9, by the way, when I click on the link of that particular page, the link is surounded by the dotted-line rectangle indicating that it is selected but nothing else seems to happen up to the moment the whole page appears. I mean, there isn't any kind of indication that something is downloading -like the animated gif circle goes round and round where the favicon is.

Maybe it's my hosting speed but is there any other way to optimize it? It seems that the browser(?) waits untill all the photos are downloaded in order to appear the whole page at once. So, how can I make it to download the page image by image or progressive?

I hope I'm not asking too much!

[You have to excuse me for my english, I'm not from this neighborhood...]

**steve.ledger** · 13 February 2013, 10:18 PM

I'd suggest you post the URL to your site so we don't have to guess

**Yannis XLS** · 13 February 2013, 10:37 PM

Sorry... It's the "rock climbing" page.

http://1mation.com/

**steve.ledger** · 13 February 2013, 10:48 PM

Yes it does seem very slow.
The site seems optimised well enough, the photos not oversized or of large data sizes.
I would re think the use of transitions though as each image is loaded before the transition starts, that's one way of causing delays.

The dotted rectangle around text links is just IE's quirky way to highlight a hyperlink which is clicked.
Go to a google search and then click and hold any link in the results, you'll see the same.

**Yannis XLS** · 13 February 2013, 11:16 PM

Hey, thanks for your quick response!

OK, I will re-think myself the use of transitions too, though I don't think that this causes the problem on that page.

I know that this is the way that IE highlight a hyperlink. I'm just wondering why there isn't any other indication -anywhere on the screen- to show that something is going on, like something is downloading.

Should I export the images as progressive JPGs in order the rest of the page to download immediately? Or, is there any way to force the browser to display the text and everything, while downloading the images?

**steve.ledger** · 14 February 2013, 12:00 AM

Personally, first I would remove all transitions and export as a test site, upload it to a test folder and compare the two.

But, unless you want to start getting into using custom scripting and custom HTML there's no way you can change how Xara Web Designer HTMLfilter outputs your site source and compresses your JPG files or the way they load into browsers. XWD has been developed so that users don't have to fiddle with the source after export or worry about what's under the hood.

**Yannis XLS** · 14 February 2013, 12:30 AM

Oh, I see...

I will follow your advice about testing the site without the transitions.

Thank you so much sledger!

**pauland** · 14 February 2013, 12:38 AM

The page has circa 2MB of images. 36 or so 45-75K in size.

On my broadband it loads fast enough.

**steve.ledger** · 14 February 2013, 01:29 AM

There you go, it loads fast enough for Paul so you don't need to do anything more

**pauland** · 14 February 2013, 07:01 AM

There you go, it loads fast enough for Paul so you don't need to do anything more

You cheeky so and so, that's not what I meant at all!

2MB of web images is bound to have an effect on loading, for me it's no big deal, but for many it would be noticeable. I counted 36 (not twenty!) or so larger images, but there are more image elements in addition to that.