HTML.co.uk

If I was to state one thing that makes me uncomfortable and I dislike most while browsing any website, my answer would be its load time. It is the most common and the biggest problem that websites take a long time to load and is surely disliked by all the users. It a well known fact that every individual has a very short attention span because of which a person can keep his attention focused for not more than 8 to 10 sec while waiting for a web page to be loaded. Although, the most ideal response time for any website would be 1 second, but this is really not practical considering the bandwidths available. This is where the HTML optimisation plays an important role.

HTML optimisation is a method or technique of minimizing the HTML file size without compromising on the appearance and the functionality of the web page while maximizing the speed of the page display and thereby offering maximum reader satisfaction. Therefore, it is very important for any web designer to consider three main aspects while designing any web page which primarily include optimising the web pages, brutalizing the graphics in your web page and structuring your site for speed. As the complexity and the need of web design is increasing by day, web designers are ignoring the importance of the load time.

There are a lot of extra characters such as spaces, comments, redundant attributes and returns that are very commonly being used in the web page. Carefully removing or deleting these characters will definitely not affect the appearance of the web page but will definitely help in reducing the size of the web page. Web page is all about balance between bandwidth and beauty. A skilled web designer is able to draw that thin line between functionality and appearance and can wisely design pages that not only appear good but at the same time display also quickly.

Try to eliminate all the leech graphics, leech here means that a graphic that is too big and heavy to sustain its load on its own. Icons should not be confused with graphics. An icon need not be realistic; it just needs to be recognizable in order to be effective. Therefore, avoid the use of very large icons in your website. It is always better to have text based navigation rather than ubiquitous image maps which would chew up a lot of bandwidth. A great way to unify a website visually would be to use a well optimized and well placed logo graphic instead of the un-optimised banner graphic which can only kill the web page’s load time. GIF images of words are nothing more than just being wasteful. Simple plain text transmits faster than anything on the net.

It would not take much of the time to do optimisation of your HTML but it has remarkable effects on the load time and definitely the user satisfaction. It is practically quite easy and achievable to reduce the load time to half without really compromising on the appearance or the looks of the web page.