Forums

Hi Karl.

I would like to suggest a simple improvement during the initial load phase.
Sometimes, depending on the connection speed or other factors, the typical circular flash "hourglass" works for several seconds and, maybe, the visitor leaves his visit thinking that the loading phase stopped.
In these case it would be useful (IMO) a different display, like this one: http://www.stevemccurry.com where the ongoing loading is visually represented, in order to give the visitor an idea of the time left to load the homepage.

Do you thing it would be feasible ?

Regards,
Marco

We already use progressive preloaders like this for images, that animate as the data is loaded. Unfortunately, the problem is of another nature: The reason why it sometimes takes time for your gallery to load, is not because it is loading data into Imagevue - It is the server processing the PHP, which in fact leaving the Imagevue SWF and client hanging, while waiting for the XML output. Even if we did have a visual loader for the initial XML, it would be at 0 progress until the server actually sends the processed XML back to flash ... and from then, it would take max 1 second to load so having a visual preloader here would make no sense.

Of course if we could do what you suggest, we would!

I am more curious why your gallery is slow initially ... Do you have a link? Since X2.5 some time ago, the gallery uses cache, which speeds up the loading time a lot. However, every time you make a change in admin, cache will need to be rebuilt first time you (or someone) views the gallery

I don't know exactly. Maybe the size of the background image (400k), maybe the caching mechanism (I know Nick was working on a more efficient version based on partial caching and I definitely hope it will be available with 2.7 !)

We'll see what happens with X2.7. I doubt background would slow down this initial screen ...

Karl, I think that the real reason is the size of my gallery, both in terms of file size and number of images uploaded. The caching mechanism introduced quite recently is a big improvement compared to the past, but it cannot be considered the final solution.
If you have a X2 draft preliminary version with some improvements in terms of performance, ready to be tested, I am available as beta tester.

Marco

Nick will have to consider this, but of course we are all for improving speed. After cache, basically it is loading a cache XML, so technically I can't think how to speed up the delivery of this much more than it is. Of course, it only delivers a cached XML if you do not make any changes in admin before you check the gallery.

I wouldn't mind checking your gallery if you have a link. I want to time the loading sequence and see where it stalls with firebug.