Again, I understand that most websites are financed by advertising. I get it.
What I don’t understand is why the core of the website is the very last to load.
For example, let’s say you’re reading a news column. You load the site. First the ads come up. Then the menus and buttons. Then the archives links. Then the help links. Then the links to other sites. etc. etc. etc. Then, at the very end, the column loads.
Why are archive links or links to other websites considered more priority than the actual content? I came to the page to seek the material. The ad loaded, the website made its money. What purpose is there in putting up all that other crap first?
I always wondered this about Microsoft Word. You open Microsoft Word, and you have that delay where it loads fonts and functions and blah blah blah before it gives you the page. Why not load the page first, give me the cursor, and then load the other stuff in the background? It’s not like I can type fast enough such that I’d need to be accessing formatting functions before it was able to load.
So… what’s the logic, because I’m sure there is some?
I guess it’s so that you get to see or use the complete product. If you started using MS Word before it had finished loading it’d be slow to respond and feel sluggish. This would encourage users to try alternatives and MS would lose business.
Websites tend to be designed to load their template first followed by content. This is probably because most pages of a site have the same template. The content is added after the template so that a new page can be created easily. It’s a far fetched educated guess, but it just might be right!
Dave