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Sneakers Regular user Melbourne, Australia 106 Posts |
Hi there,
Would it be at all possible to modify the Café pages so that all graphics are downloaded once - the first time we visit rather than refreshing every time we post, reply, or visit a new topic? An example would be all the 'smilies' that you offer. They're great, but sometimes they take forever to download (and I'm on a pretty quick broadband connection - albeit from Australia!). It would be nice if our browsers would pre-load all graphics and then we'd have them already stored locally - ready for display quite quickly. Thanks! |
negrette Regular user Washington, DC 178 Posts |
I have to agree with this too actually. Even on my fast connection at home and at work, this can at times be a little slow. It would make sense for us to be able to cache all those smiley faces and the other graphics, which very rarely change, rather than having to download them every time we move around in the Café. Is there some setting we can perhaps change on our web browsers?
Great suggestion Sneakers.
Mallusionist definition of the Simple force: The cards are fanned and if the spectator tries to take the wrong card, the magician holds onto the deck really, really tight.
http://www.mallusionist.com |
Sneakers Regular user Melbourne, Australia 106 Posts |
Quote:
On 2002-12-19 20:15, negrette wrote: Hey Negrette, Thanks for the support on this. I'm glad to know that I'm not the only one getting slow response when downloading the heaps of smilies & other graphics that are available here at the Café. There isn't a setting that you would change on your browser, however there is a simple java script that the Café web folks could add that would preload all the graphics for us. The problem is that I've noted that it's actually a little Java script that adds these smilies to our messages and not just the graphics themselves that download every time we move about. So, that may make the problem harder rather than simple. Curious that nobody from the staff at the Café has been able to get back to us on this though... Perhaps after the holiday season has ended. Cheers! |
Mary B. Café Tech Advisor Howard City, Michigan 626 Posts |
Hi guys, I'm not ignoring your questions, honest! I've been ill, and I don't like to answer technical questions when my brain isn't working right. It's not really working now, but I'll look into this in a couple of days, when I'm feeling better, ok?
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Sneakers Regular user Melbourne, Australia 106 Posts |
Hi Mary,
Not a problem at all. Hope you feel better soon! All the best for the new year. Cheers |
Gene Café Forum Developer Howard City, MI 276 Posts |
Technically speaking, all of the images are already loaded in your browser's cache if you've visited that page since you last cleared your cache. I don't have any problem viewing the Café - or rather its images - perhaps because I don't have the forum show me all of the smilies below my posting boxes. It's enough for me to know that I can still find out what code to use is by clicking on the "Smilies" link near the submit button. For me, images on pages I've already viewed come up almost instantly (I'm on cable here - at work I'm on DSL, about 4 times slower than here, and it still comes up as fast there). Regardless, there isn't anything that can be done to "preload" images that already exist in your browser's cache, because there's nothing (more) to preload - they're already there (look in your cache after viewing a page with all the smilies - you'll see they're there). It just so happens that the clickable smilie routines are what is mostly responsible for any delay in loading images. If you look at the source code of the pages where the clickable smilies appear, you'll notice there's a lot of code there - all of which is dynamically generated (please note that the smilies appear when the code is sent to the browser, not when the smilies are downloaded again, because they are not) - and I'm not about to introduce more code to the pages to do what already has been done. Sorry folks, but the issue isn't preloading, it's a combination of the nature of the routines used here and the (at times) massive data that must be generated to create the Café's pages. If you want to use cached images in a speedy manmer, don't use the smilies ... use the "Smilies" link to learn the code to use instead. In a nutshell (maybe a bit bigger than that ), that's how it all works.
I hope that helps to clear this up a bit?
Somebody kick me off the computer, will ya?
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Sneakers Regular user Melbourne, Australia 106 Posts |
Hi Gene,
Thanks for the note. I suspected that the issue may become difficult when I noticed that they were little java scripts that actually loaded all those smilies into our posts. After all, the graphics themselves are tiny and wouldn't take that long to load if that's all there was to them. Let me ask you this though: Is it possible to implement a cookie so that the java scripts stay and don't have to be downloaded with every page refresh? Thanks for your help! |
Gene Café Forum Developer Howard City, MI 276 Posts |
No, a cookie wouldn't do it. Those don't operate that way to begin with, but I get your meaning anyway. These forums, and similar forum scripts, are dynamically generated. Take the smilies for instance - the scripts take one code and repeat it for every smilie. That's the nature of these things. One javascript line for one smilie might not be that big (it isn't), but repeat that almost 150 times here ... well, you get the picture. I suppose it would be possible to "build" the smilies javascript codes and save the entire lot as one block of code somewhere in the database to be called when required, but that same large block of code - whether dynamically generated or saved as a block somewhere - would still have to be sent to the browser. There's no getting around that. I really think that any benefit derived from saving a block of code in that manner would be negligible.
You're welcome!
Somebody kick me off the computer, will ya?
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Sneakers Regular user Melbourne, Australia 106 Posts |
Okie dokie. It's a perfectly useable forum as it is. It's just a tad slow for some of us "out here" types.
Thanks for the effort anyway. Cheers! |
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