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Thread: Usability tool for checking total page size

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Number of posts in this thread: 10 (In chronological order)

From: Johanna Frohm
Date: Wed, Jan 09 2002 6:11AM
Subject: Usability tool for checking total page size
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In the past one of Bobby's reports was a web page's total size for the
page and the images on it. That is no longer provided, unless I am not
looking far enough. Is anyone familiar with another online tool or free
/ low cost downloadable tool that will provide similar information?

This was a very handy report to illustrate the significance of resizing
images, the impact of file size on download time, and so on.

Thanks.

Johanna
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-Johanna Frohm, Employee Computer Training Center Coordinator
mailto: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = http://www.delta.edu/jfrohm
Employee Computer Training Center http://www.delta.edu/emptrain



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From: Joe Huggins
Date: Wed, Jan 09 2002 6:37AM
Subject: RE: Usability tool for checking total page size
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You can look at www.usablenet.com. They have this service.

Joe Huggins
Director of Technology
Colorado Area Health Education Center (AHEC)
Phone-303.724.1131
Cell-303.667.9232
www.uchsc.edu/ahec <http://www.uchsc.edu/ahec>;
'he was a fine idea at the time
now he's a brilliant mistake'



- -----Original Message-----
From: Johanna Frohm [mailto: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = ]
Sent: Wednesday, January 09, 2002 5:04 AM
To: WebAIM forum
Subject: Usability tool for checking total page size


In the past one of Bobby's reports was a web page's total size for the page
and the images on it. That is no longer provided, unless I am not looking
far enough. Is anyone familiar with another online tool or free / low cost
downloadable tool that will provide similar information?

This was a very handy report to illustrate the significance of resizing
images, the impact of file size on download time, and so on.

Thanks.

Johanna =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-Johanna Frohm, Employee Computer Training Center Coordinator
mailto: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = http://www.delta.edu/jfrohm
Employee Computer Training Center http://www.delta.edu/emptrain



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To subscribe, unsubscribe, or view list archives,
visit http://www.webaim.org/discussion/


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From: Johanna Frohm
Date: Wed, Jan 09 2002 2:00PM
Subject: Re: Usability tool for checking total page size
← Previous message | Next message →

= EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = wrote:

> You can look at www.usablenet.com. They have this service.
>

Thank you, Joe. I just ran the evaluation version on a page with images. The
report did not reflect a list of images. In one of the demonstration pages I
saw a "list of images". Is a particular version I would need?

I provide workshops. In the past Bobby was handy, because faculty and staff
could use Bobby to evaluate a page during a workshop. From there we could look
at images and, if necessary, work on them.

Any ideas will be appreciated. Thanks.

Johanna
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-Johanna Frohm, Employee Computer Training Center Coordinator
mailto: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = http://www.delta.edu/jfrohm
Employee Computer Training Center http://www.delta.edu/emptrain




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From: Joe Huggins
Date: Wed, Jan 09 2002 4:45PM
Subject: RE: Usability tool for checking total page size
← Previous message | Next message →

Yes, I know what you mean about using Bobby for workshops, I have done the
same. I haven't used UsableNet during workshops because it doesn't return
something immediately. We went ahead and purchased the Lift for Dreamweaver
product but are just beginning to evaluate it.

Joe Huggins
Director of Technology
Colorado Area Health Education Center (AHEC)
Phone-303.724.1131
Cell-303.667.9232
www.uchsc.edu/ahec
'he was a fine idea at the time
now he's a brilliant mistake'



- -----Original Message-----
From: Johanna Frohm [mailto: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = ]
Sent: Wednesday, January 09, 2002 6:53 AM
To: WebAIM forum
Subject: Re: Usability tool for checking total page size


= EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = wrote:

> You can look at www.usablenet.com. They have this service.
>

Thank you, Joe. I just ran the evaluation version on a page with images. The
report did not reflect a list of images. In one of the demonstration pages I
saw a "list of images". Is a particular version I would need?

I provide workshops. In the past Bobby was handy, because faculty and staff
could use Bobby to evaluate a page during a workshop. From there we could
look at images and, if necessary, work on them.

Any ideas will be appreciated. Thanks.

Johanna =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-Johanna Frohm, Employee Computer Training Center Coordinator
mailto: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = http://www.delta.edu/jfrohm
Employee Computer Training Center http://www.delta.edu/emptrain




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To subscribe, unsubscribe, or view list archives,
visit http://www.webaim.org/discussion/


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From: Tom Dahm
Date: Wed, Jan 09 2002 9:14PM
Subject: Re: Usability tool for checking total page size
← Previous message | Next message →

Johanna,

This tool at NetMechanic might also help:

http://www.netmechanic.com/toolbox/html-code.htm

When you get your results, look at the Load Time Report. That shows an
estimated download time for your page, and the total byte size for each
object, including images, applets, etc.

This is a free sample, and would probably do the job for a class. Hope
this helps you.

Tom Dahm
NetMechanic, Inc.

>Johanna,
>
>I know this isn't exactly what you're looking for, but it
>does give you a list of all the graphics on a site with
>their size and download time. By clicking on the size of
>the graphic, you can see several different options for
>optimizing the graphic and what difference it will make in
>the download time.
>
>http://www.netmechanic.com/GIFBot/optimize-graphic.htm
>
>Sara Heine
>Kansas State University
>
>> -

From: Johanna Frohm
Date: Wed, Jan 09 2002 10:12PM
Subject: Re: Usability tool for checking total page size
← Previous message | Next message →

Tom,

> This tool at NetMechanic might also help:
>
> http://www.netmechanic.com/toolbox/html-code.htm
>
> When you get your results, look at the Load Time Report. That shows an
> estimated download time for your page, and the total byte size for each
> object, including images, applets, etc.
>
> This is a free sample, and would probably do the job for a class. Hope
> this helps you.

Yes. This will do it. Thank you very much.

Johanna



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From: Johanna Frohm
Date: Thu, Jan 10 2002 1:45AM
Subject: Re: Usability tool for checking total page size
← Previous message | Next message →

> I know this isn't exactly what you're looking for, but it
> does give you a list of all the graphics on a site with
> their size and download time. By clicking on the size of
> the graphic, you can see several different options for
> optimizing the graphic and what difference it will make in
> the download time.
>
> http://www.netmechanic.com/GIFBot/optimize-graphic.htm
>
> Sara Heine
> Kansas State University
>

This can work. It will be useful. Thank you. If there are other tools, I
would appreciate hearing about them.

Thank you.

Johanna




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From: Holly Marie
Date: Thu, Jan 10 2002 8:30AM
Subject: Re: Usability tool for checking total page size
← Previous message | Next message →

Many of your web editing and authoring tools might have this feature
built right in.

My Homesite will give document size or weights, and also image sizing
and weight for each image.
Though one has to be careful, because background images and certain
kinds of images embedded in other ways will not figure into the total
load time and amounts, both in online tools and off. So great care has
to be taken when loading in web site images in different ways.

Other tools that are great for image size and reduction are the graphics
app programs. They will generally give various download times for
different optimisations, when you try and export a web image. There you
will see what time it takes per image at various reductions of sizing,
as well as quality of the image with the various optimisations.

The Bobby tool was neat, Netmechanic(www.netmechanic.com) is good. I
have not been there in a long while, but believe they use to offer an
option for helping to cut the meat out of the page and images, too.

In case it was not mentioned.... Tune Up - Web Site Garage is another.
Load Time Check - reports load time from 14.4K to T1.
http://websitegarage.netscape.com/O=wsg/tuneup_plus/

A good rule of thumb, whether people have excellent connections or not,
is to keep that page total weight in around 30-50K.
Generally people surfing on the web, want results quickly, and are not
likely to enjoy waiting for any documents to load up for long lengths of
time. This is true also on the eCommerce pages, as well as the search
and directory pages. More and more people are opting for google
searching, than others because there is little to distract, and the tool
does just what you want and loads the quickest, or as one of the
quickest on the Net. Naturally if it is a Multimedia, art, or
sound/music site, this may take longer, but people viewing or visiting
those sites, know this and expect a bit longer download or loading
times. Many of my pages, including graphics are under 20K and some are
even less than 10.


Image sizing and doc weight are not the only items that affect a page
load, there are many items that these tools cannot check or factor in,
including:
Other things affecting download times:
Image heights missing
Table sizing missing
Too many tables and nested tables
(images in tables without sizing multiplies that problem.... table
cannot render until the image size is known)
use of many scripts, preloads, mm, etc... Background images may slow a
load, sliced images and image maps may slow a load.
Deprecated coding or older HTML coding... CSS and cleaner code not only
makes a web page doc smaller in size, it makes it easier for the browser
or device to understand and load up quickly. So nesting and other items
may greatly affect a page load.

yesterday, I experienced a very simple small page taking forever to
load... the reason?
Someone coded in a font tag with dreamweaver, set to some font that
*very few* people have on their systems, and there were no fonts or
generic font families listed in that tag. So, after my browsers... and
it was very very slow to load up in Opera.... looked for this barnum
family font and could not find it on my machine, then it had to decide
what font or use the default font on the web site. Not sure why it took
so long but it did. And the fonts it used messed up the display of the
page, that the designer was after.

Having too many fonts, in a list, may slow a page load, also. Or at
least I have heard this. 3-4 with a generic font-family named at the end
is a good idea.

Other Links:
EchoEcho, has tools and stats info, also:[good site]
http://www.echoecho.com/
HTML Help Validator, may... cannot remember, but it is an excellent
validator right up there with the W3C
server may be overbusy or down at times, but the validator is good and
gives examples where errors are in the web page.
http://www.htmlhelp.com/tools/validator/
From Web Site Testing Tools:
http://www.softwareqatest.com/qatweb1.html
Load and Peformance Tools:
http://www.softwareqatest.com/qatweb1.html#LOAD
Other web Test tools(for various items including usability)
http://www.softwareqatest.com/qatweb1.html#OTHER
FREE load time check(not sure if it is an itemized check), online
[other web site tools available for free, too]
http://www.virtualstampede.com/tools.htm
Web Trend Tools for the web site[think they use netmechanic for one of
the tools}
http://www.webtrends.net/tools/
"Our Checker will check your entire site or a single page, showing you
the load times of your pages including all embedded objects. When we're
done we'll report all broken links we found and the status of each link
we tested."
http://www.webtrends.net/tools/mechanic/load.htm

Lift and there is a product for MM dreamweaver, but this one costs and
there is an online service, but believe that may cost...
and I believe this one was mentioned a few times, also.
http://www.usablenet.com/


holly





From: "Johanna Frohm"


> In the past one of Bobby's reports was a web page's total size for the
> page and the images on it. That is no longer provided, unless I am not
> looking far enough. Is anyone familiar with another online tool or
free
> / low cost downloadable tool that will provide similar information?
>
> This was a very handy report to illustrate the significance of
resizing
> images, the impact of file size on download time, and so on.
>
> Thanks.
>
> Johanna




-

From: Michael Goddard
Date: Thu, Jan 10 2002 10:11AM
Subject: Re: Usability tool for checking total page size
← Previous message | Next message →

Just out of curiosity...but when Bobby was free did you download the version
you could install on your machine? I know that had this type of version.was
available. Unfortunately my PC's hard disk went bad and I lost my version
of it.

Does anyone have this?? Or is it illegal to give out copies of the previous
and free version of the Bobby?

Michael
- ----- Original Message -----
From: Johanna Frohm < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
To: WebAIM forum < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
Sent: Wednesday, January 09, 2002 2:59 PM
Subject: Re: Usability tool for checking total page size


> > I know this isn't exactly what you're looking for, but it
> > does give you a list of all the graphics on a site with
> > their size and download time. By clicking on the size of
> > the graphic, you can see several different options for
> > optimizing the graphic and what difference it will make in
> > the download time.
> >
> > http://www.netmechanic.com/GIFBot/optimize-graphic.htm
> >
> > Sara Heine
> > Kansas State University
> >
>
> This can work. It will be useful. Thank you. If there are other tools, I
> would appreciate hearing about them.
>
> Thank you.
>
> Johanna
>
>
>
>
> ---
> To subscribe, unsubscribe, or view list archives,
> visit http://www.webaim.org/discussion/
>
>




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From: suski@qwestinternet.net
Date: Thu, Jan 10 2002 1:44PM
Subject: usability tool for checking total page size
← Previous message | No next message

Here's a free tool to check page size:
http://www.echoecho.com/toolhtmlinspector.htm. Just choose the load time
option. Hope this helps.


> Date: 9 Jan 2002 06:11:16 -0600
> From: Johanna Frohm < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
> Subject: Usability tool for checking total page size
>
> In the past one of Bobby's reports was a web page's total size for the
> page and the images on it. That is no longer provided, unless I am not
> looking far enough. Is anyone familiar with another online tool or free
> / low cost downloadable tool that will provide similar information?
>
> This was a very handy report to illustrate the significance of resizing
> images, the impact of file size on download time, and so on.



-