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slimshady023 · Sep 16, 2001, 02:03 PM

Hey all -

I just put up a design site, and wanted to know what everyone thought about it -- the good, bad, and the ugly!

the site is at --> http://www.rasteroids.com

I have it optimized to the hilte, but it's still relatively slow via 56k. Is anyone completely turned off by the download speeds? Anyone checking it out on OmniWeb or OSX browsers?

I would appreciate hearing the qualms (like if it sucks, just say so!). heh heh. Much appreciated,

- Slim

Rasteroids

alphamatrix · Sep 16, 2001, 03:20 PM

That's a very nice site.

slimshady023 · Sep 16, 2001, 06:46 PM

Hey, thanks for the complement and for checkin' it out, alphamatrix!

- Slim

opallaser · Sep 16, 2001, 09:37 PM

I like it. The worst thing about using GoLive to do Javascript is that it leaves those ugly cs actions throught out producing about 3 times as much code as you actually need.

I use GoLive to do table layouts and then have a programmer do the scripting.

bluedog · Sep 16, 2001, 09:48 PM

Good site. i like the sense of light used. Although I would hesitate to put in a portfolio piece that's not finished -- the rastmusic site.

The visual cues to links are a nice touch. I don't have a prob. with the site size because I'm on a DSL. The DL times on sites that have large areas of graphics always take longer.

To optimize it further, you may want to try and reduce the number of 'cut' graphics you have. Each graphic piece counts as a 'hit' to the server in terms of how many requests it gets. When you have a page with 30 pieces or so, each one is a request and response. On a slow connection that exacerates your problem. To make things worse, and I don't know if its the case for your ISP, but some servers only have 10-15 active 'servers' that can response to requests.

What I mean by this is, if you have 30 images, and the server is running 15 processes of the server application (like Apache) it needs to wait for half of the processes to finish before responding to the other requests for pieces of your webpage. I hope this is clear, but its like only having a bag that holds 10 items and because you want to carry 20 items you have to do the trip -- twice.

If you can reduce the number of slices on each page it may help your load times. If you are or have configuration ability for the server its being hosted on, make sure the server is running a minimum of the number of graphics you have on your largest page. This affects how much memory the computer will use with requests. Good luck.

I enjoyed looking at the site and portfolio.

funkboy · Sep 16, 2001, 10:20 PM

Nice site, I like it.

I agree with the people above - getting rid of extra CSS code could help, and having each line of text be a separate image may not be the best idea - just having it be text instead of text images might be okay, depends on your asthetic.
I didn't notice any speed problems here on my DSL, so I say it's fine

Good color pallette, consistent look, a pleasure visiting.

opallaser · Sep 16, 2001, 10:50 PM

I should also state that im on a 56k modem and the loading times seemed fine.

slimshady023 · Sep 16, 2001, 11:59 PM

Hey Opallaser, funkboy (cool name!), and bluedog -

Thanks for all the helpful input. Bluedog especially -- it had never crossed my mind about graphic slices taxing a server, much less the hit count. I am a former 56k surfer (before the spoils of broadband!), and my original reason for slicing was to reuse as many graphics on different pages as possible. Browser caches are my friends! heh heh.

I now have a better idea of where I should and should not slice so neurotically. Many thanks for the detailed explanation. ... and yeah, I agree that the css should be hand code, not the Adobe pre-made.

thanks everyone!
- slim

bluedog · Sep 17, 2001, 11:29 AM

Yeah, I didn't think about slicing graphics until I started setting up a server and looked into the way they respond to requests.

Its fairly basic, but people are not really thinking about it. I was aggressively looking at ways to optimize websites and came across this kind of info. Also reducing a color palette of images can make a *huge* difference in the size of a single image.

Also, often a GIF image will be just tiny when a comparable JPG files will be a few Kb. Its not a big deal until you have a dozen of them on your page. Often with buttons and smallerstuff you can get away with reduced color palettes and still have a realistic looking image in a GIF format versus JPG.

With larger sized graphics that have a lot of details and variation of tone, the JPG or PNG format is the better option, though.

Glad to be of help.