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NOTES FOR MENTOR MEETING
Peter Roll
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
1. The new Club web site, demo Monday, March 24, cutover
Saturday March 29: issues
A. Web page loading times
▪ VERY slow at March 24th demo
▪ a potential issue if Club members experience this
▪ panic -- a lot of testing by moi Mon. and Tues. last week
Results of page loading time tests:
▪ page loading still slow, but not as bad as demo
▪ new home page up to 1-12 seconds
▪ some pages <1-2 sec. (e.g., Training, Mentors, lab Monitors) -- just
fine
▪ some pages 4-6 sec. (e.g., SIGs, Archives, Forms) -- acceptable
▪ Back button to home page 4-6 sec. in IE (but not FireFox,
Safari!); why? unacceptable because of frequent use
▪ occasional much longer load times (statistics of server loading?
network loading?)
▪ relatively independent of network connection speed (1 Mb/s, 4Mb/s,
cable vs. DSL)
▪ improvements during week by Task Force (e.g., reduce size of masthead
logo graphic)
Browser dependence:
▪ IE6 and 7, FireFox, Safari; Mac and Windows versions of all except IE
▪ a little slower on slower, older computers
▪ FireFox and Safari a little faster than IE
▪ no big differences between browsers, except IE Back button
What's going on? Why these differences?
content management system web pages (Web 2.0):
▪ many different objects on a web page
▪ server stores content objects in MySQL data base
▪ server runs Java programs to extract content and assemble into html
page, then downloads to browser
▪ browser receives the various objects (graphics, style sheets, html
code, scripts) and renders page
old-fashioned html web pages (Web 1.0):
▪ server sends page of text including html code, text content, occasional
small graphic;
▪
most content is a block of text
▪ browser renders html code and text into page display; very fast (<1
sec. for old web site)
Ergo,
▪ cannot expect a CMS Web 2.0 web site to be as fast as an html-text web
site
▪ if it's as fast as typical commercial web sites, OK (Club members used
to this)
▪ if it's a lot slower than typical commercial web sites, not OK
▪
demo last Monday not OK, experience since then seems OK
Mentors: keep your eyes and ears open
-- let us know of problems Club members are experiencing.
New tools to measure and help interpret page load times:
Safari
develop menu:
▪ download Safari at
http://www.apple.com/safari/download/
▪ Edit menu --> Preferences --> Advanced button --> check box
Show develop menu in menu bar
▪ produces a graphical display of time and sequence of each object on
loaded onto page
FasterFox extension to FireFox:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1269
▪ download with FireFox and click Install button
▪ displays page load time in lower right corner of Status bar (bottom of
FF window)
These tools enable
MUCH faster and more accurate
measurement of page load times, including doing several on after the other, to get an idea of
fluctuations in page download times.
Be sure to clear cache file before each timing to avoid confusion with what comes from the
server and what comes from the browser cache.
B. Browser resolution vs. page display -- another kind of problem
for a few Club members
(Brought to my attention in a disturbing way by my wife Nancy)
Some Club members use 800x600 because they are used to larger type fonts
▪ masthead logo is about 900 px wide
▪ ergo, page cuts off at 800 px, at the end of "Club"
▪ OK -- so scroll ...
▪ but I can't see the menus
▪ yes you can, they are still there -- they wrap around below the logo
▪ no, the pull-down enu on the right is cut off by the page edge!
This may be a real problem for a few Club members -- we need to know how many, who, and
provide them with some understanding and help with the problem.
Do we need to do more to identify and help
those Club members who have real problems with some of the technology that confronts them ?
This is just one example.
2. New how-to-do-it documentation for CyberCenter
equipment:
▪ recently updated
▪ how to find it:
http://www.sctxcompclub.org/sa/
▪ what's there:
-
Scheduled maintenance operations: Microsoft, AVG, DeepFreeze schedules
-
Config maintenance checks for Lab (and Classroom) computers: weekly,
bi-weekly
-
Printer installation instructions, for new HP 2015 and older inkJet printers
-
NAS-Lite network drive: how to mount it on CyberCenter computers (Mac and Windows);
how to configure it; how it works
3. It seems to me there was a 3rd brief issue -- I may
think of it before Tuesday -- but I didn't. Here it is:
An
article in the NY Times, describing pretty well what we do as Mentors, down to a few of the
technical details. (You have to register to read the article, but it's worth it.)
A clipping of this article was sent to me along with a thank-you note (hand-written, not an
e-mail message) was sent to me by Mentee Milo Dowden. I thank him for it and for reminding us about
handwritten notes ...
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