Visio 'save as web page', web page very slow to open

[Aussie_Jim]

I am working on a project that is auditing a hospital campus, we are delivering the data in Excel and Visio but in a final web format. There is a Visio and Excel file for each audited building which vary in size depending on building size.
The issue I have come across is when the Visio file is complete and all data has been linked from the Excel file I then select 'Save as Web Page' and let Visio create the web files. When the web file is opened (this is all locally on the machine) it is taking between 7 seconds to 4 minutes depending on building size.

Building 1 – Visio 52 pages, file size 25Mb, time to open web page – 244 seconds
Building 4 – Visio 14 pages, file size 9.2Mb, time to open web page – 7 seconds
Building 6 – Visio 19 pages, file size 11Mb, time to open web page – 7 seconds
Building 7 – Visio 26 pages, file size 13.7Mb, time to open web page – 36 seconds
Building 40 – Visio 53 pages, file size 23Mb, time to open web page – 106 seconds

Visio 2007 Pro, Excel 2007 (files saved as .xls) and IE 7.0 been used running on Win XP SP3 machine

Is there anything I can do to speed this up?

[aledlund]

Help me understand  You're running a website on winXP to service Visio visualization locally. I'd start with the standard web server performance questions - processor speed, processor architecture, memory, disk performance (interfaces, rotational speed), other processes running on the system, database characteristics/tuning, etc. 

Render time has a lot of the same issues. The quick fix might be to reduce the data in the drawings, and create more of them... Once the drawings are rendered the rest is web solution design.

For my engagements I run ws2k8 standard (x64), 3g ram, dual-core, fastest disk I could get...that's the laptop and the performance is pretty good.
hth,
al

[Aussie_Jim]

Hey, here is some more info

The machine I am currently running this on is just my home PC that I am using to construct the drawings, the whole data will be handed over to the client for them to run on there own servers. The final data is only going to be used internally within the organisation.

My PC
Win XP Sp3 (x32), Quad CPU, 3GB Ram, 500GB SATA 3.0GB/s disks

I don't think the issue is PC related but more a limitaion of Visio and how it constructs the web pages, I am no microsoft expert so forgive me but I think it is something to do with the data.xml file. In relation to the previous post the Visio file for Building 1 that is taking the most time to open contains an data.xml file with over 120,000 lines and I am guessing this is taking the time to process on opening. If this is the case then I guess your suggestion to break down the drawings and data size is the only option?

Just to add once the page has opened everything works fine when navigating through the pages and all the data is displayed as soon as selected.

[Paul Herber]

Depending on the functionality you want from the webpage output, you could try just saving all the pages as images and creating an index file. I have a utility to help with this at
http://www.sandrila.co.uk/visio-utilities/
This should be *a lot* faster than the XML solution.

[JohnGoldsmith]

Just to add to the comments.....have you tried this is IE8.  The JavaScript engine has really improved, so it would be interesting to see you notice a difference.

Another point about IE8 is the developer tools (F12) - This contains a script profiler which might help nail down where the bottle neck is.  Check out this link for info on the profiler:

http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2008/09/11/introducing-the-ie8-developer-tools-jscript-profiler.aspx

Also, have you tried the Visio Viewer?

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=D88E4542-B174-4198-AE31-6884E9EDD524&displaylang=en

Hope that helps.

Best regards

John

[Aussie_Jim]

Hey guys thanks for all the suggestions, here is what I found

Depending on the functionality you want from the webpage output, you could try just saving all the pages as images and creating an index file. I have a utility to help with this at
http://www.visio-utilities.sandrila.co.uk/
This should be *a lot* faster than the XML solution.

This would not have worked as I needed the functionality of selecting shapes and displaying their data.

Just to add to the comments.....have you tried this is IE8.  The JavaScript engine has really improved, so it would be interesting to see you notice a difference.

Another point about IE8 is the developer tools (F12) - This contains a script profiler which might help nail down where the bottle neck is.  Check out this link for info on the profiler:

http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2008/09/11/introducing-the-ie8-developer-tools-jscript-profiler.aspx

Also, have you tried the Visio Viewer?

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=D88E4542-B174-4198-AE31-6884E9EDD524&displaylang=en

Hope that helps.

Best regards

John

I tried IE 8 and this did not speed it up but the developer tools were good in showing which functions took all the time. As i'm no programmer it was all alien to me but I could see how this would help.

I also tried the Visio 2007 viewer and this was good as well but it would not suit the clients solution.


I have decided to strip the Visio drawings down (as suggested below) to a single page each and hyperlink them together, this works and as far as the client is concerened there is no visual difference.

Render time has a lot of the same issues. The quick fix might be to reduce the data in the drawings, and create more of them... Once the drawings are rendered the rest is web solution design.

Thank you to all who posted suggestions, I now have the next 6 weeks to spend drawing in Visio...