in order to make your web site load faster, besides image compression, using html authoring software, you can also optimize your html files. these are rather boring technical stuff, but will absolutely benefit your web sites.

* use CSS – CSS reduces the amount of markup in html, and you can put it as external file so that it won’t be loaded everytime.
* use valid markup – valid markups stop browsers from having to perform “error correction” when parsing the html.
* specify image and table sizes (height and width) – so that browser can display web pages before image or table is downloaded (as it can immediately determine the height and width of your images and tables).
* remove unnecessary stuff – leading whitespace, extra blank lines, comments…
* cut down on bells and whistles – cool javascript menu, buttons, graphics, music, animated gif, flash, etc. do they serve specific purpose there? or just for fun?
* split page into multiple pages if it’s too long – you have more pages at the same time.
* minimize the number of files referenced – so that the number of HTTP connections required to download a page is lowered.
* replace table-based layout with divs – if your good at CSS.
* avoid nested tables – if you have to use it.
* use external files – CSS, javascripts, etc.

goal: optimized file size – the total size of all the files of your web page (graphic, script, html, etc.) should be small enough to download quickly. get it below 30kb if possible. 20kb is better. smaller than 10kb is best.

i know many web designers will laugh at this figure. 30kb or 20kb for a modern web page? no way! my cool logo alone takes 20kb…

well, what’s the point if visitors do not want to wait for your cool logo?

pages that take forever to download is no. 1 of my top 10 web design mistakes.