My website - testing please [UPDATE NO.2] - Corsa Sport - for Vauxhall and Opel Corsa B, Corsa C and Corsa D

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AndyKent

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Registered: 3rd Sep 05
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27th Jul 10 at 12:15

Cheers both. I think the positioning errors was only coming up on widescreens so glad thats sorted

Dom your code was spot on, inserted that into its own function, got the div references sorted out and saved me a lot of hassle! Thank you!!!

I think the layout can be broken if you click more than one link quickly (ie. hit portfolio, then immediately hit services - it will display both at once) but I'm not too worried about that for now.

Alternating would nice, but I think I'd better get this slow speed issue sorted first! Will bear it in mind.

Dom

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Registered: 13th Sep 03
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27th Jul 10 at 12:24

No worries, but i'd set all of the main (the values currently set to 2000ms) slide time values to a single global variable and the other values (ones that are set to 4000ms) to double that variable value. That way you only have to play with one variable to change the whole lot. Although a good starting point would be halving the values and see what it looks like.

But yeah you can break it if you hammer the links, although that could easily be solved by resetting all of the divs to hidden (so fadeout) when you click a link (so onclick on the href tag or a global jquery click on all href links - something like $('a').click. etc i think anyways), then when the info_bar has finished slide fadein the correct div.

Rob_Quads

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Registered: 29th Mar 01
Location: southampton
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27th Jul 10 at 15:42

Few of my thoughts...

Very slow (I know you said working on this) but anything that shows a loading screen gets closed very quickly
The Quote in the middle. Whos it from? How do I not know thats what your best mate said.? Unless there is an indication that its not just a random it should be less prominent, maybe on another page.
Porfolio - Pictures loaded with the images half off the screen. Also not much substance to it.

AndyKent

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Registered: 3rd Sep 05
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27th Jul 10 at 16:12

Some good points.

This speed issue is doing my head in. I've managed to cut the loading time on my machine by a third but still far too long as you say. Flickr takes an age to deliver the images and really slowing the whole thing down.
If the images were saved locally it would be fine..........don't know whether to go for ease of uploading to the site (means I can just use Flickr and the website automatically gets new content) or lack of speed for users.

I'll put on a name against the quote. It was an actual comment I recieved though I could have just made up a name to go against it to be honest. I think it paints a good impression so I'll leave it where it is.

Portfolio space should be ok. I've just tweaked it to appear further up the screen.

Dom

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27th Jul 10 at 19:09

Requesting a thumbnail instead of the full size photo (obviously you still request for the full size photo for your modal photo div) for your thumbnails would probably save a fair amount time on the loading of the image placeholders.

Might also be worth looking at http://rpheath.com/posts/392-some-of-the-flickr-api-in-jquery which is a JQuery Flickr API 'plugin', seems pretty decent and fairly straight forward and it allows you to select the size of the image.

Also use something like lightbox (ColorBox is what i tend to use though) as it looks a little be neater that your custom box.

bishbosh

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Registered: 25th Sep 06
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27th Jul 10 at 20:51

spelling mistake in 'about me'

AndyKent

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27th Jul 10 at 21:33

Well spotted

I think something off the shelf will be what I'll go for Dom. It's not good enough being that slow.
I didn't really want to go for anything flash based but it's looking more and more tempting right now. Zero maintenance and look much better I suspect....

bishbosh

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Registered: 25th Sep 06
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28th Jul 10 at 08:09

Just out of interest, how much time and money is involved in getting a website to that stage? Did you do it yourself?

Also, will that be displayed in search engines?

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Registered: 10th Sep 03
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28th Jul 10 at 12:10

There's £500-700 worth of work there if you were paying a designer do do it, depending on who you got to do it and as a rough guess. Search engines don't like websites like that because they can't navigate them. Basically as the pages don't actually 'exist' it will only think that the home page is visible. There are techniques around this, but then you're adding complexities in there which might not be part of the site owners mission.

Dom

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28th Jul 10 at 12:51

quote:
Originally posted by ed
There's £500-700 worth of work there if you were paying a designer do do it, depending on who you got to do it and as a rough guess. Search engines don't like websites like that because they can't navigate them. Basically as the pages don't actually 'exist' it will only think that the home page is visible. There are techniques around this, but then you're adding complexities in there which might not be part of the site owners mission.

Anymore info?
I know the nasty way of doing it is to recreate the content into separate pages and then use hidden links/href tags on the page. Although getting plastering your web address on forum sigs/profiles and getting it on a linkshare site is a decent way of doing it. Obviously posting on facebook and twitter is also another way of doing it.

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Registered: 10th Sep 03
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28th Jul 10 at 13:04

Basically you have every 'page' saved as a static HTML page. You link to that page using a normal link, but stick in an onClick in your a tag which sets a # and some kind of a name in the location. You then have a second bit of javascript which polls for a change in the hash value on the page and then displays the new page using DOM effects according to the name you give your #.

This has several outcomes, you have more content on the sites which is visible to search engines. The user can make use of their browser forward and back buttons. If the user has Javascript disabled or is using an antiquated web browser they will still be able to view the page as the javascript will be ignored in favour for traditional anchors.

[Edited on 28-07-2010 by ed]

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28th Jul 10 at 13:08

That's the most basic way too. You could get even more complex by storing your content in a database/XML file and AJAX the content in from your storage method, or load the content in normally using PHP or something. That way there is no duplication of pages making editing quicker.

I've been experimenting with this method myself a little for a website I'm planning on updating soon...

AndyKent

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Registered: 3rd Sep 05
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28th Jul 10 at 15:47

You are right in what you're saying Ed, but I did decide at the start that SEO wasn't important to this particular site. If people know my name, or have picked up a business card they will have enough information to find the site.

I'm not going to rely on Google to provide me with business though, I'll go after the customers I want and let word of mouth in the local area do the rest.

In theory

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28th Jul 10 at 17:28

I was just answering bishbosh's question, wasn't having a dig or nothing

Like I said, if you know what your mission is then you can design your site accordingly

AndyKent

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Registered: 3rd Sep 05
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28th Jul 10 at 17:31

I know, just wanted to make it clear

AndyKent

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29th Jul 10 at 14:44

Right, completely overhauled the portfolio area. It now looks better, and because the images are loaded from flickr one at a time appears to be a lot faster (though the overall load time is actually not much different to before).

Going to add a couple of buttons to see more images by clicking left and right, and also the image names and set names will be completely on changing images, but thats pretty much what I'll stick with I reckon.

Any more thoughts appreciated - link in sig as before.

As ever, please make sure you Ctrl-F5 to get the latest version....

[Edited on 29-07-2010 by AndyKent]

Steve

Premium Member