Optimizations need to be verified and speed tests are one of the best options to do that. Speed Monitor is a free application that can test the loading time of multiple websites over time.

It begins by adding one or multiple websites or pages to the application. Websites are stored in rows in the main application interface and all it takes to add another one is to click on a new row and enter the website address or IP to do so.

The default frequency is set to 60 seconds which means that the program will download each page every minute. The program lists the current time in ms that it took to download the page, the last ten, 100 and 1000 times.

Charts are provided to visualize the data for a selected website address.

Webmasters can clear the data which can be handy before tests to get a new set of results. Speed Monitor can also be used to compare the page loading time of a website with another one. This may help discover further room for loading time improvements.

Speed Monitor is a portable handy program for the Windows operating system. The software has been developed as part of Donation Coder’s NANY 2011 challenge. Downloads and options to communicate with the developer are provided there as well.

Webmasters have lots of options to reduce the page loading time of their websites. This includes removing unnecessary scripts, using compression, minifying HTML, CSS and JavaScript files, merging files where possible but also to optimize images that are hosted on the server.

The difference between an optimized image and an unoptimized image can make a big difference in page loading times. Think of it this way: If you can halve the size of each image hosted on your web server, without reducing the visible image quality, then you have cut the image loading time by halve as well (well halve is not entirely correct but lets use that figure for the sake of the argument).

The two main image formats used on the web are png and jpg. Jpg images are usually well compressed and there is little to gain by reducing their quality further. The image quality drops significantly at a point.

Png images on the other hand offer lots of room for improvement, if they have been saved as true color png images. Lets take a look at the following two images for the sake of this argument.

Do you see a difference in image quality? The second image’s size is 64 Kilobytes, that is 102 Kilobytes less than the size of the first image.

Using Riot to optimize images

You can use lots of different programs to optimize images. They all come with the capabilities but differ highly in their batch optimization capabilities. Riot is a free portable software that can process images in batch. (see Image Resizer And Optimizer Riot)

The program interface looks like this on startup. I have already made the relevant changes to the lower half. In particular, you need to switch to the PNG tab, select Optimal 256 Colors Palette, best compression (slow), NeuQuant neural-net (slow) and PNGout Xtreme (very slow) for the output files.

You then click the Batch icon at the top which opens an overlay window. Click on Add Images (or the small arrow next to it) to load images directly or by folder. Please note that you should only load png images. It does not help to convert jpg images to png, considering that they are still linked as jpg images on the web.

Make sure you select a second folder for the output images. A click on start optimizes all images loaded in the window.

Webmasters can then upload the optimized images to their web server.

Please note that the reduction to 256 colors may not work for all image types. It works well for screenshots and other images that we publish here at Ghacks.

The best option for WordPress based websites was to process one image folder at a time. WordPress saves image uploads in monthly folders. The whole process per folder was to copy all png images from a folder to the local system, add those images to Riot, process them in Riot and reupload them to the server in the same directory after comparing some of the input and output images.

Tools have been created to test the page loading time of a website, for instance Yslow or Google Page Speed which both show in detail the loading time and the elements that are responsible for it.

These tools are also used by webmasters to test the loading speed of related website. Those times give the webmaster a good indication if more optimization needs to be done. If a web page loads at least as fast as the fastest competing website then it is usually not necessary to optimize further, if it is slower there might be still room for improvement.

Which Loads Faster is an online service that compares the page load time of two websites by racing them against each other.

which loads faster

The website offers a few preset speed comparisons and the option to create a custom comparison.

To race two pages, a user needs to add two page urls into the form at the top and click the go button. Which Loads Faster will instantly start loading and displaying the websites in two columns on the same page.

Page loading times of both websites are displayed in milliseconds, and the faster one is indicated with an arrow and a percentage value that indicates how much faster it is than the other web page.

The Race link at the top navigation offers another interesting variant. Here it is possible to add up multiple urls to each side to see which loads faster than the other. This could be an interesting option to compare the homepage and several subpages of websites with each other.

The settings contain an option to switch the page loading mode from parallel to serial, helpful if the two sides may interfere with each other.

Which Loads Faster is a free online service that can be very beneficial to webmasters. Additional information about the page loading times would be helpful, for instance a display of the page elements and their loading times or the hardware and software that is powering the different sites. (via To The PC)

All you need to do is run the Speed Simulator, select a speed that you want to simulate and change the proxy in your browser to localhost and port 8080. In Firefox you do that in Tools > Options > Advanced > Network and the button Settings. Just hit start in Speed Simulator afterwards and use the browser to navigate to your website. You might be surprised about the time that some users have to wait before they can see it at all.

The difference to websites that do check the loading time of your site simulating various speeds is that you are experiencing the speeds by yourself. 20 seconds does not seem much but if you experience this by yourself you might feel that it is to much.