SpeakBold.com 2.0

You no likie?

It’s very good visually, lots of great use of imagery – however, it’s a massive load and takes a while to come up. I think that may put some people off, particularly dial up users. You may want to stick a warning to say “Not dialup friendly”.

You may want to reduce the quality of the images, or convert them to something else like png (I assume they’re hi-quality jpg). I noted that not all your title images showed up such as Kaylee at the jungle gym.

I like it, but it’s shame it’s not fast loading. Unique, but heavy

Hey, nice crit. I like that. Do you think I should reduce the size of my photos, or just the graphics that create the look of the website?

Jinsan, check this thread periodically. I’m going to see what I can do to reduce the load for the graphics, and I’d like to get you input if possible.

Thanks again.

Very, very nice. It loaded fine for me but I am fortunate enough to have a fast connection.

Having tried many [heavy] designs myself, I am most impressed with how you have everything working together in such a great fashion.

Excellent in my opinion ??

Edit: I just had a quick look on 800×600 as well [I usually use 1024×768] and without entering into the old res argument, it falls apart here.
It is not an issue to me but the purists will condemn you to all eternity.

Mind you, ‘eternity’ is nice I hear….

Thanks, shadow; that makes me feel a lot better. I really busted my ass on this overhaul this weekend; a lot of hair pulling and desk pounding, you know. It’s nice to have another web designer appreciate the effort. ??

It’s also great to have other web designers pushing you towards standards and optimization when all you want to do is give up and do it your way…lol ??

I love the header, the background, style, well done, however I’m not too hot on side column in terms of color, to me it doesn’t flow as well as it could with the rest of design.

Keep it up!

Hey, Dmitri…I would like to hear your thoughts on the sidebar. Could you elaborate? Do you have any suggestions?

I’m not sure I can recommend anything specifically towards optimizing individual page load, as your site is so focused on photography (and well done there).

For the *front* page, I would NOT suggest png for image format unless you’re willing to slice things down to 256 colors. If you think jpeg can be large, try using photo-images at 24bit in png! But if you can up the compression for those initial images (the banner types), that can help. Swapping out the numerous button links for text in the sidebar would speed things up slightly, since each image requires another http request, etc.

Okay, I’ve sized down the graphics quite a bit (not the photos themselves). Everything should download significantly quicker now (I hope). If you guys wanna clear your cache and give it another whirl, I’d love to hear what your results are.

Thanks again.

Instantly.

No wait time at all. How did you scale down your images exactly? Colour downgrading or did you use a graphic optimiser?

I used “save for web” in Photoshop. I used it the first time, too, but I had the output on “high”. This time I put it on “medium”. I’d never do that on my photos, but with the graphics, I suppose its the overall effect that counts, more than the details…because the medium setting does get rid of a lot of details, and it allows some obvious compression artifacts to creep in.

Anyhow, I think it looks fine with the more compressed graphics, and I’m glad to hear that it’s downloading instantly. But then again, you are on broadband, right shadow? And you were sure to clear your cache? Anyone else getting differing or similar results?

BTW, did anyone notice the effect on smaller monitors? I set up the theme so that the thick leather border on the left will slip off the left side of the monitor and let the actual content sit on the edge. It’s not an obvious feature…it’s just one of those things that you like to see work out on the back end.

one thing i just noticed…

for about 5 minutes my broadband connection was crawling. During that time I tried to access your site. While the images were loading, it appeared that your banner images are placed on top of your frame graphics. I’m not sure if you intended for the banner images to fit inside the “frame” graphic, but right now it is a bit large….

Otherwise, AWESOME design and screw those on dialup ?? They need to upgrade anyways ??

Hey, Phil…thanks for the comment. the banner is supposed to overlay the blank frame, so that when all is downloaded, it looks seamless, like that’s the pic in the frame. When you say it’s too large, do you mean that it doesn’t line up? If so, what browser are you using? I’ve checked it in Firefox, IE, and Opera…and I assume that it looks right in Netscape and Mozilla since things usually do if they look right in Firefox. Perhaps I’ve missed something though…

The frame has a thick border, like the frame encompassing your site, just scaled down. However, when the banner is overlayed on it, the viewable border is much less and only the gold corners are visible on the frame.

I am using FF1.0.

It looks the same in IE6.