Task 2

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Some clients PCs may not be up to date and a lot of the hardware inside their PC is outdated or not working.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].