[Way OT] Web Store Software

(...)

How did you do that? I didn't see the button, Max.

It's fun jumping into the middle of 1,000 new files

It's becoming easier to understand why one elects not to maintain someone else's undocumented code.

--Winston

I think she did a passable job on optimization compared to some sites I've seen, with the same physical size pics taking two to four megabytes each. ;)

Good job, BTW.

Ditto. Five years after I began, I bought a copy of Jennifer Niederst's _Web Design in a Nutshell_ and almost cried. There she had almost all of the little hard-won tips and tricks I'd learned in those first 5 years. It's out in its third edition now.

-- The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools. --Herbert Spencer

This is the original 100K

This is the kind of image that should load during page refreshes. It's 4.7K or 5% the size of the original and less than 12% the size of the compressed version.

It would speed up page refreshes by 8.3 x. If a customer clicks on the thumbnail, *then* he can wait for the ~ 40 KB download. Page refreshes would require 82 KB, not 680 KB as it would be with 40 KB images and certainly not 1.6 MB as it is now.

--Winston :)

AWinston I agree, but I was trying to point out that a 60% saving could be made on the big pics. Had I done it thumbnail size as you did, it is near impossible to compare detail. I was trying to convince someone to do something a different way and unless you can show there is virtually no visual difference there is little chance of them being convinced.

@Larry, I hate it when people say, "but it' s better than...." That irritates me comparing one poorly made thing against an even worse made thing as though there is some justification for the first item's existence just because it is not as bad as it could be. That's the good old, "near enough" syndrome that appears to be leading the way these days.

Dave

Verily, and I've taken a guy's 111kb page and put it out at 10kb after some fine tuning. Micro$oft Word-to-HTML output is the worst.

I see that you'd rather I say what I meant, which was "It's not nearly as bad as some I've seen." Feel better now? ;)

-- You are today where your thoughts have brought you; you will be tomorrow where your thoughts take you. -- James Lane Allen

Actually you need two versions of each pic. One small and compressed (80X60?) for the thumbnail and another 800X600 that loads when you click on the thumbnail. If you are having problems getting the files the right size try InfanView. Free download at

Dave, I got that. I understood. There was no mystery there.

Making a 97 KB picture into a 40 KB picture without degradation is a Good Thing.

I intended that there be two bitmaps for each picture. One no bigger than absolutely necessary that would load 19 x quicker than the 97 KB pictures; 8 x quicker than the 40 KB pictures. This speeds up the review process for the customer. The larger picture, a ~40 KB version (Thanks to you) would load only on demand. Most of the time we click through website pages and we appreciate being able to do that quickly, yes?

Yup George, that was my point when I said: Winston > If a customer clicks on the thumbnail, *then* he Winston > can wait for the ~ 40 KB download.

--Winston

Yup. And a workable naming convention.

B_name.png for a Button T_name.png for a Thumbnail P_name.png for a Picture etc...

That kind of thing really helps when you have hundreds of files to dig through (and a sorted listing ;) )

My boat's website just pegged out (10 MB) this evening and I had to re-do some of the imagery. It was never really "designed", it just growed that way. There is no real consistency as far as naming photo.

But the naming convention for web objects really helped.

I use a prehistoric paint program (Page Image - 8.3 filenaming, but more drawing power than anything else) and an early version of ACDSee (3.1)

And Notepad++ for the text editor.

Old tools are often the best tools.

(...)

That is a great idea, Richard. Thanks!

--Winston

If you are actually doing this kind of stuff, take it a bit further.

!name.HTM for all html files - so all the pages sort to the top of he list.

And tag any other kind of file that you have several of... Text files - Xname? PDF files - Aname (Adobe)?

Make it as easy on your own self as you can!

But then we all give better advice than we take... :)

Earthlink gives you multiple free websites, one for each e-mail address. On broadband you get eight. I don't know how many you get on DSL or dialup. You could split it between multiple sites, if you have any spares.

I use picture.jpg for regular size pics, picture_m.jpg for medium size (like a catalog page), and picture_t.jpg for 80x64pixel thumbs. This leaves them in alpha order.

-- To know the road ahead, ask those coming back. -- Chinese Proverb

That way, it's quickly obvious when I don't have a thumbnail for a given larger bitmap, or a larger bitmap for a given thumbnail. Gotcha chief. Thanks!

--Winston

There are two addresses listed below... They are intended to be different sites...

But if the boat side grows any more (which it will, of course) it will need to spill over to another address.

cave1 and cave2 are sometimes used to post temporary photos and stuff for text based newsgroup discussions. Used to do that often on rec.av.homebuilt.

cave3 and cave4 are unused so far. Will probably rename one of those for the spill over. Or just hatch another one?

Haven't figured out what snipped-for-privacy@earthlink.net is about yet :) I hope it will be interesting though...

This is the original 100K

Nope. Definitely 3 or 4 afternoons. ;-)

Got any shots of fire/smoke up your way?

I have a cron job snap a shot from the wifi webcam (kitchen window) every 6 minutes. Stitch 'em together @ 10 frames/sec, and every second of video = an hour of realtime.

Here's our smoky morning of the 5th:

(6.6MB)

The locust fire was a LOT closer, (we had to evacuate for that one) but the webcam was just in the wrong place to get anything. I did get a few on the "real" camera, but haven't even downloaded those yet.