Page download speed

jbird4k

07-04-2002, 04:03 PM

Hi,

I need to measure how fast web pages download. Does anyone know where I can find a tool to do that?

bassleader

07-04-2002, 04:24 PM

I build my sites with Homesite, and its a built-in feature of that. I'm fairly sure Frontpage has it as well, though I wouldn't touch it.

What these tools really do is add up the size of the HTML, scripts, images and so on in the document (called the "document weight") and divide it by the modem speed. Obviously this will give you a theoretical value for the download time, what happens in practice will depend on the client's connection. Hope this helps.

BL

newmate

07-04-2002, 05:09 PM

bassleader gave you some good info. Most web authoring software has a load time estimation feature included that works on the method he described, but real world performance is affected by web traffic, route/server performance, client connection type/configuration etc. Here (http://www.tracert.com/sm.html) is a service that may help you get a better comparison of your software estimate and real world performance. Also ask some friends to measure from the time the page link is clicked to the intsant the page is fully loaded a few different times of the day/week and average them all and compare that to the "estimate" so you will have an Idea of what the estimate means in real life.

Vladdy

07-04-2002, 05:13 PM

I think this code should give you an idea on how long does it take to load your page, it would not take into account the server responce times:

Put this right after the <head> tag:

<script type="text/JavaScript">
var startLoad=new Date();
var endLoad=null;
var loadTime=null;

function pageLoaded()
{ endLoad=new Date();
loadTime=0.001*(endLoad.getTime()-startLoad.getTime());
alert("loading time is: " + loadTime + " seconds");
}
</script>

add the following to your <BODY> tag:
<BODY onload="javascript: pageLoaded()">

If you find alert too obnoxios, loadTime variable can be used to display loading time anywhere in your document.

If you need to know the time starting with server request - create a page which executes the following code:

// get current time
// store it in a cookie
window.location='yourpageurl';

then modify the pageLoad function above to read the startLoad time from the cookie

Edited to remove the space between java & script so the sript will work properly if / when copy / pasted. Just replaced the : with &#58; - boxer_1

jbird4k

07-06-2002, 09:55 PM

Bassleader, newmate, and vladdy,

Thanks for the info, Our goal is to go to business sites and time how long the end users machine takes to load the page.

In this case the utilties in the development tools would be sufficient.

The javascript may be a good alternative I will suggest it., we were looking for free /shareware type tools because our procurement process is lengthy and slow.

redhead

07-07-2002, 12:50 PM

If you want to see every pages loading time without putting in a script that you have to take out later, Mozilla has a handy little thing in the status bar... right now it says "Document: Done (9.83 secs)" (shows how slow my connection is:o)

Hope this helps :thumbsup: