l1

Low number of files at a glance

Site Genre: Pattern Group l

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Figure L1.1 Yahoo!’s homepage has a minimalist design with very few images, making it fast to load.

Background

You can make your Web site pages load faster by minimizing the number of files contained in those pages. This pattern can be used by itself, or in conjunction with other patterns for creating fast-loading Web pages, such as FAST-LOADING IMAGES (L2), SEPARATE TABLES (L3), HTML POWER (L4), and FAST-LOADING CONTENT (L6).

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PROBLEM

Web pages that have many images, audio/video files, applets, and plug-ins are slow to load.

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SOLUTION

magnify image Figure L1.2 Use a variety of techniques to minimize the number of files that are downloaded with each Web page.

Determine your most important pages and focus your efforts on tuning those pages for download performance. Minimize the number of files that absolutely must be loaded for each page. Take advantage of features in HTML and in Web browsers that minimize the number of images customers have to download. In addition, move slow-loading objects from the most important pages to other pages, and provide links to and previews of them instead.

Other Patterns to Consider

Apply HTML POWER (L4) to use HTML in place of images. Use REUSABLE IMAGES (L5) throughout your site so that you can minimize the download cost. Use a low number of files in conjunction with FAST-LOADING IMAGES (L2) and SEPARATE TABLES (L3) to greatly improve the download time of individual Web pages. Two important pages that you can optimize for a low number of files are the HOMEPAGE PORTAL (C1) and the QUICK-FLOW CHECKOUT (F1).

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