User Guide

188 Chapter 12 Testing and Maintaining Web Pages
Testing page download times
A document’s weight, that is, the time it takes for the page to download, is a good
metric for testing a site’s design and effectiveness. Public sites and intranets with
remote users must achieve a balance between attractive content and tolerable
page-loading times. HomeSite+ for Dreamweaver MX can help you find that balance
by supplying values for document download times across a range of modem speeds.
Only image files (GIF, JPG, PNG) are tested and included in the Dependencies list.
The following graphic shows a sample Document Weight list:
To test the current document’s download time:
1 Select Tools > Document Weight.
The file’s dependencies, such as image and media files, are listed along with file
size and download times for a range of modem speeds. Tags in code comments
are not calculated.
2 If the page’s download time exceeds the site’s requirements, edit the page to
decrease the number or size of dependencies, then retest.
HomeSite+ for Dreamweaver MX uses the Root URL setting in your FTP
configuration to determine the relative path to files.