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Too Much of a Good Thing?

Having posted more than fifty articles to the site and having populated the newest ones with more and higher quality pictures, I have noticed that the pages definitely are not 56K friendly. For example, the article on the Eversharp Skyline "clocks" at 842 seconds for 28.8 connections, and having recently loaded it on a dialed-up computer, it occurred to me that some of you may be making coffee or taking up knitting while waiting for the pages to load.

I admit I'm one of those spoiled people with a high-speed connection, but I also know that that currently is the exception, not the rule. With that in mind, I thought I'd ask you, our guests, what you think, and see if I need to make some adjustments.

Without getting into a lot of web page design detail, the fundamental for the PenHero pages is the amount of data (pictures and how "dense" they are) that has to be downloaded to your computer to view the page. Many of the pages on the site have multiple pictures in the 100K to 200K size range, so a 1MB+ page is very likely on the site, making dial-up guests have to wait.

The basic choices are to shorten the articles (not an option, sorry - editorial license here), place a size limit on the articles, break them up into multi-page articles, or use heavier compression on the pictures (which will lower their quality). Of course, things could be left just as they are, too.

This month's survey hopefully will help improve the site, so here are the choices for the question, Are the PenGallery Pages Too Big?:

• No! Go for it! Add whatever you want! - This will keep everything as-is, so some pages with lots of stuff will be very long.
• No! But limit the page length! - This will set a length / size limit and constrain the amount of stuff in an article, but not resort to image compression.
• Yes! Keep the high quality, break into more pages! - This will keep everything as-is, but broken up into multi-page articles.
• Yes! Compress the pictures, keep one page per article! - This will keep everything as-is, but compression will be used on the images, which will reduce their quality.

What do you think? Too big? Too small? More pages? Faster loading? Please vote and also add comments that you think others would find helpful!

NOTE: This is an off-site link. To return to PenHero.com, you can hit your back button or the PenHero.com link on the results page.

Too Much of a Good Thing?

Are the PenGallery Pages Too Big? No! Go for it! Add whatever you want! No! But limit the page length! Yes! Keep the high quality, break into more pages! Yes! Compress the pictures, keep one page per article!

Current Results