Noob AJAX question -

Mike,

I'm responding on this thread "Noob AJAX question". I'm not a mind reader
:-)

What link are you talking about?


--
Al Sparber - PVII
http://www.projectseven.com
Dreamweaver Menus | Galleries | Widgets
http://www.projectseven.com/go/apm
An Accessible & Elegant Accordion






"Mike" <mike (AT) nospam (DOT) com> wrote

I understand this, but have you seen the link? Those BG images, even
downsampled via GIMP, are roughly 200k each. This is necessary for the site
to work at resolutions as high as 1600. This is why I mentioned the idea
not really being considerable without using AJAX. I can't load 1MB worth of
images on the front landing page... that would be bad. :-(

"Al Sparber - PVII" <pviiteam (AT) projectSPAseven (DOT) com> wrote in message
news:gqg9b9$dcq$1 (AT) forums (DOT) macromedia.com...

There is a chance you are not clearly understanding what Ajax really is.
JQuery is a script library and its animation functions do not require
that you also use Ajax. It can be used to simply manipulate content that
is already on the page (and therefore accssible to search engines, people
with script disabled, and assistive readers for the blind). A common
misperception of Ajax is that in the vast majority of cases, the content
involved is actually downloaded in total so the same results can be had
by loading the page with all the content also loaded (statically or via
conventional database query) and then manipulating its position and
visibility to shape it any way you want.

..oO(Mike)

See thread entitled "Using jquery to animate this (link included)" posted
this morning.

(The site *is* working with flat pages. And I'm at the bells and whistles
part now.)

OK.

There's a reason I referred you guys to it! :-) But everyone's avoiding that
post. Grr. Is there something repulsive in its subject line or something?

Yes, the words 'jquery' and 'animate'. ;-)

Sure, such an effect could be nice and should be possible to do (IMHO, I
don't have any code to post), but if you can't get it to work with the
current page structure now, you should rather drop the animation idea
instead of the site's usability.

Micha

..oO(Mike)

I understand this, but have you seen the link? Those BG images, even
downsampled via GIMP, are roughly 200k each. This is necessary for the site
to work at resolutions as high as 1600.

Almost nobody will see the image in full width, but they have to
download it. Not good. What will you do in 5 years? Offer 3200px images
for 0.01% of visitors?

Try to keep the entire thing at a _reasonable_ width, for example by
using max-width. There's no point in having the menubar left and some
little text box on the right with nothing but a big image in between
them on a 1600 screen. This just makes the text to look somewhat lost.
You should also use some min-width, because if the viewport gets too
small, some menu items are not accessible anymore. A min-width would
prevent that and cause a horizontal scrollbar instead.

Another note: You can safely increase the compression rate. In my Paint
Shop Pro I can easily get one of the 200K backgrounds down to 100K or
even less without getting really visible artefacts. If you would also
reduce the width a bit (1000px maybe), you could reach 70-80K.

Micha

My apologies...

Thread (or rather Post) : "Using jquery to animate this (link included)"
Posted 9:43am this morning.

"Al Sparber - PVII" <pviiteam (AT) projectSPAseven (DOT) com> wrote

Mike,

I'm responding on this thread "Noob AJAX question". I'm not a mind reader
:-)

What link are you talking about?

"Michael Fesser" <netizen (AT) gmx (DOT) de> wrote

.oO(Mike)

I understand this, but have you seen the link? Those BG images, even
downsampled via GIMP, are roughly 200k each. This is necessary for the
site
to work at resolutions as high as 1600.

Almost nobody will see the image in full width, but they have to
download it. Not good. What will you do in 5 years? Offer 3200px images
for 0.01% of visitors?

Covered it - the image fades to a solid color at 1600 pixels. So it'll be
semi-graceful even at 3200px.

Try to keep the entire thing at a _reasonable_ width, for example by
using max-width. There's no point in having the menubar left and some
little text box on the right with nothing but a big image in between
them on a 1600 screen. This just makes the text to look somewhat lost.
You should also use some min-width, because if the viewport gets too
small, some menu items are not accessible anymore. A min-width would
prevent that and cause a horizontal scrollbar instead.

Not understanding you here. The BG div is set to 100% and won't generate a
horizontal scroll bar under any circumstance. Only the navigation menu
might, but given how it fits in a 800px viewport, I'm not sure why I'd waste
any amount of energy covering more bases than necessary.

Another note: You can safely increase the compression rate. In my Paint
Shop Pro I can easily get one of the 200K backgrounds down to 100K or
even less without getting really visible artefacts. If you would also
reduce the width a bit (1000px maybe), you could reach 70-80K.

Interesting, though I suspect your and my definitions of what is considered
acceptable artifacts might differ. Do you have a link so that I may compare?
If PSP's downsampling algorythm is superior to Gimp's, then that's
definitely a point of interest.

"Michael Fesser" <netizen (AT) gmx (DOT) de> wrote

Sure, such an effect could be nice and should be possible to do (IMHO, I
don't have any code to post), but if you can't get it to work with the
current page structure now, you should rather drop the animation idea
instead of the site's usability.

Not sure why they'd be mutually exclusive..?

..oO(Mike)

"Michael Fesser" <netizen (AT) gmx (DOT) de> wrote in message
news:rfcns41c1166ptqcr1ejug4cf9rfdf67if (AT) 4ax (DOT) com...
.oO(Mike)

I understand this, but have you seen the link? Those BG images, even
downsampled via GIMP, are roughly 200k each. This is necessary for the
site
to work at resolutions as high as 1600.

Almost nobody will see the image in full width, but they have to
download it. Not good. What will you do in 5 years? Offer 3200px images
for 0.01% of visitors?

Covered it - the image fades to a solid color at 1600 pixels. So it'll be
semi-graceful even at 3200px.

Yep (I do the same fade-out on my sites), I just consider 1600px too
wide already. Almost nobody will see the images in full size, so it's
just a waste.

Try to keep the entire thing at a _reasonable_ width, for example by
using max-width. There's no point in having the menubar left and some
little text box on the right with nothing but a big image in between
them on a 1600 screen. This just makes the text to look somewhat lost.
You should also use some min-width, because if the viewport gets too
small, some menu items are not accessible anymore. A min-width would
prevent that and cause a horizontal scrollbar instead.

Not understanding you here. The BG div is set to 100% and won't generate a
horizontal scroll bar under any circumstance. Only the navigation menu
might, but given how it fits in a 800px viewport, I'm not sure why I'd waste
any amount of energy covering more bases than necessary.

That was not what I meant. I know that there are no scrollbars caused at
the moment, but I'd rather like to see one on very small viewports.

It would only require _one_ additional rule somewhere in your CSS. On
viewports smaller than 800px a horizontal scrollbar is better than
missing menu items. I admit this shouldn't happen usually (in my Opera
here I have to decrease the width to 650px to make the 5th menu item
vanish), but it's absolutely trivial to completely prevent it.

Another note: You can safely increase the compression rate. In my Paint
Shop Pro I can easily get one of the 200K backgrounds down to 100K or
even less without getting really visible artefacts. If you would also
reduce the width a bit (1000px maybe), you could reach 70-80K.

Interesting, though I suspect your and my definitions of what is considered
acceptable artifacts might differ. Do you have a link so that I may compare?

http://temp.mfesser.de/vilverset/

bg05.jpg is the original directly taken from your site, the others use
varying compression levels: 10 almost leads to the same file size as
your original, 25 is my default for almost all web images, in some cases
(depends on the image) I even go up to 30. In this case 30 leads to some
little artefacts in the sky part of the image, but 25 would still be
acceptable to me.

Micha

Thanks. I'll take a look at it later and perhaps there is a logical solution
somewhere.

"Mike" <mike (AT) nospam (DOT) com> wrote

My apologies...

Thread (or rather Post) : "Using jquery to animate this (link included)"
Posted 9:43am this morning.

"Al Sparber - PVII" <pviiteam (AT) projectSPAseven (DOT) com> wrote in message
news:gqgbhv$g6g$1 (AT) forums (DOT) macromedia.com...
Mike,

I'm responding on this thread "Noob AJAX question". I'm not a mind reader
:-)

What link are you talking about?

..oO(Mike)

"Michael Fesser" <netizen (AT) gmx (DOT) de> wrote in message
news:09cns4p3t3g5nim4eevgsot1c8p6pmd9l4 (AT) 4ax (DOT) com...

Sure, such an effect could be nice and should be possible to do (IMHO, I
don't have any code to post), but if you can't get it to work with the
current page structure now, you should rather drop the animation idea
instead of the site's usability.

Not sure why they'd be mutually exclusive..?

I don't think they are. What I meant is that it's better to have a fully
accessible site with no such animation than a decreased accessibility
just for the sake of a graphical effect.

Or in other words: If you (or someone else) can find a way to do the
animation you want, while keeping the site as accessible as it currently
is and usable even without JS, then do it, there's absolutely no problem
with that. But if you can only find a solution, which would require
fundamental changes to the site and which may affect the accessibility,
then you should _not_ use it. Accessibility is much more important than
an animation.

Micha

"Michael Fesser" <netizen (AT) gmx (DOT) de> wrote

Yep (I do the same fade-out on my sites), I just consider 1600px too
wide already. Almost nobody will see the images in full size, so it's
just a waste.

Not in my field of work. We're most of us already at 1920. The switch to
widescreen also makes 1024 practically obsolete already. Most widescreen
modes default at 1280 don't they? 1600 seems a reasonable "max width" to me,
especially when you consider how fast technology becomes obsolete.

We'll have to agree to disagree that it's too soon to consider 1600.

bg05.jpg is the original directly taken from your site, the others use
varying compression levels: 10 almost leads to the same file size as
your original, 25 is my default for almost all web images, in some cases
(depends on the image) I even go up to 30. In this case 30 leads to some
little artefacts in the sky part of the image, but 25 would still be
acceptable to me.

Yes, well.. you conveniently picked the image with the least information in
it. I could get that one under 200k too. But what about bg03 for
instance?