Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Programming The Internet IT Technology

Interview With Web Optimization Expert Andy King 25

Posted by timothy from the make-things-simple dept.
Adrian Holovaty writes "Andy King, author of the new book Speed Up Your Site: Web Site Optimization, was kind enough to chat with me about Web optimization -- making pages load and work efficiently -- and how it applies to news/information sites and weblogs. Andy founded WebReference.com and Javascript.com, two of the most respected Web development sites."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Interview With Web Optimization Expert Andy King More

Interview With Web Optimization Expert Andy King

Comments Filter:

  • Banner Ads (Score:5, Insightful)

    by misfit13b ( 572861 ) on Tuesday March 11, 2003 @02:19PM (#5485945)
    "At a certain point users will reject a multitude of banner ads."

    Ya think? Just check out one of the sites he founded, webreference.com [webreference.com]. People take web design advice from that example?!

    • Re:Banner Ads (Score:4, Interesting)

      by cyb97 ( 520582 ) <cyb97@noxtension.com> on Tuesday March 11, 2003 @02:22PM (#5485968) Homepage Journal
      Founded != designed... further websites is usually taken over my moneygrabbing capitalists when they start to receive hits enough to charge ppv instead of clickthrough...
      No flame intended ;-)
      • No flame taken. :^)

        However, if I were him, that's not a website I'd like to be associated with in the second paragraph of a Q&A about web optimization. And just to be catty, that color scheme leaves a lot to be desired too. ha ha ;^)

      • Holy cr... (Score:3, Interesting)

        by metamatic ( 202216 )
        I remember using webreference.com a couple of years ago. Hadn't been there in ages, just went back to look and... yeesh!

        If I hadn't read this story, I would have assumed that the owners of webreference.com had let the domain expire, and some lamer had snatched it up and used it as a backup URL for his GeoCities site.

        Needless to say, webreference.com is being deleted from my bookmarks as soon as I hit Submit.
    • So I'm not the only one to check out the sites and say "What the hell?"

      Maybe the guy is a great optimiser... but useful design, isn't his game.

  • Oh, the hypocrisy! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Wonko42 ( 29194 ) <ryan+slashdotNO@SPAMwonko.com> on Tuesday March 11, 2003 @02:29PM (#5486014) Homepage
    I'll listen to this guy's advice on web optimization as soon as his sites begin adhering to W3C standards. Until then, he's a monkey in a tree throwing poo at the other monkeys trying to get them to stop throwing their poo at him.

  • Tables suck? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by dimator ( 71399 ) on Tuesday March 11, 2003 @04:32PM (#5487022) Homepage Journal
    OK, I'm down with modern-day new-fangled design strategies, but sometimes a table does exactly what I need, with a minimum of effort. Am I evil?

    • I'm down with modern-day new-fangled design strategies, but sometimes a table does exactly what I need, with a minimum of effort. Am I evil?

      No, but if you're going to use them (on say ... your /. link [ucla.edu]) you should probably make certain they don't explode at font-sizes other than the one on your development platform (for example, on say ... your /. link [ucla.edu]). :p

  • Superior Site (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 11, 2003 @06:59PM (#5488663)
    Personally I think www.w3schools.com is a far [far far] superior site.
  • Did he just pick up the nearest magazine or book and describe the layout that he saw?
  • Some news sites still use tables, font tags and single pixel GIFs, which can be inefficient. Switching to high-level CSS selectors and CSS layout control can make a big difference in size and speed.

    Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't this cut out a lot of legacy browsers? I'm also not sure about ADA compliance w/ this methodology. I imaging news sites would want to appeal to the widest possible audience.

    • You got your facts backwards. Structural HTML + CSS presentation is the best way to combine nice presentation (for conforming browsers) with backwards compatibility and accessibility.

      • No, no, no.

        Good site design is driven by a clearly defined business requirements.

        The design of open Web news sites, which are dependent on advertising support, is driven by a commercial requirement that the layout -- including all of the advertising -- be visually consistent across all supported browsers.

        Most of us define "supported browsers" to include 4.x and newer. That is a business decision, not a technical decision, and it's driven by observation of actual usage.

        Your definition of "backwards comp
    • Try Wired News [wired.com].

      No tables, and looks great in the latest versions of Mozilla and Explorer. Not only that, try the same page with Lynx or Avantgo and see it working flawlessly with them too.

      Fh
      • When I tried w/ Netscape 4.76, I go this message: Wired News content is accessible to all versions of every browser. However, this browser may not support basic Web standards, preventing the display of our site's design details.

        Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of CSS and I do use it, but I can't tell people with older browsers to go take a hike, and I don't have time to code multiple pages (like Wired is apparently doing.)

        • That's exactly what I'm looking for!

          They just keep one version of their site (no need to code multiple pages). It will look good on modern browsers that implement CSS (like IE and Mozilla), but it will also work flawlessly with not capable browsers (eg Netscape 4.76). You will only lose the fancy stuff, but you will able to access all the content. Try with Lynx or with a speech reader browser for blind people, it will work.

          Fh

Slashdot Top Deals

To program is to be.

Close