For people on dialup - some workarounds for slow page loading

[AnnieA]

If you're on dialup, and are having problems with pages that load with excruciating slowness, you might want to read this...

With the economy in shambles, it's (sadly) entirely possible that there will be more WC users who have to forego their expensive broadband, at least for the time being, and return to a pokey dialup connection in order to access WC. And there are also those of us who, for one reason or another, have always used dialup. As an image-heavy site, WC can pose special challenges for those of us on a slow dialup connection, as I am. If you're on dialup, you may find that some pages take so long to load that you feel like pulling your hair out, or worse yet, you may have considered no longer participating in the site.

But never fear! Here are a few workarounds I discovered that help in viewing those WC threads that include an especially large number of images, such as the WDE and the Scavenger Hunt (in which every other post may contain an image). These workarounds won't make things really speedy for those on dialup - "speedy" and "dialup" are mutually exclusive - but they may help make viewing threads much easier.

First, adjust the way the thread displays. When you open up a thread, you'll see a blue band with several links on it just above the first post. The drop down menu on the far right says "Display Modes." Pull the menu down and choose the "Linear Mode" option. That way, the posts will show up in the thread in chronological order, oldest to newest. The "Hybrid Mode," although very handy for keeping one's place in the conversation, makes each page take longer to load, so make sure to avoid it if you have dialup.

Second, adjust the number of posts per page to the fewest possible. To find the posts per page option, you'll first need to click the "My WC" link at the top of the page (it's at the far left side of the second blue band from the top). Then find the Control Panel (it's in the side bar at the left) and select "Edit Options." Scroll just a little over half way down the page and you'll see the option to select the number of comments per page.

The lowest number of posts per page is 5, which is what I use. Depending on the speed of your connection, you might find a somewhat higher number will work just fine for you. When you lower the number of comments per page, you'll simultaneously be increasing the number of pages, so it's generally easier to open up a separate document in notepad to write your reply, rather than clicking back and forth between WC pages. When you're done with your comments, save them before copying your reply into the Quick Reply box anywhere in the thread. That way, if there's any problem with the connection when you try to post, you won't lose your reply; you'll have a copy of it and can try again. Once you know the reply has posted, you can delete the saved notepad file.

Once all the adjustments above have been made, one other thing I generally do is after accessing the first page of the thread I want to participate in, but before I start reading through that first page and composing my reply, I click on the next page and let it load while I'm reading and commenting on the first page. I do that for all of the pages that I want to view and comment on; in each case, the next page is loading while I'm reading the previous page. That speeds things up a bit too and I don't have to wait for page loads.

There's yet another possibililty you might want to try to speed things up. Again on the Edit Options page, you can choose to have images display only as thumbnails, which also theoretically can help with page loading, as thumbnails are much smaller than full images. The overall thread will load faster, and then you can click on each image separately to see it a full scale. Frankly, I don't find them all that helpful, since it takes time to open each image anyway. But who knows, maybe it would work great for somebody, since computers so often seem to have personalities of their own, as do artists.

These workarounds don't really make the actual images load faster, but do make the whole process a little easier to handle, and in general will reduce the overall amount of time needed to view a thread. On some of the most popular threads, such as the WDE or the Scavenger Hunt, you'll end up with a humongous number of pages, but it really is helpful to load more pages with fewer images rather than one page with lots and lots of images. And there will be fewer screen freezes, which also saves time.

It's important for broadband users to remember the size limits for images, too. The maximum image dimensions are 800x800 pixels, and I believe images are still limited to a file size of 100k. (Please correct me if I'm wrong on that last part - it may have changed when the WC maximum pixel dimension requirements were changed.) There are lots of programs with which it's possible to resize images; see the RESIZING AND UPLOADING your PICTURES thread pinned at the top of the forum.

Hope this is helpful. WC on dialup can be a challenge, but because even dialup users Wet Canvas, it's well worth it!

[Yorky]

Tanks Annie, a very useful suggestion.

I have stuck this thread.

Doug

[Rod]

Thanks Annie,
I live in a small community by the sea where broadband is not available.
I'll try your suggestions as at the moment Wetcanvas is too slow to participate,
Rod.

[sundiver]

I'll definitely be using your suggestions this summer at the cottage. Thanks, Annie!

[AnnieA]

Thanks, Doug! And I hope that the methods I suggested will help both you, Rod, and Wendy when you go to your cottage.

There are a few other things to try as well:

In the Options Menu (I gave the instructions on how to access it above), under "Visible Post Elements," you can also turn off avatars and signature lines. These tend to be really tiny images anyway, but if your dial up is as slow as mine is, every little bit helps. You are also offered the option of turning off images, but what would be the point of coming here to WC if you did that?

Also, down at the very bottom of Options, there's another choice offered of the Message Editor Interface that may offer a little additional speed: you can change the type of text editor you want to use. The Enhanced WYSIWYG editor (the last option) may take longer to load. The basic editor, the first option, however, doesn't offer buttons for even the most basic text editing, such as bold or italics. The middle option, the Standard Editor, is probably a good compromise. It offers just the most basic editing tools, but clicking "Go Advanced" will reveal a more extensive offering of editing options.

Some non-WC workarounds
(I won't give specific recommendations here (for specific browsers or other software) because I'm not really an expert, and which of these might work for you depends quite a bit on your particular computer and other circumstances):

1. Log on during low-usage times for your ISP. Avoid noon to 1PM and the hours when people are just coming home from work and logging on.
2. Look into using a smaller, faster browser.
3. Try out Linux, which has a couple of flavors that are said to be much speedier in general.
(These next three suggestions can conceivably speed up your computer in general).
4. Make sure the maximum memory your computer is capable of using is installed.
5. Make sure you've got enough extra space on your computer for the cache
6. Run a diagnostic program on your computer, to make sure everything else is working properly.

I hope this helps those who are stuck with dial up. Good luck!

[sundiver]

We went to the cottage last weekend, I made some of the changes you suggested, and it definitely helped!
Thanks.

[Rod]

Yes, it does help. Hopefully next year we may have broadband. They are laying fibre optic cables over the next 6 mths in our area,
Thanks Rod.

[Yorky]

I use Firefox and use the adblock feature to prevent advertisements loading which save a lot of loading time.

Doug

[*Deirdre*]

One other thing I try to do for those on dial-up especially...is to mark non topic threads such as birthday wishes..as OFF TOPIC...so you don't waste money looking only to find it's not about drawing or painting ect.

[David12]

Originally Posted by AnnieA

If you're on dialup, and are having problems with pages that load with excruciating slowness, you might want to read this...

With the economy in shambles, it's (sadly) entirely possible that there will be more WC users who have to forego their expensive broadband, at least for the time being, and return to a pokey dialup connection in order to access WC. And there are also those of us who, for one reason or another, have always used dialup. As an image-heavy site, WC can pose special challenges for those of us on a slow dialup connection, as I am. If you're on dialup, you may find that some pages take so long to load that you feel like pulling your hair out, or worse yet, you may have considered no longer participating in the site.

But never fear! Here are a few workarounds I discovered that help in viewing those WC threads that include an especially large number of images, such as the WDE and the Scavenger Hunt (in which every other post may contain an image). These workarounds won't make things really speedy for those on dialup - "speedy" and "dialup" are mutually exclusive - but they may help make viewing threads much easier.

First, adjust the way the thread displays. When you open up a thread, you'll see a blue band with several links on it just above the first post. The drop down menu on the far right says "Display Modes." Pull the menu down and choose the "Linear Mode" option. That way, the posts will show up in the thread in chronological order, oldest to newest. The "Hybrid Mode," although very handy for keeping one's place in the conversation, makes each page take longer to load, so make sure to avoid it if you have dialup.

Second, adjust the number of posts per page to the fewest possible. To find the posts per page option, you'll first need to click the "My WC" link at the top of the page (it's at the far left side of the second blue band from the top). Then find the Control Panel (it's in the side bar at the left) and select "Edit Options." Scroll just a little over half way down the page and you'll see the option to select the number of comments per page.

The lowest number of posts per page is 5, which is what I use. Depending on the speed of your connection, you might find a somewhat higher number will work just fine for you. When you lower the number of comments per page, you'll simultaneously be increasing the number of pages, so it's generally easier to open up a separate document in notepad to write your reply, rather than clicking back and forth between WC pages. When you're done with your comments, save them before copying your reply into the Quick Reply box anywhere in the thread. That way, if there's any problem with the connection when you try to post, you won't lose your reply; you'll have a copy of it and can try again. Once you know the reply has posted, you can delete the saved notepad file.

Once all the adjustments above have been made, one other thing I generally do is after accessing the first page of the thread I want to participate in, but before I start reading through that first page and composing my reply, I click on the next page and let it load while I'm reading and commenting on the first page. I do that for all of the pages that I want to view and comment on; in each case, the next page is loading while I'm reading the previous page. That speeds things up a bit too and I don't have to wait for page loads.

There's yet another possibililty you might want to try to speed things up. Again on the Edit Options page, you can choose to have images display only as thumbnails, which also theoretically can help with page loading, as thumbnails are much smaller than full images. The overall thread will load faster, and then you can click on each image separately to see it a full scale. Frankly, I don't find them all that helpful, since it takes time to open each image anyway. But who knows, maybe it would work great for somebody, since computers so often seem to have personalities of their own, as do artists.

These workarounds don't really make the actual images load faster, but do make the whole process a little easier to handle, and in general will reduce the overall amount of time needed to view a thread. On some of the most popular threads, such as the WDE or the Scavenger Hunt, you'll end up with a humongous number of pages, but it really is helpful to load more pages with fewer images rather than one page with lots and lots of images. And there will be fewer screen freezes, which also saves time.

It's important for broadband users to remember the size limits for images, too. The maximum image dimensions are 800x800 pixels, and I believe images are still limited to a file size of 100k. (Please correct me if I'm wrong on that last part - it may have changed when the WC maximum pixel dimension requirements were changed.) There are lots of programs with which it's possible to resize images; see the RESIZING AND UPLOADING your PICTURES thread pinned at the top of the forum.

Hope this is helpful. WC on dialup can be a challenge, but because even dialup users Wet Canvas, it's well worth it!

Yes dear i have facing these problems. But after reading your comment i think that is the salutation of my problem. Thank you so mach for your Help.

[Yorky]

Another saving would be to set your Default Subscription Mode in Options to "Do not Subscribe". This would eliminate emails from all the threads you have replied to unless you click "Subscribe to this thread" in Thread Tools at the top of the thread.

Doug

[artfans]

The color of these pictures in your signature is very lovely!

[rebeccarobbin]

I really love your signature pictures too. Good Job!