Why am I waiting so long for some websites to download?

Too many sites I go to take a long time to render - often times over 30 seconds. The page displays but freezes so that the user is unable to scroll down and often the site temporarily freezes the browser so that one is unable to go elsewhere. (I find this issue to be more prevalent with IE than Firefox. It also applies only to the tabs and windows associated with that particular session.)

I've looked at the coding of these pages. Most of them are professionally done. The coding is fine and the graphics of reasonable size. So why do the pages take so long to render?

These pages had one thing in common. They had dozens of external javascripts for content scrollers, assorted widgets, jQuery, analytics and dozens more external CSS calls. Many of these .js and .css calls were unnecessary. The lesson here is that developers need to pay more attention to these external HTTP calls and limit them to what is necessary. It may be necessary to recombine the css and js to optimize the page loads.

Another big offender is the practice of preloading videos and podcasts. Developers cannot make the assumption that users will want to view these items. In delaying the page rendering in order to pre-load the videos they are alienating viewers. It may be a tough decision but pre-loading may not be an option.

See an earlier article: @Font-Face and Page Rendering

How to Add Different Meta Tags for Different Posts in Blogger

This is one of the questions I get very frequently.

One trick of the trade used by all developers is to save a back-up. This way, if you can't undo your changes, for whatever reason, you can still revert to the original. After saving a back-up to your harddrive find the following piece of code: all-head-content

(In Windows do a CTRL F)

It will take you to the following:

<b:include data='blog' name='all-head-content'/>

Just after the above code add the following.

1. Tell Blogger which page you want to give the unique meta tags.
2. If you want to use the META Description Tag describe your content in a sentence or two.
3. If you want to use the META Keyword Tag put in your keywords and separate them with a comma.

<b:if cond='data:blog.url == "http://yoursite.blogspot.com/someYear/someMonth/fileName.html"'>

<meta content='How to add different meta tags for different posts' name='description'/>

<meta content='meta tags, blogger' name='keywords'/>
</b:if>

You can repeat this step as often as you want to.

It is my opinion that using these tags is not worth the effort. Ten years ago, yes, they were useful. Today, after all the abuse by SEOs, these tags are close to useless.

15th C Help Desk

I've been having a frustrating time helping people with the simplest of applications. This was the perfect comic relief.

DuckDuckGo

As long-time readers of this blog know, I'm a strong advocate of privacy rights. The problem is two-fold: first people don't understand how much privacy they've given up and second the available privacy technology is too difficult, too complicate for the average person to use.

It looks as if that may be changing. Another privacy based search engine has come on the market. It has a silly name, DuckDuckGo but if it provides good results it may become an important tool in one's "privacy arsenal."

EDIT 9/27/2010:

If you're looking at privacy minded search engines don't forget to look at  Start Page.

Underscores versus Dashes in URLs

I had a whole series of discussions with clients regarding this, especially in having them change company policy in constructing URLs. I found this video and, to paraphrase an old saying, a video is worth a thousand words.

The End of Google Wave

Google has decided to pull the plug on Google Wave. After great promise it dies an ignoble death.

Google in their August 4th update states that:

Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked. We don’t plan to continue developing Wave as a standalone product, but we will maintain the site at least through the end of the year and extend the technology for use in other Google projects.
Update on Google Wave

The failure was primarily due to the business decision to launch the product too soon. This was a robust application whose target audience included non-techies who will have nothing to do with a product that doesn't help them accomplish the tasks at hand. In many ways Google Wave was a time-sink, entertaining and a useful exercise for IAs, developers and other techies, but of little to no use for many business users. The end result we see now - after a rousing introduction - Google Wave is dead barely a year after being introduced to the public.

The Psychology of Users

One thing to factor in when coming up with a strategy with business owners is the psychology of users, both that of the site owners themselves and the site users. Site owners want to have what others have or they feel that they would be lacking in comparison to their competitors.

Then there is the psychology of site consumers who feel that the site is less professional without the gizmos that another site has.

I see this all the time in relation to social media. Some sites are better suited for social media than others. For some sites social media will never be more an unnecessary time sink and money pit.