FASTER and FASTER and FASTER!

Late last week we did a band width analysis to see where the bandwidth goes. Around 20% of it was spent on THUMBNAILS alone.

We made a change in which anonymous users would see the tiny thumbnails (we store 2 sizes of thumbnails - tiny and large) by default instead of the large ones. Sure enough, bandwidth use went down. We also made the change that the default would be the tiny thumbnails as well.

Now, let's say you want to have the larger thumbnails again, you need to have an account (accounts are free and take only 15 seconds to create) and then set your site optimization for DISPLAY rather than SPEED.

Today, we re-optimized the JPEG previews for display (rather than print). The result is that the thumbnails which used to be 30K on average are now falling to less than 10K even though they look the same. On a typical page with 10 previews, this will save nearly a minute of download time for modem users! Not all the thumbnails have been migrated yet but in the next day or so the process should be completed. Hope the site seems faster.
11,750 views 10 replies
Reply #1 Top
That's good stuff. A neat solution that is less costy than an new OC3 line :o)
Reply #3 Top
Neat.
Reply #5 Top
i agree with everything except for the jpeg optimization - all my wallpapers look awful now!
Reply #6 Top
I agree.... my walls are looking pretty sad as well...
Reply #7 Top
I have to admit the jpg compression level used create noticeable artifacts. I did some test myself and if we could up the jpg compression to about 30-35% (in PS) which represents approx. 7 to 8K in file size, then most of the artifacts would be gone. On the other hand, do we really need to have high quality thumbs since we still have access to the zoom feature which gives full quality picture... that's something we could debate for some times
Reply #9 Top
You could consider using .gifs as thumbnails. At low resolutions as this a .gif can look just as good as a .jpg and be smaller.