Please report on your load times. Thanks!

[Andrea B.]

I want to hear again from members about whether they are currently experiencing slow load times. If so, do you see slow loads from UVP every time or only at certain times of the day when, possibly, local traffic in your region might be slowing things down? (I see that with my own ISP sometimes.) 

 

I'm asking to hear from you because I'm planning to look into a CDN service. CDN = Content Delivery Network. This permits the website pages to be cached at different locations in order to improve delivery. Another possibility, if really needed, is to move to a different server. That can be quite a tedious process, so I'm hesitant to do that until we have tried other solutions.

 

My recent investigation into slow load times experienced by some members did not turn up anything obvious on the software/server side. 

 

I have implemented the restriction on uploads of image files to be max 1800 px width X 1800 px height.^[2] That should be plenty enough to present a good image^[1]. Just remember that you will probably have better image quality if you make the resize rather than let the forum software do the resizing. Image resizing can be saved as a preset in converter/editing software so that it can be easily and quickly applied. Make some experiments of your own to determine what works best for you. Actually, 1200 px maximum is probably all we really need.

 

It has been demonstrated more than once that we cannot see the differences in forum display between a JPG saved at medium quality versus high quality. I cannot implement a restriction on image file "weight", but please do try not to save your JPG at the highest quality. I'm a big offender on that score! It is sooooo hard for me to save a JPG at medium quality even for display on forum pages. 

 

 

 

^[1]I looked around on different forum websites. I think we actually have as much "space" as any of them to display images. But do provide links to any forum you know about which you think has better image display. Not Flickr, etc. Those are not forums.

 

^[2] The internet, forum software, and almost all monitors do not support well display of vertical/portrait images. So I did not try to determine a particular image height restriction. Obviously the maximum height for an image is much less than 1800 px.

 

 

Footnotes even! My, my aren't we getting fancy!! 

 

[ulf]

 

That means thing loaded fast for me now!

The ping speed was similar to before.

 

--- ultravioletphotography.com ping statistics ---

28 packets transmitted, 28 packets received, 0.0% packet loss

round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 129.438/141.932/412.233/52.081 ms

 

When choosing any of the pages in My attachments it now took about 2-3s with the bigger Mb sized images instead of several minutes.

All of the images cannot, I think, be cached locally?

 

I wish there were some way to post and hide higher resolution versions if you would like to show a big image.

Ideally if you uploaded something big the forum should rescale for primary showing and also generate a link that had to be actively clicked to fetch the ful resolution image.

[StephanN]

Ping is around 160 ms from Austria. Load times are back to the way they used to be before

[Nate]

I was getting slow image load times on my pc for a while. Thought it was on my end, But at work on my phone, it was slow too.

I checked last week, and all have been loading fast like normal now.

69ms/72ms/70ms for min/max/avg.

If it slows down again, I'll check the ping

[Andrea B.]

OK, this is very interesting to hear. Nothing was changed on the UVP end with respect to the software or the database except for setting a new restriction on image dimensions which is only applicable going forward (and not to existing uploaded images). So whatever was causing the very slow load times was because of

• local ISP conditions, OR
• some slowdown somewhere in the internet. 

The question becomes:  how do we ever figure out what is causing such a problem. I don't really know.

 

 

---

 

 

I wish there were some way to post and hide higher resolution versions if you would like to show a big image.

 

We have to keep in mind that most viewers cannot see an image larger than their browser display without having to scroll around through such an image. Just how large is that? You can figure it out by closing all browser sidebars and clicking up your browser to fill the monitor. Then drag images of various sizes onto the browser until you have figured out the maximum width and height.

 

 

---

 

 

When things are slow, run one of the Time-to-First-Byte analyzers. SpeedVitals.com, for example. Here's a link for a batch test. https://speedvitals.com/ttfb-test

Such a batch test can indicate some slower areas of the world. Also you can see whether the DNS Lookup (URL translation to a numerical address) or the TCP Connect Time or the TLS Handshake (authentication between server and requester) appears slow.

 

 

[Andrea B.]

Example

Macbook Pro Retina 16" + Safari browser fully expanded, no sidebars

The largest image possible within that browser has width 1616 pixels.

[ulf]

Yes that is true, but only when you want to look at the full picture.

Sometimes it can be really interesting to zoom in to 100% too without someone else's decision of a position for a local crop.

Then scrolling around is quite OK.

I have stationary computers and big 30" monitors for my photo work. They show more pixels than those smallish laptop screens.

[Andrea B.]

How many? I'm curious. 

[ulf]

Two.

One Dell UP3017 and an older U3014, (2560 x 1600 pixel).

Both have a really good gamut and I do calibrate them reasonably often.

They are connected to a really beefed up MacPro 2012 (128GB memory, Dual Xeon 3.49GHz processors and a rather fast graphics card).

 

Unfortunately this computer has reached as far as it can for the OS to enable me to use my Photoshop CS6. (10.13)

I might not be able to run my spectrometer with the software I like on more modern Macs. 

 

My kitchen computer is a trashcan Macpro 2013 D700, with a smallish 24" 2560 x 1440 pixel thunderbolt Mac display.

[Andrea B.]

Good stuff, Ulf! 

I'm on the lookout for a new monitor. I'm tired of working on the laptop, although it is a Retina - thus very crisp at 3072 x 1920. (But of course any browser constrains that width when viewing images.) But the ergonomics of a laptop are bad and one's head/neck get strained.

[ulf]

Yeah the screens of laptops are too small for real work like CAD or photo editing.

Some of the Dell monitors are quite good, especially if you add some calibration hardware.

 

It is really crazy that the basic design of my main MacPro is almost the same as the one released 2009!

 

I have my 30" monitors placed side by side and that is a bit too wide for a good overview.
My ideal monitor should have 2000 pixels or more vertically and 50% wider in ratio than the ones I have to allow more space for tool windows and functional palettes.

That is useful both for CAD and photo editing.

Unfortunately my graphics card could not support anything like that.

 

One day I might get some version of a Mac Studio.

In general it seams like stationary computers have a longer working life span.

 

[Doug A]

@Andrea B. My Internet service is slow because I live in the boonies. Don't notice this site being slower than others. 

Thanks,

Doug A

[dunksargent]

I was experiencing very slow load times in January 2024 but today images are loading fine.  BW, dunk 

[Andrea B.]

Thanks for the reports!

 

**********

 

I made an initial try at setting up CDN through CloudFlare and had to give up 'cause I had no danged idea what I was doing!! That in spite of having coded more than one DNS application "back in the day". But I will try again. CloudFlare has extensive documentation and instructions. I just need to read through some of it.