Some Suggestions

I really like the new look, 10/10 Rate.

I only would like to suggest these things:
* Using Sprites for site graphics (20+ Http request could be saved, improving the site performance A LOT)

* Optimizing images (for example: Optimizing help.gif could save 12.6KiB (93% reduction)

* Combine (to avoid extra http request) & Minify Javascript (to reduce filesize)

* The same rule is for css files to. Compressing them would reduce the filesize!


ALSO the most important, the layout is broken, and the site floats to the right! here is a screenshot
i43.tinypic.com/sdh2f6.png


I hope you will consider these things, and if you need help, i really would like to help, in exchange for nothing (phpClasses helped me alot)

All those suggestions were evaluated in the past and currently they are not worthy.

- Sprites: All images are served from a static server that sets expiry dates much later in the future. So there is only one request for each image for visitor. There is not much point in forcing the user to load a big sprite file that contains all the images. It makes the use download a large file and the images appear much later. It also forces redoing the HTML to use CSS to define images, thus forcing CSS dependence on the rendered images.

- Optimizing GIF images: Later the images will be switched to PNG format.

- Minify Javascript: All Javascript is served using HTTP compression. Compression reduces Javascript file size and makes them 5 time smaller. That is way more efficient than minifing.


As for site pages appearing shifted, that seems to be caused by AdBlock extension. Try disabling that extension to see is the problem stops.

Thanks for the suggestions.

I disagree about sprites. The total image size of one big image would be comparable to the size of all the little images put together, so I don't see how it would be any slower to download. It should be about the same.

Also, yes there is only one request per image per visitor, but the more visitors you have, the more requests you have. It wouldn't hurt to reduce the server load that all the first-time visitors create.

The point is that the site uses over 60 icon images but they are not used in all pages.

As for server load, as I mentioned images are loaded from a static server that is multithreaded so it can handle thousands of simultaneous requests with low CPU usage. That was explained here:

phpclasses.org/blog/post/66-More-de ...

Could compacting the site icons into several sets of sprite images reduce significantly the initial page load? I don't think so because the great part of the load delay is caused by ads, which in turn take a lot more time to load.

Besides it would only make slightly faster the load of the first page with icons. It would not improve the load of subsequent pages.

There are many things to do in this site. The benefits of turning icons into sprites do not seem to be great enough to make it a priority.

Ok, I understand.