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Software Engineering vocabulary · Web, Mobile and Interface Development

Load time

Meaning in software engineering, with examples

nounCore term

In software engineering, load time means: How long a page takes to download and appear on screen in a usable state, usually measured in seconds or milliseconds.

In Turkish: yüklenme süresi, sayfa yükleme süresi

How it is used

Teams measure, reduce and monitor page load time, often with Lighthouse or with data from real users. Because 'loaded' can mean many things, developers now prefer specific metrics such as Largest Contentful Paint.

Example sentences

  1. After we compressed the images, load time dropped from four seconds to under two.

  2. Mobile load time matters more because most of our visitors use phones.

Common collocations

  • page load time
  • reduce load time
  • fast load time
  • measure load time
  • Core Web VitalsThree metrics from Google that measure real user experience on a page: loading (LCP), responsiveness (INP) and visual stability (CLS).
  • cacheA place where copies of files or data are kept for a while so they can be served again faster, for example in the browser, on a CDN or on the server.
  • image optimizationMaking image files as small as possible while they still look good, for example by compressing and resizing them and by using modern formats.
  • lazy loadingA technique that waits to load images, videos or code until they are actually needed, for example when the user scrolls near them.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Web, Mobile and Interface Development

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