decreasing sifr render time

Question

I'm using sifr for a few items on this page: http://blueprint.staging.dante-studios.com/public/templates/home.php

unfortunately it seems that the rendering is very slow, does anyone have any idea of how to:

a) speed up the rendering process b) hide all "to be sifr'd" items until all of them are ready?

Answer 1

There is a performance penalty associated with SIFR. Unfortunately the speed is partially dependent on the speed of the client computer. The only way to improve times is to reduce the use of SIFR, or remove it altogether and use images to ensure fonts render the way you want them to.

Also, make sure that your font files only include the letters you are using, to reduce download time.

Answer 2

Yes.. I’ve used sIFR in many times and help me so much.. Visitors said rendering is very slow too. I has one solution which change to Cufon.

Cufon is more exciting because, it doesn’t use any browser plugins. Cufon, on the other hand just needs JavaScript to be enabled. Just a suggestion ;)

Cufon Demo

Answer 3

Here are a few suggestions:

• The Flash movie has the bold and italic and bold + italic glyphs embedded. If you don't need those, they're adding needless weight to the movie. Same goes for other characters.
• You could get rid of all JavaScript comments in the sifr-config file.
• Flash transparency is not advised as it's a bit heavier to render.
• To improve the initial display, look into ratios
• Try loading the sIFR code before jQuery