User Side Factors
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Download Speed – Download speed measures how
fast it takes for a file to download to your computer. Download speed is
measured normally in ‘MB/S’ or ‘KB/S’ these mean Megabytes and Kilobytes per
second. Download speed is important in any computer, it reduces how long it
takes for websites to load and it can also speed up updates on your computer.
In order for my website to be accessible for everyone is by trying to
minimalize how much data is on my site so it has reasonable loading times for
any computer. To do this I can check my images are the right size, rather than
compressing much larger images.
·
Web Browser- Web browsers are applications used
to view sites from the World Wide Web. There
are 4 main types of web browser, these are Internet Explorer, Google Chrome,
Mozilla Firefox and Safari, which is exclusive to Apple products e.g. IMac,
IPad and IPhones. As I’m designing a website it is crucial that the user has at
least one of these browsers so they can actually view the product.
·
Cache Memory – Applications can store certain
data in the computers system memory or RAM. Websites can load quicker because
of this as it can save videos, images, text and can also remember your password
if allowed. This will reduce the loading time of my website making it a much
more efficient experience for the user.
·
Processor speed – this is worked out by how fast
a processing cycle is completed. Also known as ‘clock speed’ it is measured in
megahertz (MHz) and gigahertz (GHz). If the viewer doesn’t have a good clock
speed they won’t be able to view images and videos without lagging.
Server Side Factors
·
File Types – There is a large variety of file
types. These are things such as Bitmaps, JPG, GIF, Vector etc. An example is a
JPEG file. This file will contain an image as this is what JPEGS are. The
computer uses a file extension, this identifies what the file is. For example a
JPEG is a compressed lower quality version of a ‘wav.’ Because of this, it has
a much shorter loading time compared to that of a wav. File. In order for my
website to be a success I will need to have a good balance in the quality of my
videos and images for optimum loading times. The users of my website will also
have the correct file extension software so they are able to view the images
and videos.
Web Server Capacity
·
Available Bandwidth – Bandwidth is the maximum
data transfer rate of a network or internet connection. It gives you
information on how much data is transmitted through a connection and how long
this data took to be transmitted. It is measured in Mbps, standing for
megabytes per second. This gives the user an idea how long it will take them to
download a file, for example if you were downloading a file which was 100MB and
you had a bandwidth of 5MBS it would take you 20 seconds to download. If the
user only has a cable modem, which provides up to 25MBPS it will more than
likely take longer to load the webpage compared with a user who has a gigabit
Ethernet connection, which has a bandwidth of 1000MBPS, so when designing my
website I need to make sure everyone is able to view it no matter what
connection they have.
·
Executions To Be Performed Before Page Load – every
time a website is loaded all of the data for the site has to be retrieved,
things such as images, text, videos and the CSS style. This process can take a
long time depending on the bandwidth, but using JavaScript can boost the
loading time overall.
·
Number of Hits – a hit is the number of
everything on the page and the page itself is a hit. For example, if a site had
6 images and 3 videos this site would have 10 hits. The higher the amount of
hits on a site the longer the loading time will be, this is why I will try to
keep a reasonable amount of hits per page.
