CWCONLINE v2003b

you have 187K of graphics on the intro page.

this'l take about 37 seconds on 56k and 3.5 on cable (512k)

you might (do it !!) want to change the luthaweb and GL vault and ultimawebs to text only.

you shouldn't have long loading intro's (ppl start to close windows).

also u might want to change the "you need requirements" thing, looks bit boring and plain. table maybe?

you STILL cant click the links on the top menu flash before fully loaded (if someone knows you layout to site, they might want to go 1.2.3. in to bit they want.. change it ;))

constructive criticism ^ obviously

I disagree with chriso...there's absolutely no need to get rid of the graphics, just compress them some. It seems like you didn't use any compression...but you could get the file size down quite a bit with no noticeable loss in quality.

If you don't mind (though it's too late already :D) I've taken the center image and compressed it in both jpg and .gif formats.

Here's the jpeg:



And here's the GIF:




The JPEG here is only 10.3 KB, and the GIF is slightly more at 23.

The JPEG has better color than the GIF.

So yeah, whether you forgot to or just never thought of it, play around with compression, you'd be surprised how much of a difference it makes in file size. I don't know about you, but whenever I compress stuff, I always zoom in a bunch and then grimace over every imperfection I see. However, you gotta look at what's necessary...in your case it's just a splash page, nobody's gonna study it, and even if they did they'd be hard pressed to find any differences at all. Plus, the 56kers will thank you when it takes 5 seconds rather than one minute.

My advice to you is to compress them a good bit, but even if you do this you can end up with file sizes that total maybe 30K...not too much, but if you really want to make it fast, I'd suggest making the images slightly less detailed, and that way you don't have to worry about preserving every last pixel quite as much. Either way would work though...

hope this was helpful .

Hey Christopher, glad to see you're on here now...hopefully these guys and gals will help you out a lot!

I agree to deker on the fact that your site shouldn't be flash at all.
There's no movement, if you don't count the fade in which is annoying.

Might as well just make it all html, you don't detract from the experience, and it loads a helluva lot faster.

i think flash'd suit the subject (if u did actually use any of the things in flash *ANIMATION* maybe?)

but when i said get rid of the graphics, i meant, either compress em as u said or get rid of em.

the reason i dint say compress em is because it fits into bother jpg and gif catigories.

lines and pictures basically.

i still think u cud take it easy wiv the piks tho

So you think it'd be better to just use the images in HTML format? I will see. One reason I did the 2nd index in flash was to save on space, so it wouldn't take so long to load images. I'm trying to keep it as neat and organized as possible, without having such a lag in loading. It's bad enough as it is already.

Thanks, life. One reason I am afraid to touch the compression, is the lower you set it, the more you see those horrible compression marks on segments of your image, which I don't like very much, but I will play around with it. I thought compression around 5 - 8 would be good for images.

By the way, nice sig, chris. ;)

I updated the biography page....again, and I'm working on the content now, but I think I may have made it even worse. I don't know. I'll let you guys decide. I hope I can learn this stuff, before I go to college in a few years. I don't want to disappoint clients in the future. :-X


Christopher William Coddington (Xzandar / cwcandromeda),
CWCONLINE Administrator/Webmaster

Flash will not help anything load faster. And compression has to be used. None of my images have a loss of quality, but all are compressed as much as possible to save download time. That entire huge graphic on your site shouldn't be more than like 70k, if you compressed it correctly.

Okay, I'm slicing the image up, but do you think it's wise to keep the navigation menu in flash? To me I think it is, and I can remove the fade effect, too.

You're right. I managed to get what I've sliced so far down to very low file size, but still have very reasonable quality. Thanks.


Christopher William Coddington (Xzandar / cwcandromeda),
CWCONLINE Administrator/Webmaster

No you don't need the nav in flash. Why would you? It's not even animated, so it's just a waste to use flash.

and yes please get rid of the fade