Unit 28 Task 2 - 1

Introduction

In this fact sheet I am going to be outlining the factors that will have an impact on the performance of a website. Within this fact sheet I am going to describe - User Side Performance Factors - Download speed, Client hardware and software platform and Client PC Performance. I will also be talking about Server Side Performance Factors, Web server performance, Bandwidth and File Types.

 

User Side Performance Factors

Download speed

users can have different types of download speed, some uses will have wired and some will have wireless, wireless tends to cut out more for the user and wired is known to be faster. If the download speed is slow, the user will have a lot of problems trying to download the webpage. Web developers need to test out a lot of different types of internet speeds to be able to make sure their website is able to work smoothly for the slower download speed users

Client hardware and software platform

Users have different types of browsers; therefore the way the CSS looks on each browser will differ. Some of these browsers will have a smaller display area for the user therefore the CSS will change and this could make images out of proportion for the user. Also, users use tablets as well, some tablets run different OS compared to the computer. For example, Apple iPad runs iOS, this operating system does not have Adobe Flash installed for it, if a website uses Flash, and errors will be displayed for the user. However Microsoft’s Surface 3 uses Windows 10, Windows 10 has Adobe Flash installed, and therefore the website described earlier will run correctly for this tablet.

Client PC Performance

Some clients PCs may not be up to date and a lot of the hardware inside their PC is outdated or not working. For example, the user’s computer may be infected by viruses; this could cause many errors for the user. However if the user is using an antivirus, sometimes the program will use a lot of CPU, this will affect the way the users browser functions, this makes things slower.

 

Server Side Performance Factors

Web server performance

The web server’s performance all depends on how many tasks the webpage has to do. For example, if the webpage has a lot of videos, pictures, and cookies etc. the web server will take a lot longer to load these items. The performance of the website is also affected web server capacity, which is basically bandwidth. The web server performance is a also decided by how the good or up to date the hardware is. If the hardware is old the way it processes data may be a lot slower and wasn’t designed for the long run of more technological advanced systems, i.e. the ability for unlimited bandwidth.  (Anon., n.d.)

Bandwidth

If the server side has more bandwidth it will allow more people to access it, therefore the higher the bandwidth the more users can access the website. Therefore the smaller the bandwidth the fewer amounts of people can download at once from the webpage. Server side scripting uses a lot of bandwidth and is only used when it has to be, otherwise developers will use client side scripting as this is executed on their PC. Most hosting providers nowadays allow for the use of unlimited Bandwidth. More components on a website will use up more bandwidth, therefore it is best to use compressed file types. (Anon., n.d.)

File Types

Usually now, web pages load almost instantly for most users, however some file types are too big and slower operating systems may stall when trying to download the webpage, for example, by using the file type .PNG, you will see that the file size is relatively high compared to using the file type .jpeg. By using less compressed files in the webpage, the web page will take a lot longer to download for some users. Sound file types are a huge factor to server side performance, by using .WAV you will be using a lot of space that the user will need to download, this will make it so that most of the sounds on the webpage will most likely not play when the user, for example, clicks on a button. However, the best alternative that most developers use .MP3, this is because it has a much smaller size.

 

Bibliography

Anon., n.d. Server Side Factors. [Online]
Available at: http://webunit28.wikispaces.com/Server+Side+Factors
[Accessed 6 November 2015].

Anon., n.d. User side and server side factors that influence the performance of a website. [Online]
Available at: https://10mahmoodsadaf.wordpress.com/about/
[Accessed 6 November 2015].

 

 

Task 2

Introduction –
 in this report, I am going to be describing how HTML and CSS work together to produce websites. I will describe what HTML is and what its purpose is in developing websites. I will also be doing the same for CSS. After describing, I will conclude by describing how HTML and CSS work together in the development of websites. This description will go over the ability for the programmer to pre define tags and the ease it will bring when having to come back to edit the tag.

HTML – HTML stands for Hypertext Mark-up Language, HTML uses tags like - <p> and </p>. This tag will make it so the text written within them, will be classed as a paragraph. Its purpose is to create websites, the language is very easy to learn, and this is because all of the code uses tags. HTML is the mark-up language that all web pages are written in. HTML is very basic and can cause a lot of confusion, the formatting for HTML is limited and is not very good at formatting multiple lines of text, though it is possible, it will take the programmer a lot of time to do so.

CSS – stands for Cascading Style Sheet. CSS is a plain text file format and is used for formatting content on webpages (HTML). CSS is able to edit the way text looks in more depth than what HTML can. Formatting for example can be – font, size, colour, border and location of HTML. CSS is also able to create a house style for the pages of a website. In other words, CSS will be used for the ease of being able to format multiple amounts of text. The programmer can set it so that a paragraph can be pre-defined, or the programmer can create a border at the start of the file and be able to edit it with ease if they need to change it.

Compare and Contrast – HTML is what everyone will write their page in. With HTML you are able to create a title, paragraph, insert links etc. However with HTML, you are limited to how you do this. For example, if you were creating a webpage for someone and you have one line as a different colour, the person may want that line changed to blue and the rest of the text to purple. With HTML, you will need to go to each line of code and manually change them. However, with CSS you can configure the tags. For example, <p1> can be pre-defined to have a font size of 50 and the colour to be red. Now if the person doesn’t like the way <p1> looks, you can go back to where you pre-defined how <p1> will look and change the values without having to go to each line of code to edit the colour.

Unit 20 Assignment 2 P1

Introduction

In this report I am going to be describing what Notepad and Komodo Edit are. Within this I will also be stating the advantages and disadvantages of both. After this I will compare the two products and finally I will conclude what my favourite program is.

Notepad

Notepad has many different purposes. Notepad can be used to allow users to program in a language that they wish. Notepad isn’t just aimed at programming it can be used for storing notes, hence the name ‘Notepad’.

Advantages:

·         There is no training needed

·         It is free and comes with Windows

·         It is very quick to load.

·         Supports all languages as it saves as .txt

Disadvantages:

·         Has no autocorrect

·         Only works for Windows

·         Very basic formatting

·         No internal preview for programming HTML

 Komodo Edit

The purpose of this program is primarily for programmers to write code, it supports many languages. It is aimed towards programming as it has autocorrect for most code for the language that the user chooses when creating the project,

Advantages:

·         Automatic formatting – indenting, colour coding

·         Auto correct and suggest.

·         Has support for many languages

·         Internal preview

·         Free and works on multiple Oss

Disadvantages:

·         Slow to load

·         Complex compared to Notepad

·         You need to install it

·         Sometimes the auto suggest changes the text when you don’t want it to

Comparison

Both of the programs have formatting however Komodo Edit better supports the programer. Both support many languages; however Komodo Edit allows you to choose a specific, so it can help you with auto correct and suggest.

Conclusion –

In conclusion I believe that Komodo Edit is the most useful and is the program I would use to write code in HTML. My reasons for this are because it has auto-correct and suggest. It also speeds up writing code because  it automatically puts in the close code, for example, when I type <p1>, the program automatically inputs </p1> at the end for me.