What total page size (including CSS, JavaScript, and media) do you generally shoot for when you create your websites? Any tricks you'd like to share? Here's a video with 14 tips about how to decrease page load time, along with the accompanying website with a total of 34 performance tips.

I hope that "decrease" load time instead of "increase"

Generally, it depends on the stickiness of your visitors.

For visitors who visit more than one page, minimize html (by using css), consolidate and compress css and javascript. Set reasonable expire times in the response headers. This will promote client caching and allow subsequent pages to load faster (ie... less to download).

For visitors who most likely see only one page, moving the css and js into the page will work out better.

In either case, smaller image sizes and fewer images will help. Some people merge images into one big one and use css to show the right part in the right place. This might be overkill but, it will reduce pings to the server. Avoid inline css, it can bloat pages quickly.

If you must send big pages, gzip compression works wonders. For a high traffic site, I recommend using a gzip accelerator card instead of doing it with code (definitely use a card for ssl).

Besides load time, for some pages render time can be a big deal. Especially with data tables. For those, giving rendering hints to the browser can help a great deal. Use thead, tfoot, and tbody (in that order). Avoid colspans and rowspans because they can cause the rendering engine in the browser to have to start over.

Including javascript at the bottom of the document will help render time too. Try to avoid the use of document.write in js as well.

Originally Posted by willcode4beer

I hope that "decrease" load time instead of "increase"

Generally, it depends on the stickiness of your visitors.

For visitors who visit more than one page, minimize html (by using css), consolidate and compress css and javascript. Set reasonable expire times in the response headers. This will promote client caching and allow subsequent pages to load faster (ie... less to download).

For visitors who most likely see only one page, moving the css and js into the page will work out better.

In either case, smaller image sizes and fewer images will help. Some people merge images into one big one and use css to show the right part in the right place. This might be overkill but, it will reduce pings to the server. Avoid inline css, it can bloat pages quickly.

If you must send big pages, gzip compression works wonders. For a high traffic site, I recommend using a gzip accelerator card instead of doing it with code (definitely use a card for ssl).

Besides load time, for some pages render time can be a big deal. Especially with data tables. For those, giving rendering hints to the browser can help a great deal. Use thead, tfoot, and tbody (in that order). Avoid colspans and rowspans because they can cause the rendering engine in the browser to have to start over.

Including javascript at the bottom of the document will help render time too. Try to avoid the use of document.write in js as well.

Oops, yeah, that was supposed to be decrease...I fixed it. Render time is a big deal because if at least some of the page renders, it gives the impression of activity, which will make it more likely that the user stays on the page until it finishes loading. Proper rendering can help offset large page sizes. But I'm still curious, what page size do you generally shoot for?

I don't. I realize there are still Amish people on dial up (), but I assume most of my readers have broadband.

Okay, so asking the question a little bit differently, what page size makes you go, "Oh boy, I'd better work on this a bit." 100k? 200k? 300k? More?

I hope that "decrease" load time instead of "increase"

Agree on this. People will not wait until your site is fully loaded. Some people will leave immediately your site once they encounter slow loading of page.

This question depends a lot on your audience. I took many more liberties, for example, when doing a pages for a multi-million dollar massive development targeted at upper-class people, than when doing one for a boat rental company.