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I was doing some tests on version 3 about SEO and loading times and it came up that the first page as it is in the demo setup is over 370kb in size!!
The concept of "page size" is defined as the sum of the file sizes for all the elements that make up a page, including the defining HTML file as well as all embedded objects (e.g., image files with GIF and JPG pictures). It is possible to get away with page designs that have larger page sizes as long as the HTML file is small and is coded to reduce the browser's rendering time.
Google originally stated a 100K page size limit "recommendation".
I’ve seen examples up to 5Mb, I’m sure you’d go higher for certain sites. Google would truncate the page and wouldn’t index the entire page.
The original 100k recommendation was for text and html not including images. At the point that Google originally made that recommendation, Googlebot would only index the first 100K of the page.
Today googlebot WILL index far more than 100k of the page. 100k downloads very quickly for most users, even those on cell phones.
Offcourse it wouldnt hurt to slim it down a bit. So I started looking and found that flags.png as a file is about 123kb alone. It is a 4360px long file wich contains all flags for cs-cart languages.
So I came up with a solution that can bring that file down to 1.5kb or less.
Open that file an keep only the flags you need (most setups use 2 or 3 different languages).
After that open base.css in you active skins and go to line 3438 to .flag.flag-en (for english) and change the position of the image for example background-position: 0 -34px; if the Uk flag is the second one .
Keep doing that for all flags you need to keep in cs-cart. Then delete all the rest of the flags entries in the css wich you dont use . (I dont have to say that you already had a backup from base.css!).
After that you save over 120 kb alone from the image file and maybe a few kb from base.css
Fotis
PS
You can drop more the size of the first page if you use jpg files instead of png for the slideshow (not what cs-cart did!) Thats another 150kb from the demo first page of cs-cart v3., You can even design Html banners with smaller images and use a few gif also in them. Yes banner slider works with html banners now!!!
I managed to drop the file size of the first page to just 120kb with these simple steps! (no html banners just jpg)
