How to get the page to load before appearing?

[ChrisMacPherson]

I have noticed on a lot of sites that all of the images and page contents load before the page is displayed. Is this just to do with the browser, or can I make this happen with some code?<br><br>Chris MacPherson<br><A HREF="

http://www.technomusic.org/macpweb"

TARGET="_new">

http://www.technomusic.org/macpweb</A>

 

[palbano]

Dear Chris,<br><br>Try putting the entire contents of the page inside a table cell.<br><br>Good luck<br>-pete

 

[carpeliam]

Oh wow.. can you imagine? An entire page inside one table cell? Well... I can't say that I'd encourage it, but that's up to you ) <p>Liam Morley<br><a href=mailto:lmorley@wpi.edu>lmorley@wpi.edu</a><br><a href=

http://www.wpi.edu/~lmorley/>

] :: imotic :: website :: [</a><br>"light the deep, and bring silence to the world.<br>
light the world, and bring depth to the silence.

 

[palbano]

Yeah, I had mixed feelings about posting that, but it's their web site so I figure they are responsible for.... blah blah blah... yada yada yada ;0)<br><br>-pete

 

[carpeliam]

Oh wow. I just came across a page with everything inside a single table cell. No wonder it took so long to load. Please folks, <b>don't do that sort of thing</b> ) I was looking for the sys admin on my college's website, and one of the many links that came up on a search for &quot;systems administrator&quot; was <A HREF="

http://cee.wpi.edu/FW_Proceedings/tom_paper.html"

TARGET="_new">

http://cee.wpi.edu/FW_Proceedings/tom_paper.html</A>

.<br><br>Oh, and if anybody wants to help me find out how to contact my sys admin, feel free ) <p>Liam Morley<br><a href=mailto:lmorley@wpi.edu>lmorley@wpi.edu</a><br><a href=

http://www.wpi.edu/~lmorley/>

] :: imotic :: website :: [</a><br>"light the deep, and bring silence to the world.<br>
light the world, and bring depth to the silence.

 

[palbano]

Liam,<br><br>If your on a NT system I don't think there is any dway to track down the sysadmin. I thought that on a UNIX server you just had to write a script and run it and he will appear won't he?<br><br>-pete

 

[carpeliam]

Well this is on my college server, which is Unix... write any kind of script? I don't understand.. <p>Liam Morley<br><a href=mailto:lmorley@wpi.edu>lmorley@wpi.edu</a><br><a href=

http://www.wpi.edu/~lmorley/>

] :: imotic :: website :: [</a><br>"light the deep, and bring silence to the world.<br>
light the world, and bring depth to the silence.

 

[palbano]

Sorry... it was a lame UNIX wise crack.<br><br>I was having one of those days<br><br>-pete

 

[carpeliam]

sorry, I was a little slow yesterday ) <p>Liam Morley<br><a href=mailto:lmorley@wpi.edu>lmorley@wpi.edu</a><br><a href=

http://www.wpi.edu/~lmorley/>

] :: imotic :: website :: [</a><br>"light the deep, and bring silence to the world.<br>
light the world, and bring depth to the silence.

 

[torkil]

You can get a layer to position itself on top of your contents until the page is done loading - then the layer goes invisible... VOILA!<br><br>Get that script at <A HREF="

http://www.bratta.com"

TARGET="_new">

http://www.bratta.com</A><br><br>Good

luck!

 

[carpeliam]

ughhh.... the whole thing is disgusting.<br><br>In any case... imagine being the user in a situation like that. Sure, everything loads at exactly the same moment. But what about until then? The wonderful side-effect of incremental loading is that it serves as a carrot. The user knows the page is loading because he/she can see it. When I see a page that's completely blank, I exit the browser. I'm not going to wait around.<br><br>Theoretically, it's a bad idea to make your user wait until the entire page is loaded before he/she can see any of it. PLEASE just let your pages load in a regular way.. your visitors will be happy ) <p>Liam Morley<br><a href=mailto:lmorley@wpi.edu>lmorley@wpi.edu</a><br><a href=

http://www.wpi.edu/~lmorley/>

] :: imotic :: website :: [</a><br>"light the deep, and bring silence to the world.<br>
light the world, and bring depth to the silence.

 

[ChrisMacPherson]

Most of my pages are very basic and have a few tiny(1k) graphics. It just looks ugly sometimes when it's loading up and also shows exactly how the page is formed. I know that most web designers could work it out in about five seconds, but I think it's nice to be presented with a page all in one go without knowing how everything fits together.<br><br>I agree with what you say about making users wait, which I agree will not be very interesting and it may turn them away, but if the page only takes 20 seconds to load then I can see no harm in this method.<br><br>I will test it out anyway and see. <br><br>Thanks for all the suggestions!!<br><br>Chris Macpherson

 

[carpeliam]

it'll take even longer than that if you put everything inside a single table cell... tables eat up an incredible amount of overhead. So it'll end up taking more than just 20 seconds... and I'm not sure what the latest statistics are as far as how long the average web user will wait for a page to load, but I'm pretty sure it's not that much. plus, any dHTML or CSS is likely not to work in Netscape, as Netscape is horrible when it comes to tables and CSS.<br><br>putting everything inside a single table cell is bad for performance in numerous different ways, and there are probably a lot that I'm forgetting. It's up to you, though... <p>Liam Morley<br><a href=mailto:lmorley@wpi.edu>lmorley@wpi.edu</a><br><a href=

http://www.wpi.edu/~lmorley/>

] :: imotic :: website :: [</a><br>"light the deep, and bring silence to the world.<br>
light the world, and bring depth to the silence.

 

[JuRo]

You're right folks, it is not effective to do this, even when I am not sure what you have&nbsp;&nbsp;meaned with &quot;to load the whole content of a page into a single table cell&quot;. Its probably a way to archive the effect. In any case, Thedamager, maybe you want a JavaScript solution for preloading images into the browser's cache (&lt;-hope, something like:<br><br>&lt;script language=&quot;JavaScript&quot;&gt;&lt;!--<br>pic1 = new Image();<br>pic1.src = &quot;path/to/image.png&quot;;<br>pic2 = ...;<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>--&gt;&lt;/script&gt;<br><br>Hmm, probably no . You have a problem with the text moving around when the images are being proccessed? Try to set them width&height attributes. Its a bit faster then too, the proccess.

 

[carpeliam]

I'll DEFINITELY second Juro's point about <FONT FACE=monospace>WIDTH</font> and <FONT FACE=monospace>HEIGHT</font> attributes. For ANY image you use, ALWAYS set the <FONT FACE=monospace>WIDTH</font> and <FONT FACE=monospace>HEIGHT</font> attributes. It makes your page load faster, and it's standards-compliant.. works better with older browsers, too. I don't want to preach here ) but I really can't stress that enough.<br><br>And also... your images shouldn't have an integral part in &quot;how your page fits together&quot;. Images are not for structuring your layout- they are elements that are positioned externally. Spacer GIF's are the work of the devil ) <p>Liam Morley<br><a href=mailto:lmorley@wpi.edu>lmorley@wpi.edu</a><br><a href=

http://www.wpi.edu/~lmorley/>

] :: imotic :: website :: [</a><br>"light the deep, and bring silence to the world.<br>
light the world, and bring depth to the silence.

 

[ChrisMacPherson]

I agree with most of the comments posted here, and then I visited the site suggested by Torkil. That site has a a script which will do exactly what I want and it has been tested on netscape, IE... browsers. Thanks to Torkil and everyone else but I have found what I'm looking for!! That site is amazing!!!<br><br>See ya <br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Chris MacPherson