How do I use the pre and post build reports?
When you first open SiteGrinder it analyzes your document to identify static and interactive elements, and checks to make sure all the hints and layer positions make sense.
If there's something wrong with your design, whether it's a misspelled hint or a layer that could potentially interfere with a button, SiteGrinder will probably identify it.
The pre-build report tells you all of the things SiteGrinder knows it will be doing, and gives warnings and errors about things it thinks may be wrong.
A warning, represented quite a yellow triangle, represents something that SiteGrinder isn't sure is a problem but that you should take a look at to make sure.
An error, represented by a stop sign, is something that will definitely cause problems with the build and that you should fix before building.
It's much faster to take a quick read through the pre-build report and fix problems before you build than it is to wait for the build to discover any mistakes.
The post build report appears above the pre-build report when the build is complete. It provides a link to the directory where your site was built and gives you important information about how big the files that make up the site will be upon downloading. It also contains a link to the build folder so you can open it quickly.
A particularly valuable statistic here is the information about shared elements and the comparison of the initial download to the other downloads. Because pages so often share many of the same graphics, and since SiteGrinder automatically ensures that identical graphics are culled down to one, going to another page after the loading the first page usually takes much less time. This is because browsers recognize that the graphics have the same directory and file names and so don't download them again.
Read more about the Report Pane UI