Comments/suggestions welcome. I've tested this in FF3 and IE6.
Still doing some light code fixes, and client is in the process of entering content (some of the content is there).
Thanks.
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Just Imagine.
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Site review
- Thread starter GUJUm0deL
- Start date
MikeBarone
Programmer
I will start.
You have a good design started. It took a long time for me to load (maybe just a fluke).
Too much whitespace on the main page. Maybe some food pictures or something to spruce it up?
Actually, as I look deeper the white space is throughout. Maybe add theme pictures depending on where they are on the site.
I like the navigation, was very intuative.
I think you need a header image that caputes the site as a whole. What that will be depends on what you are trying to get across/sell.
I think you have a good start here, keep up the good work.
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Mike
FREE CGI/Perl/JavaScripts
You have a good design started. It took a long time for me to load (maybe just a fluke).
Too much whitespace on the main page. Maybe some food pictures or something to spruce it up?
Actually, as I look deeper the white space is throughout. Maybe add theme pictures depending on where they are on the site.
I like the navigation, was very intuative.
I think you need a header image that caputes the site as a whole. What that will be depends on what you are trying to get across/sell.
I think you have a good start here, keep up the good work.
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Mike
FREE CGI/Perl/JavaScripts
- Thread starter
- #3
Hey, thanks! Actually the white space on the main page is going to be filled with some images and texts. I'm just waiting for the client to make up his mind on what he wants to add there. The left menu also has white space, and there he wanted to have a banner ad for his book on Amazon.
The header image is the "Jay Weinstein" logo between the top navigation. The client wants the left side (which is also white space) to be empty. I suggested having logo and the links centered but he was against it.
I had to add some extra height because on the PHOTOGRAPHY section, the images went outside the border and looked like choppy. I'm hoping to fill out the extra spaces with smaller images or text (or even a banner for his books).
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Just Imagine.
The header image is the "Jay Weinstein" logo between the top navigation. The client wants the left side (which is also white space) to be empty. I suggested having logo and the links centered but he was against it.
I had to add some extra height because on the PHOTOGRAPHY section, the images went outside the border and looked like choppy. I'm hoping to fill out the extra spaces with smaller images or text (or even a banner for his books).
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Just Imagine.
- Thread starter
- #4
BTW, what browser did you check in? And, how did the PHOTOGRAPHY section load?
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Just Imagine.
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Just Imagine.
traingamer
Programmer
Excruciatingly, mind-numbingly slow (over a very fast connection) - didn't actually see any pictures. (Using IE6).
If someone pointed me to this page from somewhere other than here, I'd have hit the back button before it finished loading and would never revisit.
You have over a hundred elements on this page comprising over 500k bytes. 17 scripts - get real. It would take somewhere in the vicinity of 3 minutes to load just this page with high-speed dialup.
Think smaller (as in smaller footprint) - much smaller.
You especially want the main page of a site to load quickly and cleanly.
Greg
People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use. Kierkegaard
If someone pointed me to this page from somewhere other than here, I'd have hit the back button before it finished loading and would never revisit.
You have over a hundred elements on this page comprising over 500k bytes. 17 scripts - get real. It would take somewhere in the vicinity of 3 minutes to load just this page with high-speed dialup.
Think smaller (as in smaller footprint) - much smaller.
You especially want the main page of a site to load quickly and cleanly.
Greg
People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use. Kierkegaard
- Thread starter
- #6
Which page(s) exactly is the excruciatingly, mind-numbingly slow? The pictures (for now) are under the PHOTOGRAPHY link only (
The 17 scripts your referring to is Coldfusion generate AJAX tags. I use CF function called <cfwindow> for the 'contact us' form.
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Just Imagine.
The 17 scripts your referring to is Coldfusion generate AJAX tags. I use CF function called <cfwindow> for the 'contact us' form.
-- Again, what page are you loading that's taking so long?
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Just Imagine.
- Thread starter
- #7
For those saying the site is too slow, what page are you referring to? According to the site load 0.55 seconds for the main page, 7.76 KB.
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Just Imagine.
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Just Imagine.
traingamer
Programmer
Sure, the html is less than 8k. But the scripts, CSS and CSS images combined are huge. Run it past Web Site Optimization to get a sense of what I'm talking about.
Once I get past that initial load, it responds faster, but nowhere near what I would describe as quick.
The navigation is not intuitive. To get to the photograpy page referenced above, I have to:
1) click photography on the navigatiion
2) click Photographs by Jay in the newly displayed side navigation
3) click corn
4) hover over the individual thumbnails
I shouldn't have to think that much - you're going to lose the casual web surfer very quickly.
Greg
People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use. Kierkegaard
Once I get past that initial load, it responds faster, but nowhere near what I would describe as quick.
The navigation is not intuitive. To get to the photograpy page referenced above, I have to:
1) click photography on the navigatiion
2) click Photographs by Jay in the newly displayed side navigation
3) click corn
4) hover over the individual thumbnails
I shouldn't have to think that much - you're going to lose the casual web surfer very quickly.
Greg
People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use. Kierkegaard
- Thread starter
- #9
Greg, I have no control of that. The client insists on a nav like this.
I only load one CSS file, the other two come from CF serving them up. I'm guessing those files are by-products of using the <cfwindow> tag. I've used <cfwindow> on many other sites, and I'm sure other CF developers have used it as well but this is the first I've heard of a slowness of loading pages due to it. I'm not sure the length of CSS file(s) would render a page to crawl as you're reporting. There are many CSS heavy sites that use more then 10 CSS files and JS files and they render without an issue.
I also checked the queries being used. None are heavy loaders. In fact, the queries are pretty basic.
I'll look into why the site loads slow. I'll double check all the image sizes and see if they can reduced any more without ruining the clarity. As far as the CSS and JS files are concerned, not sure there's much I can do about that.
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Just Imagine.
I only load one CSS file, the other two come from CF serving them up. I'm guessing those files are by-products of using the <cfwindow> tag. I've used <cfwindow> on many other sites, and I'm sure other CF developers have used it as well but this is the first I've heard of a slowness of loading pages due to it. I'm not sure the length of CSS file(s) would render a page to crawl as you're reporting. There are many CSS heavy sites that use more then 10 CSS files and JS files and they render without an issue.
I also checked the queries being used. None are heavy loaders. In fact, the queries are pretty basic.
I'll look into why the site loads slow. I'll double check all the image sizes and see if they can reduced any more without ruining the clarity. As far as the CSS and JS files are concerned, not sure there's much I can do about that.
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Just Imagine.
As Greg said, check out which will tell you just why the site loads like frozen treacle. The home page (link above) which is nice and plain and simple, no complications and with no pictures showing is well over 500K. The whole thing is clunky to say the least. There is also over 200K of JS which seems a bit excessive for a very vanilla site.
You also need to look at at some stage.
___________________________________________________________
If you want the best response to a question, please check out FAQ222-2244 first.
'If we're supposed to work in Hex, why have we only got A fingers?'
Drive a Steam Roller
Steam Engine Prints
You also need to look at at some stage.
___________________________________________________________
If you want the best response to a question, please check out FAQ222-2244 first.
'If we're supposed to work in Hex, why have we only got A fingers?'
Drive a Steam Roller
Steam Engine Prints
- Thread starter
- #11
John, I already looked at the link Greg provided. And I mentioned that the JS files are AJAX files which are loaded by the CF server when I use the <cfwindow> function.
I do not have any control over that, other then not use <cfwindow>. Many CF developers use <cfwindow> and I have not heard of any issues with site load because of that.
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Just Imagine.
I do not have any control over that, other then not use <cfwindow>. Many CF developers use <cfwindow> and I have not heard of any issues with site load because of that.
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Just Imagine.
It won't matter to your visitors that a particular file is generated by CF and not by you - they still have to download it. It does seem like quite a big overhead for not much benefit. Maybe you could ask on the CF forum for ways to reduce the footprint of <cfwindow>?
That said, I didn't find it slow-running on my machine - but I've got a fairly fast connection.
I agree with Greg about the navigation, it seems to take twice as many clicks as it should to do anything. Even when I get to a page of text, I have to click "more" to display more than the first paragraph.
I'd give the blocks of text a little more line-height to make it easier to read.
The link to the home page is hidden at the bottom of the page, at the very least you should make clicking on the "Jay Weinstein" logo take you home.
I like the top logo/navigation, its left-aligned position and the white space on the right. However, I'd space out the "TEACHING APPEARANCES ABOUT ME" links so that APPEARANCES is centred and ABOUT ME is right-aligned within the width of the logo.
Each page should have its own <title>, at the moment they all just say "Jay Weinstein".
Have you given thought to how your photograph pages will cope with pictures of different proportions? Does Jay never take pictures in portrait orientation?
-- Chris Hunt
Webmaster & Tragedian
Extra Connections Ltd
That said, I didn't find it slow-running on my machine - but I've got a fairly fast connection.
I agree with Greg about the navigation, it seems to take twice as many clicks as it should to do anything. Even when I get to a page of text, I have to click "more" to display more than the first paragraph.
I'd give the blocks of text a little more line-height to make it easier to read.
The link to the home page is hidden at the bottom of the page, at the very least you should make clicking on the "Jay Weinstein" logo take you home.
I like the top logo/navigation, its left-aligned position and the white space on the right. However, I'd space out the "TEACHING APPEARANCES ABOUT ME" links so that APPEARANCES is centred and ABOUT ME is right-aligned within the width of the logo.
Each page should have its own <title>, at the moment they all just say "Jay Weinstein".
Have you given thought to how your photograph pages will cope with pictures of different proportions? Does Jay never take pictures in portrait orientation?
-- Chris Hunt
Webmaster & Tragedian
Extra Connections Ltd
It's your site - and if you're happy with a 500K+ load on each page, that's fine.
However when you ask for a site critique, it's our duty to pick up on items that we feel are less than perfect. I don't know what vital function <cfwindow> performs, but I didn't see any functionality on the site that might conceivably need 300K of JavaScript. If you don't want to write your own JS functions there are a number of other libraries available (google for 'javascript libraries'), most of which can be readily cut down to provide just the functionality you actually need.
___________________________________________________________
If you want the best response to a question, please check out FAQ222-2244 first.
'If we're supposed to work in Hex, why have we only got A fingers?'
Drive a Steam Roller
Steam Engine Prints
- Thread starter
- #14
Chris,
- I'll investigate about the <cfwindow> causing issues. But like you, I did not find any slowness issues when developing and neither did the client when he clicked around. He even had a few people do the same on their PC's.
- I tried to get the client to change his mind on the navigation, but he really wants it this way.
- The block of text (which is the same block of text if you noticed) won't be on the every page. The client is still trying to decide what he wants to place on the each page. Most likely a quote or a small image or something.
- I'll add the TITLE of each section on the page, good catch.
- Pictures of different proportions is something I'm struggling with. Currently I resize each picture to a specific width/height. Right now, which W and H to use is something we're playing with. Jay's pictures are not portrait orientation. His pictures are mostly food preparation and purely for show.
john, as stated above, I use CF function called <cfwindow> for the 'contact us' form.
And, while I'm listening to a few people say the JS files makes the site load slow for them I'm somewhat baffled that he usage of <cfwindow> doesn't cause other site's to have the same slow behavior. I'll ask in the CF forum about this, as my Google searches yielded no results about this.
_____________________________
Just Imagine.
- I'll investigate about the <cfwindow> causing issues. But like you, I did not find any slowness issues when developing and neither did the client when he clicked around. He even had a few people do the same on their PC's.
- I tried to get the client to change his mind on the navigation, but he really wants it this way.
- The block of text (which is the same block of text if you noticed) won't be on the every page. The client is still trying to decide what he wants to place on the each page. Most likely a quote or a small image or something.
- I'll add the TITLE of each section on the page, good catch.
- Pictures of different proportions is something I'm struggling with. Currently I resize each picture to a specific width/height. Right now, which W and H to use is something we're playing with. Jay's pictures are not portrait orientation. His pictures are mostly food preparation and purely for show.
john, as stated above, I use CF function called <cfwindow> for the 'contact us' form.
And, while I'm listening to a few people say the JS files makes the site load slow for them I'm somewhat baffled that he usage of <cfwindow> doesn't cause other site's to have the same slow behavior. I'll ask in the CF forum about this, as my Google searches yielded no results about this.
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Just Imagine.
- Thread starter
- #15
The top navigation are 'category' items, the links in the left column are 'sub-category' items.
How else would one go about having less clicks when dealing with category->subcategory->individual item links? On any site when you have main category, sub-category, and product item there are multiple clicks involved to get to the item level.
Just wanted to see how this is different then those sites.
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Just Imagine.
An idea would be to check if there is only one subcategory. If so, go ahead and display the subcategory's individual item links. We can only click on one subcategory anyway, why not show it without making us click. If there are multiple subcategories, then yes, we should have to decide/click.
- Thread starter
- #17
Because there won't be only one sub-category. The client is in the process of getting his content together and inputting it in.
One category will have multiple sub-category, and each sub-category will have multiple items attached to it.
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Just Imagine.
One category will have multiple sub-category, and each sub-category will have multiple items attached to it.
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Just Imagine.
So the category 'Photography' will have more than 'Photographs by Jay'? I didn't realize he'd showcase somebody else's photography on his site...
Anyway, what I meant was, if he's only going to have 'Photographs by Jay' (which seems logical), don't make us click that...go ahead and show 'Corn' (and whatever else that grows to include) in the main portion.
Anyway, what I meant was, if he's only going to have 'Photographs by Jay' (which seems logical), don't make us click that...go ahead and show 'Corn' (and whatever else that grows to include) in the main portion.
- Thread starter
- #20
tjcusick[/], the about me section will not be shown on every page as it is now. The client is in the process of getting his content together. Each page will be diff. The 'about me' will only be on the main page.
ethorn10, umm, no. Jay won't be showing anyone else's photo's on his site. But he does have other sub-category names to show other photos, one of which is 'food preperations'.
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ethorn10, umm, no. Jay won't be showing anyone else's photo's on his site. But he does have other sub-category names to show other photos, one of which is 'food preperations'.
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Just Imagine.
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