image preload error?

[hornet2go]

I hate to criticise such a fantastic website, but it is constructive criticism!

I use a very slow connection and notice these things. When I open a page the bottom bar tells me I'm downloading things like 'memberssweatshirt.jpg' etc and it goes on forever! even if I press the stop button in IE. It slows things down real bad if I want to go off site to visit a link in another window. I'd guess it's an error in a JavaScript image preload command but I can't guess how to fix it, sorry.

One of the best ways the web has been made use of so far though! hope it goes on and on.

Cheers
Neil

[Grant Johnson]

hmmm, thanks for noting that - I'll have a look and see what I can do.

We do try hard to make the site usable for all, even on the slowest connection!

(but we do have a very fast broadband connection so it can be hard to tell sometimes)

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Grant Johnson

Seek, and ye shall find.
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One world, Two wheels.
www.HorizonsUnlimited.com

[rpalmen]

Yep! Noticed that too. Although i have a broadband connection, the constant reloading of the souq advertisement images is annoying, and more important, it's consuming more of your bandwith than mine (ok, it's a cache hit, but still a request going out to you server).

Keep up the good work!

[Grant Johnson]

I've been struggling with this one, and can't get consistent results.

IE 5 / 6 never reloads the images once loaded. Netscape 4.x and 7.x show that they are still loading, but nothing is actually downloaded - at least the lights never blink!

I have added a preload to the home page, so in theory if you go there first the images will be loaded in your cache, and never needed again. However, this should also work all the time anyway, so I'm at a loss!

What browser(s) are you using, and what evidence/proof that images ARE ACTUALLY constantly downloading do you have??

Thanks for your help folks, without it we'd never even know we had problems, much less be able to solve them.

We have 5 computers with all flavours of IE, Netscape, and Opera, on Win2k and 98SE, but while that's something like 90% of the possibilities, we don't have everything covered. XP is our next test platform, but it's expensive!

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Grant Johnson

Seek, and ye shall find.
------------------------

One world, Two wheels.
www.HorizonsUnlimited.com

[fireboomer]

Grant,

I have a Ibook with MACOS 9.1
As browser I use Mozilla 1.1
2 things that proof I am connecting to the server over and over again:
* Two messages are appearing over and over again: connecting to "www.horizonsuli..." and then "documend done"
* Funny enough, when the connection appears the lights on my modem blink indicating that there is stuff going out and comming in...

So, yep about twice a second (!!!!) I am reconnecting to your website.
Also my harddisk gives a swing and writes something away twice a second....

It isn't slowing me down (using cable) but it is ennoying.

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http://users.pandora.be/pieter.maes2/

[Grant Johnson]

Thanks Pieter,

ok, so we have a mac with the problem. Hmmm. The images are SUPPOSED to be cached. Can you check and ensure that your cache is turned on?

I will download Mozilla in the morning and see if it does the same on Windows.

thanks again,

------------------
Grant Johnson

Seek, and ye shall find.
------------------------

One world, Two wheels.
www.HorizonsUnlimited.com

[fireboomer]

Hey Grant,

How are we doing on this little thing?
I notice that my connection stays quite while reading a page. Great! So the problem is solved?

Good job, keep it up!


Pieter.

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http://users.pandora.be/pieter.maes2/

[rpalmen]

Hurray! Found something. Had page cache turned off, needing it for my own developments. Tools / Internet options / tab general / section Temp files / button settings / radiobutton set to 'reload on every visit to page'.

After setting it to 'automatic' no more requests, just cache hits.

So the source is in the way the SRC="/js/storerotate.js" loads the images. If you'll mail me the js, i could have a look at it (no guarantees given).

Or you could disable it for paid membership! ;-)

PS: Running Ie6.0 on XP (all eng).
PPS: sorry for the late reply