www.gamutadvertising.com

Thanks in advance,
Paula

This page uses frames, but your browser doesn't support them.

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Gil Harvey
The Host Factory
Resellers are our speciality
"Indecision may or may not be my problem"

[This message has been edited by Gil (edited 08-05-2001).]

On NN 4.7 at 800x600 resolution, the word "Advertising" in the left frame is starting to fall behind the bottom of the browser. I'm assuming there are two more links below that which are unaccessable?

If he is absolutely set on frames, here's an article you can read to help avoid some of the pitfalls: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9612.html

I would recommend not using them, personally.

You need page titles.

The page is very slow loading. If I wasn't critiquing, I would have been gone long before the page was up. Some of the graphics seem to be saved in an incorrect format, which could help that some. Photos and graphics with gradients, such as the background on the left frame, should be saved as .jpgs. Everything else, such as some of the logos on one of the pages, should be saved as .gifs.

Be sure you have optimized or compressed all the graphics, even the ones the thumbnails are linked to. You may need to divide some of them onto two or more pages.

All graphics, page titles included, need alt text.

On at least one of the pages, the phrase "graphic design" gets split onto two lines. I would put a non-breaking space there to keep it together.

It looks like he does good work. It should be a fun site to do.

Sandy

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Stu Reilly Design
Allegheny Web
Dreamweaver Sites

*But* I have to echo Sandy about the page being slow to load - just under 45 seconds on a fast connection isn't good - most people will have left by then, me among them.

The graphics are your biggest problem. Slowing it down something wicked - Sandy has addressed that fot you.

You really do *need* to add some non-frames content.

Please please please try to avoid frames for this site a table based layout would be so much better and much easier on you, your client, and most importantly of all your client's visitors.

Good luck with it and have fun - I'm eagerly anticipating seeing more sites from you in future.

BTW yes my own site uses frames (and no I don't like it) but as I'll be upping stakes and moving quite soon I decided it wasn't worth kicking up a fuss with my business partner who's a great admirer of frames and uses them at the drop of a hat.

PS: I looked at it using opera on a PC. Can't help you especially with a MAC except to say that the differences can be quite pronounced. One rule of thumb is that any font will look about three quarters the size on a mac that it will on a PC. It's a question of who your audience will be - if it's mostly PC users then go for that.

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Hope this helps :-)
Gorilla
aka Mark Saunders
http://www.computerdriving.com
Email Address: marksaunders@techie.com
=======
"Gotcha!" Cackled Pooh as he assimilated the Borg.

[This message has been edited by gorilla (edited 08-06-2001).]

To have the left side stationary, it will have to be a frame.

For all of the navigation to show, everything is going to need to be moved way up and/or made smaller. If you think 800x600 is bad, have your client look at it at 640x480, which some people do use. The other alternative is to put a scroll bar there which will be way Ugly.

You might consider placing the nav text right on the left frame graphic (save a copy of the original graphic) and make hotspots on it from there.

The art of compression is to take graphics down in file size as far as you can without degradation. It takes a little time, patience, and practice. They will already look a little less glitzy than print because they cannot show at better than 72dpi. With print you're talking approximately 300dpi.

The graphics have to come down in file size and the pages have to become faster or no one is going to see his wonderful work. Internet viewers just will not stick around for slow business pages....entertainment, yes. That's a whole different world.

Feel free to show him these comments. (And good luck.)

Sandy

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Stu Reilly Design
Allegheny Web
Dreamweaver Sites

[This message has been edited by Goober (edited 08-06-2001).]

Actually Sandy has said it all. It is a very different medium and thus has its own rules. I hope you do manage to persuade your client as really that site and the work deserve to be better known, at present because of the speed that's a bit unlikely.

Mark

You will find that properly optimised images lose nothing much in quality on the web - having very high quality images is fine but the screen can only render them to a certain level. The key is to 'optimise' not frantically compress

Also, as Sandy said, saving in the correct format can dramatically reduce file size while actually improving the quality of the image.

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Katherine

InKK Design
LinKKs - Kilkenny's Online Magazine

-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
"Dogs have owners, cats have staff!"

You're very welcome! Just thought I'd add somewhat to what Katherine has said - proper file type (gif vs jpeg) and optimisation is key to all.

I've never used the xat product but if katherine reckons she can't do without it then that's a pretty high recommendation in my book. (Katherine's graphics sparkle.)

To give you an example of the importance of file type I have a photo which is 128k as a gif and 52k (uncompressed) as a jpg file.

compression ratios - well it's a question of trying it out for size -

Just to give you some options if you don't want to use the xat product for a while.

1. As you have frontpage you've also got image composer (it's on the second cd)

in image composer do this:

import each image then click the image to save

then file|save for the web

try the various options gif vs jpg and experiment with compression ratio for jpg.

2. Pixia

A graphics editor that I now use a lot is pixia. It's really good, actually i take that back - it's superb. As it's free the price is pretty excellent also. You can get it here.

http://www.ab.wakwak.com/~knight/

That page has a great set of links to tutorials as well. (some of them downloadable.) you'll be able to do pretty well everything you want to do in that - it's very powerful.

(Download the helpfile also.)

3. Gimp has been ported to windows!!!!

(That "bump bump bump" sound you're hearing is me jumping up and down in delight )

http://www.gimp.org/~tml/gimp/win32//

don't be put off by the "I'm not responsible if it crashes" from Tor Lillquist it's very stable in fact i don't know anybody that it has crashed on.

4. Fookes software have a very good thumbnailer I did a huge postingf on it for somebody and he very nicely popped into the graphics forum here.

Here's the link to that.

http://www.frontpagewebmaster.com/ubb/Forum10/HTML/000564.html

5. One last trick - you can chop up very large images into pieces and mortar them together into a table. The utility to do that is called splitz and yuo can get it here:

http://www.b-zone.de/index.htm

(yes its free too )

Side note to katherine and all you other graphics wizards - try pixia - I think you'll get a pleasant surprise.

Kind regards to all,

Mark

quote:

---

Originally posted by Paula:
I'm beginning to think maybe I can do this stuff after all!
Thank you again,
Paula

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Based on what I and everyone else saw I don't think there's any doubt of that

Sorry, I couldn't resist that reference...

Let me add that I took a looksee at the site, and whoa.... it is something !!

Artistic, great colors, very, very impressive.

Congratulations....

Kind regards,

Mark

ooooh! I'd forgotten about the bursting into flames thingy.

[This message has been edited by gorilla (edited 08-10-2001).]

So you're a fine Scottish lassie are ye? I've been to Ayrshire...quite lovely.

Well, like Gorilla, I wish you well.

Cheers

Good luck on those graphics. I'm also working at getting this optimizing thing down!

Paula (another one )

(Bill, a fine Scottish lassie indeed, although a little long in the tooth these days!)
(Paula, thank you, I think I got that fixed. I always like to hear from another Paula! Don't run into that many, not a real common name.)

*much* quicker (for me anyway) - I forgot to mention a very handy little utility called "webspeed" from a company called tafweb. It's free (Born mean that's me )

Whenever I want a more accurate estimate of a page's speed I use it rather than FrontPage. You can get it here:

http://www.tafweb.com - just follow the software link on the main menu. I especially like that it allows me to set a "congestion factor" - ie - how long will it take if the net is very busy?

Kind regards,

mark

Well, long in the tooth is good. I'm there as well and I like to think of folks like us as fine wines, just getting finer all the time.

Will take another look at an already great looking site.

How about my friend Gorilla? He's got a ton of experience and seems to know where to go to get the answers. And a fellow Brit as well.

Cheers

quote:

---

Originally posted by Bill Nicol:
And a fellow Brit as well.

Cheers

---

I am NOT British. Irish yes, Danish yes, entitled to several other passports yes, English mother yes, none of which makes makes me British

For the second time today, I have to issue an "oops". Sorry for the misnomer. Being of Celtic blood and roots, I should know better.

I met a Scottish guy a couple of months ago whose name was Kenny. When I inadvertently and innocently called him Ken, he quickly corrected me and asked me to call him Kenny as "Ken" was too anglicized.

I understand such sensitivities and sensibilities over such sovereign identities. Please accept my apologies for such a mistake.

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Piper Bill

"Uiste, agus cluich" said the P/M.

The load speed is much better.

I can now see more of the links in the left frame. Is there supposed to be a contact button? If so, it's below the edge of the browser.

There's a sizeable side-to-side scroll on the home page and a lesser one on the Illustration and Graphic Design pages.

The phrase, "graphic design," is still being broken on some of the pages in the bottom nav bar. I would suggest putting a non-breaking space between them to keep the phrase together.

Fernly Hills and Mountain spring would look a lot better saved as .gifs. The squiggles around them are from being saved as .jpgs.

Good job,
Sandy

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Stu Reilly Design
Allegheny Web
Dreamweaver Sites