Web desginer-y folk - help required

[Bozza]

Having bought madisonmckay.com (the name of my daughter) some time shortly after she was born, I thought I'd actually use it finally.

Basic idea is nothing new, I guess, create a photo album type site so friends and family can see how and what the little lady is doing.

I know there are probably lots of 'out of the box' type things out there that can do this for you but I wanted to have a crack myself as, despite 'running' NSC, I've never done a thing when it comes to web design and site building.

Anyway, I've knocked up a home page here:

http://www.madisonmckay.com and I very much like the way it looks to the eye. However, I am concious that it is very bulky, file size wise. Files have been created as .PNGs. I just downloaded a PNG to JPG converter and ran all files through that. It reduced size a bit - I'd guess around 20% or so. However when I used he JPGs instead of the PNGs the site didn't look like it should. Possibly something to do with the transparency thing that PNGs enable and I know nothing about.

So....

1. Does the site load really slowly for you?
2. What can I do to improve it, whilst retaining the current look?

Any help gratefully appreciated and sorry if these questions are naive ones - as I say - I'm new to this malarky (although enjoying it!)

Thanks...

 

[adrian29uk]

The site loads just fine. As you know most people are on broadand these days.

If you want to retain the look, transparency then you will have to stick the .pngs

I just put together a site for somebody www.mendipminis.co.uk

I did this as a complete graphic in photoshop and then sliced it.

Its mainly a .jpg, but I am using .png for the form otherwise the form titles would look pants with transparant gifs.

Its fine and it looks nice. You still need some meta info.

 

[tedebear]

So....

1. Does the site load really slowly for you?
2. What can I do to improve it, whilst retaining the current look?

Any help gratefully appreciated and sorry if these questions are naive ones - as I say - I'm new to this malarky (although enjoying it!)

Thanks...

We're on broadband and yours is a little slow to load for us.

Its all to do with the quality of photos - I wonder if Roz would be able to tell you how she loads her photos (ie size and quality) to her all things brighton beautiful website - hers loads pretty quickly from memory?

We use Macromedia dreamweaver to build and maintain our website and it has a function which shows the view of the photo and then when you click on it the resolution is much higher, sort of like a giant low res thumbnail...Makes the pages load faster and if someone wants to see the detail then they select the photo.

 

[bhaexpress]

I wouldn't say it was slow at all, have seen far more slower business sites. Looks fine but a bit of background would be nice.

However, the question is this, how can such an ugly bloke have such a beautiful daughter ?

No looks fine, good effort.

 

[clippedgull]

Loads very fast here

 

[tedebear]

I must add we do have a pants download speed on our broadband...

 

[Cadiz Seagull]

Site loads fine for me

I can recommend a good web designer for you - talk to Nail-Z-Gull and tell him I want commission

 

[nail-Z]

Site loads fine for me

I can recommend a good web designer for you - talk to Nail-Z-Gull and tell him I want commission

 

[Cadiz Seagull]

I'll take that as a yes then

 

[gullshark]

did you use iWeb for that?

The general rule of thumb is to use JPGs for photos and the like and PNGs for buttons and other simple things.

If you have photoshop there is an option to save a PNG as "web safe" which reduces the palette and compresses them down.

You are right in saying that PNGs support transparency, the only workaround there is to make a JPG of ALL the images and make it one big image.

 

[Bozza]

Yep - used iWeb.

Funnily enough I just used SnagIt on my work laptop to grab the whole page and save as a JPG and it's come out at 103kb, as opposed to about 1.5mb or something currently.

 

[Lady Bracknell]

It loads very quickly and looks good.

Of pictures, everything that goes on my site is an optimised jpg. All smaller images will open as BIG when clicked on. I'm not keen on pngs unless used for buttons and the like either. There was a time when I was very careful to calculate how long images would take to download. Nowadays I'm afraid that I assume a pretty much universal broadband connection. Especially given the sort of browsers likely to want to use the site.

 

[TonyW]

Having bought madisonmckay.com (the name of my daughter) some time shortly after she was born, I thought I'd actually use it finally.

Basic idea is nothing new, I guess, create a photo album type site so friends and family can see how and what the little lady is doing.

I know there are probably lots of 'out of the box' type things out there that can do this for you but I wanted to have a crack myself as, despite 'running' NSC, I've never done a thing when it comes to web design and site building.

Anyway, I've knocked up a home page here:

http://www.madisonmckay.com and I very much like the way it looks to the eye. However, I am concious that it is very bulky, file size wise. Files have been created as .PNGs. I just downloaded a PNG to JPG converter and ran all files through that. It reduced size a bit - I'd guess around 20% or so. However when I used he JPGs instead of the PNGs the site didn't look like it should. Possibly something to do with the transparency thing that PNGs enable and I know nothing about.

So....

1. Does the site load really slowly for you?
2. What can I do to improve it, whilst retaining the current look?

Any help gratefully appreciated and sorry if these questions are naive ones - as I say - I'm new to this malarky (although enjoying it!)

Thanks...

When you say the site doesn't look right with the images as .jpegs, what do you mean exactly?

 

[Bozza]

Re: Re: Web desginer-y folk - help required

When you say the site doesn't look right with the images as .jpegs, what do you mean exactly?

If you look at the site now you will see it where I have simply changed all PNGs to JPGs.

 

[TonyW]

Re: Re: Re: Web desginer-y folk - help required

If you look at the site now you will see it where I have simply changed all PNGs to JPGs.

Looks fine to me

Sorry, only joking, you can change it back now thanks.

 

[TonyW]

You using any photo editing software, or are you just dropping them straight into the web site software?

 

[Lord Bracknell]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Web desginer-y folk - help required

you can change it back now thanks.

Please do ... and quickly.

Those scissors have done some nasty damage.

 

[tedebear]

Re: Re: Re: Web desginer-y folk - help required

If you look at the site now you will see it where I have simply changed all PNGs to JPGs.

Yikes!

 

[clapham_gull]

Gifs support transparency too.

I'm quite happy to convert the images (like the scissors) to have transparent areas if you PM me.

 

[Bozza]

You using any photo editing software, or are you just dropping them straight into the web site software?

I'm just using iWeb.

I don't have any photo editing software (beyond iPhoto).

I reckon a single jpg (as attached) would do the trick - some quality has been lost, obviously, for this page.

However now I feel I'm getting into this a bit, I'm curious how I could create that page, using separate JPGs with the page being not quite so hefty.