I am planning on adding a subscription only component for access to some videos and other materials.

Also, I have another site which I need to overhaul and re-do. It will be more involved with a database component. I am tempted to use the same theme (with some tweaking) as the one I'm referencing here because I like it so much, but I don't want to. That's how I found this site--looking for a similar template--professional, clean, etc (at least in my opinion ).

I know the javascript is not compatible with older browsers, and I'd like to be able to test for that and deal with it. Don't know if that's possible.

Any suggestions, comments, etc are greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Teresa

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www.CavySpirit.com

The only thing I would say is it takes forever to load - when the source is too big to open in Notepad, you have a problem! I would try to slim it down a little, well, a lot actually. It may mean losing the applet and some of the other stuff, hard decisions I know but unless you are sure all your users are on fast connections size matters a lot. I certainly would not have waited for it under normal circumstances.

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Katherine

InKK Design
LinKKs - Kilkenny's Online Magazine

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"Dogs have owners, cats have staff!"

I visited using IE 5.0 and I waited over 2 minutes for the homepage to load and it didn't finish. After pressing Stop on my browser your homepage came up but I don't know if what I saw was all of it or not. Maybe the slowness was a result of that adoptables show on your homepage but I'm definitely not the one to talk to about that!

One thing I think that your site might benefit from are some bookmarks especially in the longer pages (e.g, news). As it is, that's a long scroll and I knkow that that turns some people off from a site.

I just a beginner with FP, so take all my comments with a grain of salt.

Tony

Okay, up until my last update, I've been praised for a fast loading site! I added one additional photo to the javascript applet for a total of 5. I think that must be one too many. I just went back down to 4, and took out a few of the other javascript control buttons.

Now, it loads right away again for me. Please check it out again and tell my what you think...

Thanks much,
Teresa

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www.CavySpirit.com

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Katherine

InKK Design
LinKKs - Kilkenny's Online Magazine

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"Dogs have owners, cats have staff!"

How are you finding the size of the page? I'm not sure how to do that. And is just the size of the html that impacts performance? Since the javascript preloads 4 photos, at about 18-19K each, doesn't that also impact load time beyond the html size?

I'll definitely add a mini-toc at the top of my news page. It is getting too long.

Thanks,
Teresa

To get the size of the page, righ click anywhere in an empty area of the page and choose properties. It might be useful to compare your site with some others, to give an idea of what works well.

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Katherine

InKK Design
LinKKs - Kilkenny's Online Magazine

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"Dogs have owners, cats have staff!"

[This message has been edited by abbeyvet (edited 11-02-2001).]

From a fellow "anti-pet stores" crusader, keep up the good work! -Joy

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MyDog8it Design
SunState Consulting

If I change the navigation bar, I need to change it in the theme. Is is possible to do programatically? Or do I have to hard code it? Not sure. ???

Any load time improvement without the polls?

Thanks,
Teresa

Hope the load time is better and the content looks just as interesting. I rather liked having the polls on the front page, but can live without it.

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www.CavySpirit.com

You have an awesome site, but the home page in particular is not optimised for slower connections. The quickest, biggest change you could make is to put a single photo on the home page. The Frontlook Applet looks great, but the 4 photos combined are 69927 bytes and by putting them into a java applet (slower loading than javascripts) it increases the loading time even more. If you go for a single image here, you *might* be able to add those polls back in without too much of an increase in time.

The other thing that is making the load time seem so long is that all the content is nested inside one large table. I'm not sure why it was designed that way, but when you have some time I'd suggest on working on one blank page and re-do the layout without so much nesting. There are one or two tables you don't need that are holding the rest of the tables inside them. You might also email the designer of this layout and ask if they'd be willing to do one page like that for you.

I know you have a ton of content that would need to be copied into a new layout if you did this, but for the long-term usability of the site I think you should consider working on it. Although many people are getting high-speed connections, there is still a huge section of viewers using 24k or slower. The browser won't start to show anything until it's read the content of the first table, which includes the whole page. With stacked tables, it'll quickly show the first one while the next table loads.

The small photos of you and Robert are a bit fuzzy. I'd skip the links to the larger ones and improve the ones that are immediately shown.

Since most of your navigation is done with graphics, I would consider a text link to the site map a must. The top level navigation could be a graphic for the squares and text links... you could keep them white and not underlined by using an inline CSS.

Very huge, informational, wonderful site.

The only other suggestion (not looking in Netscape here, so hopefully that is fine) is to reset your monitor resolution to 800x600 to test view your sites (cavyspirit and cavycages). Some of the pages have a horizontal scroll, others don't. That should be an easy fix.

Linda

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Frontpage Web Templates

[This message has been edited by LB (edited 11-03-2001).]

I'm never sure what little change I'm making that somehow throws off the width of the page causing a horizontal scroll. And with all the darn tables, I find it tricky to figure out how to correct it!

I will contact the author and see what might be possible. I really like the overall theme. I need to completely redo my cavy rescue site and was thinking about using the same theme but changing a color.

Does that help the loading time? If it's signficant, then I'll try the gif rollovers somehow instead.

Thanks

Sandy

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Stu Reilly Design
TheTemplateStore
Allegheny Web
Dreamweaver Sites

But, now I notice that the formatting regarding spacing is different on NN as compared to how I really want the spacing on IE. I'm using NN 6.1 at the moment. How the heck do I reconcile the right way to space using br's and p's? The main page (index) is the way the header part should look, in both NN and IE, I'll have to clean up all the other pages so that they display properly in NN. But, the body (or bulk) of the content on the main page shows the way I want it in IE, but has too much space in NN. Yuk. What to do?

Can someone point me in the right direction?

Thanks,
Teresa (www.cavyspirit.com)