optimizing images

disaster-master — Fri, 01 Jun 2001 18:15:03 +0000

Karen,

Much better!! I like it. Loads fast for me.

I discovered a neat FREE tool that allows you to opitimze your graphics. You can find it at spinwave.com There are others but I am pretty happy with this one.

There may be a better way to shrink your stuff but this is what I do. When I create an image (gif or jpg) I will optimize in whatever program I am using (PSP, Photo Impact, etc) trying different methods. If I am not satisiied I wll then take it to the image cruncher at Spinwave and give it a whirl there. Sometimes it will shrink it a bit more and sometimes it will make it look terrible. You just have to play around with it a bit.

You can also not optimize it all all (leave that baby at full throttle...huge) and take it straight to Spinwave and optimize it there first. Don't know why but I get different results sometimes. Just be sure and take a copy of your image to spinwave because once you change it there you can't get the original back. I made a folder for my copies to try and keep them seperate from the rest.

Also, when you get ready to save the image at Spinwave be sure and type in yourimage.jpg or your image.gif cause if you just put yourimage it won't save it. Took me a while to figure that out. Never said I was the brightest chick on the planet....HAHA!!!

If anyone has any better suggestions please post them. I am always eager to learn new tricks.

Oh, please post the method you used to make the transparent images and what program you are using. I can't seem to figure that one out.

disaster-master

Thanks for all the help!

KarenArt — Fri, 01 Jun 2001 16:08:55 +0000

I finally got my page done (just as I ran out of time).
I sort of figured out how to turn an image with a slight drop shadow or emboss effect into a decent transparent gif.
I just wish I knew how to optomize everything more without completely destroying them.
... oh well.

All the serieous problems have been fixed: the fonts look right, the alignment is fixed, the alts were redone, even all the 3d tables are gone.

All next month I will be cleaning up the rest of my site to make it look it's best, but as least I can say I'm happy with the home page now.

(Of course after this I just have 4 more sites to do) :0

If you'd like to take a look, Id appreciate it!
Let me know if you see anything else that could be improved.

Thanks again
Karen

TheGizmoid — Thu, 31 May 2001 18:27:12 +0000

I checked your site with both NS 4.6 and IE 4.0 on a Mac running OS 7.5.5 (talk about antideluvian!) and everything worked just fine, rollovers and all. As for graphics, if you stick with gif and jpg, you're fine. But older browsers can't display png.

As for the nav buttons, I see that you were going for the same physical dimenions (144x50) and because the word "exchange" has more letters, it comes out smaller than "forums" which looks much larger. To me it's much more aesthetically pleasing to look at the font in the same size, even if that means they are different widths.

Some of your buttons have the wrong "alt" tag.

Looks great, though. I don't mind the background at all. From your warning, I thought it was going to be something horrid.

The load time was excellent on my 33.6 dialup.

mairving — Thu, 31 May 2001 17:18:47 +0000

So you are using Photoshop. You could also do the page layout there to see how things work instead of laying it out on paper.

Thanks too for looking at my personal site

KarenArt — Thu, 31 May 2001 17:08:47 +0000

I forgot to say thank you to TWF Member (annonimity is my name)...

It's nice to hear someone say they liked my personal site.
For some reason I seem to have an easier time with image maps than I do with a lot of individual images.... go figure.

Thanks for the kind words!
Karen

KarenArt — Thu, 31 May 2001 16:57:59 +0000

Thanks so much!
There was an error on my page. I didn't catch it until webmistress pointed it out. I just had the code trying to do an ONLOAD=preloadImages when it didn't need to. No big deal to take out.

I was so excited to try to make some nicer main links that I rushed too quickly and sized a couple wrong.
I actually am redoing them slightly smaller so they will look nicer.

I printed the page out(that's how I check layout) and I realized the "About this site", "Remember us" and "Contact us" looks much too heavy. I think they would also benefit from a size reduction. What do you think?

I know there are some that will say "finally!" when I tell you I am getting rid of the 3d table around the picture.
I'm still not sure what to do with the search table though.

Oh and mairving, the link for this month's challenge is supposed to be broken (I told you it would be).
The lesson isn't schedualed to start until tomorrow and Melissa still has to give me her final ok for the layout of her lesson.

Thanks again everyone!
I will probably be back to ask you about my final (and I mean it this time) layout for my page.

I'll try to check out some of the other sites here as well.

Have fun
Karen

PS: I am creating alternate versions of all the links I'm creating now (for when I change my background). I also am finally remembering to save the psd files.

Fine now!

The Webmistress — Thu, 31 May 2001 13:19:46 +0000

I don't get that error anymore! maybe it was my pc

One other thing I have just noticed is that the "Remember Us" text looks like the letters have had their bottoms cut off!

mairving — Thu, 31 May 2001 13:15:37 +0000

I am not getting the error that Webmistress is. Maybe it has been fixed. The page does look a lot better. Just a couple of minor issues. One is that it appears that the 'Exchange' link on the left side is a smaller font than the other ones. I don't know if you were experimenting with the different size or not. Also the link for this month's challenge is broken. Other than that I think that you site looks like an artists site and very well done at that.

disaster-master — Thu, 31 May 2001 13:10:21 +0000

I like the new colors for the links on the left even if you change the bgcolor to white. I am with webmistress on the background though. I kinda like it too. I peeked at your homepage in your profile and it is beautiful. I hope you intend on keeping that.

One thing I noticed is...the text size for the "Exchange" link is smaller than the others. I would make the others the same size as that one. Or even make them smaller than that. Also, on the right where it says, "About this site, remember us, and contact us", that text is different sizes also. Actually, I think I would just use plain text there instead of graphics. Not sure.

I know the feeling about the rollovers....LOL I had the hardest time with those. Yours did work for me. I am using IE 5.0.

I feel that the load time was acceptable. I believe that most people tend to accept a little longer load time with art sites.

Don't know about the old browsers. You will have to get that info from the pros here.

The Webmistress — Thu, 31 May 2001 12:13:42 +0000

I get an error when loading the page :

Line: 81
Char: 1
Error: Object expected
Code: 0

Other than that I think that the graphical text links are a bit too big.

The background is actually growing on me :eek: but you do see the "boxes" around the graphics, I know you say you are going to change it but I would have done the new links with a coloured background now so that you don't have to re-do the links later again!