http://thepluginsite.com/products/htmlshrinker/

Before downloading this I was wondering how it worked. A number of my
Worldwide Report files are quite large and take time to download for people
of dial-up internet access. I was wondering if anyone else had used this
programme and would it have the desired effect for me?

Thanks

Keith (Southend)

http://www.southendweather.net

On Tue, 1 Jun 2004 12:34:42 +0100, "keith.r.harris"
wrote:

http://thepluginsite.com/products/htmlshrinker/
I was wondering if anyone else had used this
programme and would it have the desired effect for me?


Unlikely to make any real difference I would have thought, unless
maybe you're using an MS Office application to create the pages. The
best way of reducing the size of text files is simply zipping them.
They obviously wouldn't then be readable as HTML pages and would
require downloading via a link that you provide but zipping can often
provide a considerable size reduction in such files. Try one and see
maybe?

JGD

"keith.r.harris" wrote in message
...
http://thepluginsite.com/products/htmlshrinker/

Before downloading this I was wondering how it worked. A number of my
Worldwide Report files are quite large and take time to download for
people
of dial-up internet access. I was wondering if anyone else had used this
programme and would it have the desired effect for me?

Thanks

Keith (Southend)

http://www.southendweather.net


See the FAQ Keith (http://thepluginsite.com/products/htmlshrinker/faq.htm).
As far as I can tell it parses your files and removes unecessary tags and
other white spaces.

It claims an average saving of 24% for files. Might work for you, although
if your HTML coding is already good then it may not reduce the file size
significantly enough to warrant using it.

I suppose trial and error would show you how good it was.

I asked my brother who is pretty knowledgable on this and seems to agree. He
says that "what this does is shrink the HTML files, which are basically the
words and numbers, probably by removing superfluous spaces. It won't shrink
images, and in my experience these are usually the bulk of the site." As
yours is mostly data it might be worth a try. Obviously you've sorted your
image compression problem - nice pic of Hyde Hall gardens.

Dave
"James Hurrell" wrote in message
...

"keith.r.harris" wrote in message
...
http://thepluginsite.com/products/htmlshrinker/

Before downloading this I was wondering how it worked. A number of my
Worldwide Report files are quite large and take time to download for
people
of dial-up internet access. I was wondering if anyone else had used this
programme and would it have the desired effect for me?

Thanks

Keith (Southend)

http://www.southendweather.net


See the FAQ Keith
(http://thepluginsite.com/products/htmlshrinker/faq.htm).
As far as I can tell it parses your files and removes unecessary tags and
other white spaces.

It claims an average saving of 24% for files. Might work for you, although
if your HTML coding is already good then it may not reduce the file size
significantly enough to warrant using it.

I suppose trial and error would show you how good it was.

I will try this in the near future and the reason is that because my
HTML files are copy/pasted from my excel spreadsheets, there are
litrally hundreds of tabs and spaces embedded in them. I'm sure
someone with some good computer programming experience could make a
better job, but it's the way I have produced the data to date. I
remember a colleague commenting on this 'superfluous' information
embedded into the HTML before, so when I run one through the process
I'll let you know what (if any) the difference in size is, it's worth
a go.

Incidentally, I wasn't thinking of reducing 'images' with this
programme, I will use the Microsoft Powertool 'image resizer', which
seems to be idiot proof :-)

Again many thanks for all the advice, promps and links.

Keith (Southend)

********************************
'Weather Home & Abroad'
http://www.southendweather.net
********************************
COL Station for Southend-on-Sea
http://www.wunderground.com/weathers...p?ID=IESSEXSO1
********************************
Reply to: kreh'at'southendweather'dot'net
All mail scanned for virus's using Norton 2003



On Tue, 01 Jun 2004 16:24:00 GMT, "Dave. C"
wrote:

I asked my brother who is pretty knowledgable on this and seems to agree. He
says that "what this does is shrink the HTML files, which are basically the
words and numbers, probably by removing superfluous spaces. It won't shrink
images, and in my experience these are usually the bulk of the site." As
yours is mostly data it might be worth a try. Obviously you've sorted your
image compression problem - nice pic of Hyde Hall gardens.

Dave
"James Hurrell" wrote in message
...

"keith.r.harris" wrote in message
...
http://thepluginsite.com/products/htmlshrinker/

Before downloading this I was wondering how it worked. A number of my
Worldwide Report files are quite large and take time to download for
people
of dial-up internet access. I was wondering if anyone else had used this
programme and would it have the desired effect for me?

Thanks

Keith (Southend)

http://www.southendweather.net


See the FAQ Keith
(http://thepluginsite.com/products/htmlshrinker/faq.htm).
As far as I can tell it parses your files and removes unecessary tags and
other white spaces.

It claims an average saving of 24% for files. Might work for you, although
if your HTML coding is already good then it may not reduce the file size
significantly enough to warrant using it.

I suppose trial and error would show you how good it was.

I used it on myEuropean file for 31st May 2004, it shrunk it down by
9%. You can see what it's removed as far as HTML is concerned by
comparing the two files here...by viewing the source file
http://www.southendweather.net/eu040531.html
Shrunk. Removed tabs and spaces.

and
http://www.southendweather.net/eu040530.html
not shrunk

Keith (Southend)

********************************
'Weather Home & Abroad'
http://www.southendweather.net
********************************
COL Station for Southend-on-Sea
http://www.wunderground.com/weathers...p?ID=IESSEXSO1
********************************
Reply to: kreh'at'southendweather'dot'net
All mail scanned for virus's using Norton 2003
On Tue, 01 Jun 2004 18:35:45 +0100, "Keith (Southend)"
wrote:

I will try this in the near future and the reason is that because my
HTML files are copy/pasted from my excel spreadsheets, there are
litrally hundreds of tabs and spaces embedded in them. I'm sure
someone with some good computer programming experience could make a
better job, but it's the way I have produced the data to date. I
remember a colleague commenting on this 'superfluous' information
embedded into the HTML before, so when I run one through the process
I'll let you know what (if any) the difference in size is, it's worth
a go.

Incidentally, I wasn't thinking of reducing 'images' with this
programme, I will use the Microsoft Powertool 'image resizer', which
seems to be idiot proof :-)

Again many thanks for all the advice, promps and links.

Keith (Southend)

********************************
'Weather Home & Abroad'
http://www.southendweather.net
********************************
COL Station for Southend-on-Sea
http://www.wunderground.com/weathers...p?ID=IESSEXSO1
********************************
Reply to: kreh'at'southendweather'dot'net
All mail scanned for virus's using Norton 2003



On Tue, 01 Jun 2004 16:24:00 GMT, "Dave. C"
wrote:

I asked my brother who is pretty knowledgable on this and seems to agree. He
says that "what this does is shrink the HTML files, which are basically the
words and numbers, probably by removing superfluous spaces. It won't shrink
images, and in my experience these are usually the bulk of the site." As
yours is mostly data it might be worth a try. Obviously you've sorted your
image compression problem - nice pic of Hyde Hall gardens.

Dave
"James Hurrell" wrote in message
...

"keith.r.harris" wrote in message
...
http://thepluginsite.com/products/htmlshrinker/

Before downloading this I was wondering how it worked. A number of my
Worldwide Report files are quite large and take time to download for
people
of dial-up internet access. I was wondering if anyone else had used this
programme and would it have the desired effect for me?

Thanks

Keith (Southend)

http://www.southendweather.net


See the FAQ Keith
(http://thepluginsite.com/products/htmlshrinker/faq.htm).
As far as I can tell it parses your files and removes unecessary tags and
other white spaces.

It claims an average saving of 24% for files. Might work for you, although
if your HTML coding is already good then it may not reduce the file size
significantly enough to warrant using it.

I suppose trial and error would show you how good it was.

On Tue, 01 Jun 2004 20:49:02 +0100, Keith (Southend) wrote:

I used it on myEuropean file for 31st May 2004, it shrunk it down by
9%.

Looking at the unshrunk and shrunk versions there isn't anything
further that you can remove, well you could remove some of the font
declarations at the top but you'd probably only save 100 bytes and out
of 300,000+ thats not significant. B-)

300K is rather large, you are talking over a minute to download on
dial up. I feel you need a rethink about how the data is
presented/arranged. An overview page with min max's etc and links to
each countries data which is stored on a seperate page? Each page
would be small and quick to load. You already have the basic workings
of a previous/home/next system to navigate within the country
listings. Also think about how the data is stored on server, I'd go
for a directory per day (or whatever the unit period of time is) with
standard filenames so all you have to do is point to that days
directory and everything "just works". So for example
/data/2004/05/31/norway.html is Norways data for 31st May 2004 etc.

Apologies to Grandma...

--
Cheers
Dave. pam is missing e-mail

Hi Dave,



No apologies needed, always interested in any views or ideas. My website is
in need of a facelift (like me g), but some thought needs to go in to it
first.



I like the idea and must admit there is a few other things I like to do, but
my knowledge of HTML is limited and would require a lot of time to develop.
From your example below it would imagine that every country would require it
's own html file for each day. None of my files are generated automatically,
so at the moment that would take a lot of time just generating the
individual files. However, I do like the idea and if anyone has a format or
programme that may do something like that I would take it on board. I have
always thought that anyone new to my website probably thinks 'their' country
isn't in the list, as it's not obvious from first glance. The only other way
of reducing the file size is by having them purely as text files .txt, but
you have no control over fonts and attributes etc, I still have my European
data repeated as a text file further down the 1. Worldwide Reports page,
some people like this as they can copy and paste the text into some other
application without having all the html stuff. I guess the problem is, is
that there is a lot of data there. The overview page is also a great idea, I
first started to do this purely as a quality control exercise, it
immediately throws up any obvious errors in the code. I still need to refine
this a bit, as Greenland amongst the European section is a bit odd as has
been previously pointed out to me.



Oh well, another 20 years and I'll have more time on my hands, assuming I'm
still here, god forbid g



Any suggestions/pointers/help always welcome.



Thanks



Keith (Southend)

http://www.southendweather.net





Looking at the unshrunk and shrunk versions there isn't anything
further that you can remove, well you could remove some of the font
declarations at the top but you'd probably only save 100 bytes and out
of 300,000+ thats not significant. B-)

300K is rather large, you are talking over a minute to download on
dial up. I feel you need a rethink about how the data is
presented/arranged. An overview page with min max's etc and links to
each countries data which is stored on a seperate page? Each page
would be small and quick to load. You already have the basic workings
of a previous/home/next system to navigate within the country
listings. Also think about how the data is stored on server, I'd go
for a directory per day (or whatever the unit period of time is) with
standard filenames so all you have to do is point to that days
directory and everything "just works". So for example
/data/2004/05/31/norway.html is Norways data for 31st May 2004 etc.

Apologies to Grandma...

--
Cheers
Dave. pam is missing e-mail
"Dave Liquorice" wrote in message
ll.com...
On Tue, 01 Jun 2004 20:49:02 +0100, Keith (Southend) wrote:

I used it on myEuropean file for 31st May 2004, it shrunk it down by
9%.

Looking at the unshrunk and shrunk versions there isn't anything
further that you can remove, well you could remove some of the font
declarations at the top but you'd probably only save 100 bytes and out
of 300,000+ thats not significant. B-)

300K is rather large, you are talking over a minute to download on
dial up. I feel you need a rethink about how the data is
presented/arranged. An overview page with min max's etc and links to
each countries data which is stored on a seperate page? Each page
would be small and quick to load. You already have the basic workings
of a previous/home/next system to navigate within the country
listings. Also think about how the data is stored on server, I'd go
for a directory per day (or whatever the unit period of time is) with
standard filenames so all you have to do is point to that days
directory and everything "just works". So for example
/data/2004/05/31/norway.html is Norways data for 31st May 2004 etc.

Apologies to Grandma...

--
Cheers
Dave. pam is missing e-mail

Keith (Southend) wrote:
I used it on myEuropean file for 31st May 2004, it shrunk it down by
9%. You can see what it's removed as far as HTML is concerned by
comparing the two files here...by viewing the source file
http://www.southendweather.net/eu040531.html
Shrunk. Removed tabs and spaces.

and http://www.southendweather.net/eu040530.html
not shrunk

Hi Keith.
It isn't all about size, you know :-). Although this may seem off-topic,
it is relevant, as many (most?) meteorological sources (including NMCs)
fail to maximize their display potential and hence lose readers/users.

I tried a quick look at your files, both shrunk and unshrunk. Neither
file would validate as "proper" html, as there is no character
encoding specified. That's a bit like saying "This page is in
English/French/Urdu/Mandarin...you choose" If a browser can't
figure which characters to use, then the page ends up as gibberish.
The pages may still display in Internet Explorer, but that's mainly
because Internet Explorer ignores the rules too!

You use tables for display - that's fine for such tabular data and has
the useful side effect that most browsers will still display the data OK
- tables have about the best support in how browsers render the page.
However, your pages are locking out potential visitors. Try
a) Shutting off images (and see if you can navigate the data).
b) Scrolling just a little down the page (and wave goodbye to the headers).
c)I personally found the text size way too small to read...until I
turned off the style sheets. (Style sheets and "font" tags in the same
code?)

As far as accessibility goes, it is illuminating to run pages through
http://www.cynthiasays.com/ or some similar accessibility checker (as
well as http://validator.w3.org/ of course).

There's also the issue of the code itself. Well-structured and
signposted code makes it fairly easy for someone else to spot any coding
errors one might make.
Ifyourcodeallrunsintoamesslikethisdoes,itssomuchha rdertosolve. So, while
code crunchers are fine as far as they go, writing code to standards
is a way to reduce coding, increase page usefulness and maximize your
audience. Good luck with it.

Colin.

"Colin" wrote in message
...
Keith (Southend) wrote:
I used it on myEuropean file for 31st May 2004, it shrunk it down by
9%. You can see what it's removed as far as HTML is concerned by
comparing the two files here...by viewing the source file
http://www.southendweather.net/eu040531.html
Shrunk. Removed tabs and spaces.

and http://www.southendweather.net/eu040530.html
not shrunk

Hi Keith.
It isn't all about size, you know :-). Although this may seem off-topic,
it is relevant, as many (most?) meteorological sources (including NMCs)
fail to maximize their display potential and hence lose readers/users.

I tried a quick look at your files, both shrunk and unshrunk. Neither
file would validate as "proper" html, as there is no character
encoding specified. That's a bit like saying "This page is in
English/French/Urdu/Mandarin...you choose" If a browser can't
figure which characters to use, then the page ends up as gibberish.
The pages may still display in Internet Explorer, but that's mainly
because Internet Explorer ignores the rules too!

You use tables for display - that's fine for such tabular data and has
the useful side effect that most browsers will still display the data OK
- tables have about the best support in how browsers render the page.
However, your pages are locking out potential visitors. Try
a) Shutting off images (and see if you can navigate the data).
b) Scrolling just a little down the page (and wave goodbye to the
headers).
c)I personally found the text size way too small to read...until I
turned off the style sheets. (Style sheets and "font" tags in the same
code?)

As far as accessibility goes, it is illuminating to run pages through
http://www.cynthiasays.com/ or some similar accessibility checker (as
well as http://validator.w3.org/ of course).

There's also the issue of the code itself. Well-structured and
signposted code makes it fairly easy for someone else to spot any coding
errors one might make.
Ifyourcodeallrunsintoamesslikethisdoes,itssomuchha rdertosolve. So, while
code crunchers are fine as far as they go, writing code to standards
is a way to reduce coding, increase page usefulness and maximize your
audience. Good luck with it.

I do mine in Dreamweaver, which is a bit daunting at first glance, but it
seems to produce clean concise code. I was just too lazy to want to learn
the code!

--
Rob Overfield
Hull; 3m ASL
http://www.astrosport02.karoo.net/YorkshireWeather/