Peter, some more suggestions: [warning to non-webheads - technical content!]
The order frame is pretty bloated with <FONT> statements, <BGCOLOR> statements, ALIGN options, Javascript, and the like. (But mostly <FONT> statements!) MOST of this would go away by using a style sheet.
It seems to me that most of the people who are going to go in for this flashy stuff are going to have the latest wizzy 4.0 browsers. If you make that assumption, you can take out a lot of the bloat by using a style sheet. (But please, please, attach the style sheet, do not embed it in the frame!)
While it may not be that noticible to individuals, unless they are on a slow connection, I believe that you can take out something like 75% of the bytes in this frame (probably more like 80-90%) by using an attached style sheet. This means perhaps a 75% reduction in bandwidth utilization in aggregate for the site vs the way it's currently coded. I think we'd all appreciate the outcome of that improvement.
Your Javascript should also be put in a separate file - use <SCRIPT SRC="blahblah.js"> instead of embedding the Javascript. (Although you don't have a whole lot of Javascript in there right now, so that will not gain you as much as the style sheet.)
Alternately, if for some reason you don't like the <SCRIPT SRC=...> approach, you can put all of your Javascript functions in the main frame (e.g. the one that defines the frameset). You then reference them as "parent.blah()". Of course, this comes at the expense of a lot of unnecessary "parent." in your "on" statements. SRC= really is better, but does lose compatability with Netscape 2.x.
People with pre-4.0 Netscape browsers and with pre-3.0 MSIE browsers will see plain text in their default font, but I don't think that's so terrible - they want the flash, let em' upgrade!
Plus you gain some very nice things by using an attached style sheet:
1. You can have separate style sheets for MSIE 4.0, MSIE 3.0, Netscape 4.0, etc. etc. so that you can optimize the appearance in each.
2. You could even have special style sheets for special needs, that could be selected in the user preferences. You could have the "coke bottle" style for those that need big fonts, the "magnifying glass" style for those who like a lot of stuff packed in a small space, and the "neon glow" style for those that REALLY like flash.
Seriously, you want real cool WITH functionality, give us a "gallery" where we can choose between various style sheets, and everybody should be happy. If you don't want to do this on the server-side, you could easily select from a (limited) number of style sheets in client-side Javascript using a cookie value. I'd suggest a single-character suffix to the style sheet base name, which gives you plenty of variations. This could be coded quite tersely in Javascript.
3. Even if you don't go to the extreme of user-selectable style sheets, at least you gain the ability to instantly change the look of the entire interface by changing just the style sheet(s).
The style sheet gets downloaded ONCE and then gets referenced from the browser's cache. Almost ALL of the style-related HTML can then go away - most of the markup that is left should be structure-related - the original intent of HTML.
(You'll still have to do the superscript/subscript diddling for the fractions, unless you want to use <SPAN class=...> tags, which of course will take more space than the <SUP></SUP> tags you are using now. But with a style sheet, you can precisely control exactly how you want superscripts and subscripts to look. For example, you could make them use a smaller font, without the need for a bunch of <FONT> tags.)
The speed IS vastly improved over a couple of days ago when I tried this. It seems that something was just misconfigured on the server at that time, because it was taking FOR-EVER to get any page from the new servers. |
