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New Designs

Posted: Wed Nov 02, 2005 5:02 pm
by Luke
Just finished these sites... just wondering what everybody thinks...

Easy to find things? Layout OK? Anything confusing? Let me know. Thx.

I know neither one of them are w3c complient and probably have all kinds of css problems, so let me know that too.

http://www.paradisedirect.com
http://www.sierra-tech.com

Posted: Wed Nov 02, 2005 7:19 pm
by Chris Corbyn
The Markup can at least be fixed though... the errors are minor. A good 50% of them just require you to add alt="" to your image tags. The rest are pretty much just closing self-closing tags <tag /> ;)

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http% ... ech.com%2F

I quite like your design work yes. Not too OTT and they do what they are supposed to do. Good work.

Posted: Wed Nov 02, 2005 7:27 pm
by Luke
d11wtq wrote:I quite like your design work yes. Not too OTT and they do what they are supposed to do. Good work.
Thank you very much!
What is OTT?

Posted: Wed Nov 02, 2005 8:58 pm
by feyd
Over the top

Posted: Thu Nov 03, 2005 11:11 am
by Luke
Thanks Feyd.

Posted: Thu Dec 08, 2005 6:16 pm
by Luke
Any ideas on how to lower the load time on the sierra-tech website. It takes a little too long.

Posted: Thu Dec 08, 2005 6:41 pm
by Zoxive
The Ninja Space Goat wrote:Any ideas on how to lower the load time on the sierra-tech website. It takes a little too long.
http://www.websiteoptimization.com/serv ... -tech.com/
Analysis and Recommendations

* TOTAL_HTML - Congratulations, the total number of HTML files on this page (including the main HTML file) is 1 which most browsers can multithread. Minimizing HTTP requests is key for web site optimization.
* TOTAL_OBJECTS - Warning! The total number of objects on this page is 55 - consider reducing this to a more reasonable number. Combine, refine, and optimize your external objects. Replace graphic rollovers with CSS rollovers to speed display and minimize HTTP requests.
* TOTAL_IMAGES - Warning! The total number of images on this page is 51 , consider reducing this to a more reasonable number. Combine, refine, and optimize your graphics. Replace graphic rollovers with CSS rollovers to speed display and minimize HTTP requests.
* TOTAL_CSS - Congratulations, the total number of external CSS files on this page is 1 . Because external CSS files must be in the HEAD of your HTML document, they must load first before any BODY content displays. Although they are cached, CSS files slow down the initial display of your page.
* TOTAL_SIZE - Warning! The total size of this page is 204982 bytes, which will load in 41.05 seconds on a 56Kbps modem. Consider reducing total page size to less than 30K to achieve sub eight second response times on 56K connections. Pages over 100K exceed most attention thresholds at 56Kbps, even with feedback. Consider contacting us about our optimization services.
* TOTAL_SCRIPT - Congratulations, the total number of external script files on this page is 2 . External scripts are less reliably cached than CSS files so consider combining scripts into one, or even embedding them into high-traffic pages.
* HTML_SIZE - Congratulations, the total size of this HTML file is 18798 bytes, which less than 20K. Assuming that you specify the HEIGHT and WIDTH of your images, this size allows your page to display content in well under 8 seconds, the average time users are willing to wait for a page to display without feedback.
* IMAGES_SIZE - Warning! The total size of your images is 172465 bytes, which is over 30K. Consider optimizing your images for size, combining them, and replacing graphic rollovers with CSS.
* SCRIPT_SIZE - Caution. The total size of your external scripts is 5174 bytes, which is above 4080 bytes and less than 8K. Consider optimizing your scripts and eliminating features to reduce this to a more reasonable size.
* CSS_SIZE - Warning! The total size of your external CSS is 8545 bytes, which is over 8K. Consider optimizing your CSS for size by eliminating whitespace, using shorthand notation, and combining multiple CSS files where appropriate.
* MULTIM_SIZE - Congratulations, the total size of all your external multimedia files is 0 bytes, which is less than 4K.
-NSF

Posted: Thu Dec 08, 2005 7:06 pm
by Luke
yea I appreciate that... I have checked the speed report myself... just not sure how to reduce a lot of those without sacraficing the look of the site.

Posted: Fri Dec 09, 2005 9:29 am
by Roja
The Ninja Space Goat wrote:yea I appreciate that... I have checked the speed report myself... just not sure how to reduce a lot of those without sacraficing the look of the site.
I didn't look at how you are doing the mouseovers, and there may be a more efficient method - do some googling.

But the first thing you should do is move *all* the javascript out into a seperate (external) file. That will allow the file to be cached, loaded in a seperate thread, and most important of all - compressed. You need to do the same for *all* the css and style information.

Once you have the external files, compress the external files using php. That will reduce the size and the download time. You can use it on both the CSS and the JS, which is over 50k of the page size, which will probably reduce down to about 20k. Thats ~30k savings without changing *anything* visible to the user.

Next, redo all the images with png+pngcrush. I quickly tested a few of the images on the page, and they benefit from it. It should save you a solid 10-20%, and at 137k, they are the largest part of your page. 20% would gain you another ~20k off the page size.

Together, that would be over 1/3rd faster.

To get better savings than that, you'll have to trade some visual elements. Personally, I think the header is *far* too large. People come to that page for content, not a pretty picture and navigation elements. At 1024x768, almost *HALF* the page is the graphical header and the nav system. I have to scroll down to see the contents!

If you don't want to be that aggressive, at least switch out the mainheader, seminarschedule, and partner graphics with simple css text layovers. That should save you ~2-5k.

Beyond that, you are looking at dramatically changing the page.