Take this (ServerFault) page for instance. It has about 20 elements. When the last of these has loaded, the page is deemed "loaded"--but not before. This is certainly the protocol used by our testing service (which is among the small group of well-known vendors that offer that sort of service). Obviously this method is based on a clear, definite endpoint--therefore it's easy to apply w/ concomitant reliability. I think it's also the metric used by the popular Firefox plugin, 'YSlow.'
For my employer's website, nearly always the last-to-load items are tracking code, tracking pixels, etc., so from the user's point of view--their perception--the page was "loaded" well before it had actually loaded based on the criterion used by our testing service (15-20% is a rough estimate).
I'm sure i'm not the first person to consider this nor the first to wonder if it is causing micro-optimization while ignoring overall system-level, or user-perceived performance. So my question is, are there are other more practical (yet still reasonably precise) measures of page loading time?
