With web design what would be the max load time for a website? I designed a webpage in photoshop, set the pix to 75dpi, and generated the slices in imageready to gifs. It says it takes 82 seconds to load on a 28.8 when i open up the page in frontpage. Is there anything that I could do to minimize the load time, or any programs out there that could help me with cutting the load time down?

Optimise the images on the site, they normally drag the loading down.

Originally posted by Paul-ukhost
Optimise the images on the site, they normally drag the loading down.

is there a program to do that or do you reccomend how to do that?

I don't want the quality of the image to degrade at all

Originally posted by thomor25


is there a program to do that or do you reccomend how to do that?

I don't want the quality of the image to degrade at all

Adobe Photoshop will do that for you, comes at a price though. There may be other software applications that will do the same job.

In photoshop, The "SAVE FOR WEB" option under file will bring up an optimization window where you can set quality, etc.

Originally posted by Paul-ukhost


Adobe Photoshop will do that for you, comes at a price though. There may be other software applications that will do the same job.

I have ps 7.0

This is what the webpage looks like I have some more tweaking to do as you can see but you get the general idea, some things are blacked out because the domain name hasn't been registered yet.

Our competition is so far from what I've seen listed below. I might make the homepage more like the last link but we are on a farm in pa and wanted to make the website more personal and down to earth and not seem liek a big huge corp even though we could take a decent amount of orders.

www.simmondswoodturning.com
http://www.southwestpostdesigns.com/
http://www.woodparts.com/
http://shop.store.yahoo.com/vintagewoodworks/porchposts1.html
http://www.hbgcolumns.com/

Your site preview looks far better than your competition :)

That save for web feature in photoshop is totally cool. Before I did that with my rollover buttons they were 5KB's large. When I did that they reduced down to like 700bytes. Saving's in both bandwidth, and load time.

Try to minimize the colors while exporting.

It looks like your using tables or frames in the desing, with a orangey woody texture as the background image, right? One way of making it load faster is to replace the textured background for the content part of the design with just a background colour instead. It will make the info more readable as well as making the page load faster. Kind of what I've got at my own site :)

Originally posted by Reptilian Feline
It looks like your using tables or frames in the desing, with a orangey woody texture as the background image, right?

Originally posted by thomor25
I designed a webpage in photoshop, set the pix to 75dpi, and generated the slices in imageready to gifs.


Hmm. If you just made a big image in photoshop and sliced it up, your page could benefit from some actual HTML layout (like tables or divs). One way you could reduce file size might be to save the files as .gifs and reduce the color depth. That way, you can avoid some of the fuzziness that you'd get from using lower-quality jpg files. On the other hand, you can probably cut file size more by using compessed jpg files, but you'd get fuzziness.

I do most of my designing using photoshop and an image of about 600x800. I then cut out the parts I'm using as images, and place them in frames or tables, and the "empty" parts have just bgcolor. I asumed that's what thomor25 did as well.

Interesting......

I switched it back to jpegs and lowered the quality to 30 and its load time is 28 secs on a 28.8k frontpage says and so does ps.... Not that bad... Also I use iframes on the page so it doesn't have to load all the graphics again. I wanna add something to the empty space next to the logo like a woodburned treeline farm scape or something like that but not too intricate.... It would match the marks above the first and below the last buttons burnt wood wise.... What could I do to blend in the page button at the top? Cause it doesn't look like its cut into the background, you see I wanted the page to look like ti was carved out of one piece of wood and that the top of the wood was stained leaving the underneath that was carved away untouched.. Should I just make it letters instead of the wooden button on the pages or what? Do you guys have any ideas? Or should I post this in some other forum as well?

You're right about the button over the info part of the page, it looks like it's been stuck there. I have a few ideas that might work, one being you create a kind of medalion with the edges slanting out. The wood burning siluette of a landscape in the top part next to the logo would look great. If you like I can make a few models for you as examples.

thomor25,

28 seconds is far too long for a home page. On any page except one that is expected to show photos, your graphics should be under 15k. Your home page text should load quickly.

I would lighted the your background. More contrast makes it easier to read and usually results in a smaller graphics file.

You might try making the background image a small image, ie, a thin line that repeats is better than one big image. And are your buttons on the background or on separate images? Should be separate images. To make your page more readable, you might consider limiting the woodgrain to the masthead and navigation bar. Then use tables to set it up.

You are better off not making an image 800 x 600. Make your page scaleable so those with larger monitors don't get an empty white chunk to the right.

In clicking on the first 2 links you posted, I'd say your competition has a problem with page size. On the first one I had to pagedown 5 times to get to the bottom. Eeek!

There are several different ways of limiting the size of the page; css, tables and frames. 800 width is a pleasant size to read even on larger monitors so your design shouldn't need to be larger than that. Just create table columns that resize with no content on either sida, or use frames, or do it with CSS and layers and positioning. PLace the content in the middle, and no one will think a second time about the white portion on either side.

You should limit scrolling to about 2 monitor pages, eg. 600x2 then add a link to the next page.

The design theme is good but I would reconsider using such a heavy design. The wood color is also too heavy on the eyes.....would be better if it is a paler or better still avoid using it all over the page.

Download time is definetely a critical issue in webdesigning. The size that is optimum for all kind of internet access, dialup being the slowest, is about 60 Kb file size (which can extend upto maybe 100 Kb using sliced graphics)

http://www.trendcurve.com/
A home page like this framed in natural wood all around would be my choice for your website.

If you want to catalog your products with large images then place them in a separate pop up with medium sized thumbnails on the webpage. This way the page size will not increase but still allows a visitor to see a a larger image if he or she wants to. See Corbis.com for a good example of how images are well placed on the webpages.

Well thats just my opinion but you can be creative in your own way and do a better design. Dont hesitate about the design too much.......you can always change later or
improve on it. (Isnt that the way everyone is doing):stickout:

You also visit Macromedia forums for some good tips in website building.

The most important is the internet speed. If you are on broadband then mpeg also no prob but if you are on 33.6kbps dialup then don't blame your layouts. Most imp thing is connection speed.

It's a pity there isn't a style called color:woody; that has a texture as well. It would solv a lot of problems.