Some users of Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism Online
from outside of USA/Canada have reported slow
response to us, especially when they are viewing the full text of
articles. This slowness is primarily caused by overloaded networks
between the US and Europe at certain times of the day, by slow network
links in some parts of Europe, and by the large size of the full-text
articles. There are some things that you can do to improve response.
- Most important: avoid using the site at the times of your
day when the east coast of the US is at work. This will improve
your response time by a factor of two or three.
- Look first at Abstracts, which usually arrive in
about 1/10th the time of a full article, if you are not certain
you want to see a full article. You can do this by clicking on
the [Abstract]
link in a table of contents or in a search result.
- Increase the size of the cache that your browser uses to save items
that it has already seen. This will avoid returning to the server
to get a symbol or a button that has already been seen before.
You can change this in "Preferences/Advanced/Cache--Disk Cache".
- Change the "Page in cache..." (Mac) or "Document in cache..."
(Windows) radio button in "Preferences/Advanced/Cache"
to "Once per session". This will ensure a minimum number of
inquiries to the server.
- Upgrade to the latest version of your browser. Each new version appears to
have noticeable speed improvements, perhaps on the order of 20%.
