Kilt sample Photos

[Abax]

Mark,

First off, let me say thank you for supporting XMarks. I appreciate the good work this site does, and your support is appreciated.

I don't usually respond to personal attacks like the ones you posted above, but I don't think you meant to be offensive . . . maybe you were just being defensive. You seem to be sincere about promoting kilts, so there's something good right there. I offer the information below as constructive criticism. Not belittling or demeaning but intended as assistance. Read what I've written below and you'll see I don't insult you even once.

First we have no codes protecting the pictures...second if you ever want to get an image off the web you can always screen print it and paste it to paint.

I stand corrected. It appears to be a fluke of the HTML which I presume you created in Microsoft Word.

The fact is they are large images.....large images take longer to load

Quite so. I count 37 megabytes of PNG images alone on http://www.thefrugalcorner.com/samples.htm. That's far in excess of what's needed for a typical display on a computer monitor.

could it be your Internet connection-is your high speed really high speed, what is your MTU set at, were you also doing other things on your computer, is it a cable connection on a shared segment? Of course theh connection I have at home is a 10 Meg Cat 5E running down to a load balancing router with 4 Data T1's.....but what do i know about these computer and network thingies

My Internet connection works just fine. Boasting about your unusual connection isn't likely to make your customer downloads any faster.

Abax..come on-you said "IF THEY CANT GET THEIR WEBSITE TOGETHER THERE MAY BE OTHER PROBLEMS"

Like what, ---What other problems directly relates to a slow website...drunken driving, fraud, civil unrest, rebellion, WHAT

Offhand, I'd say one symptom would be someone inviting everyone on XMarks to take a look at their new web page, then being demonstrably defensive about some constructive criticism . But seriously, when I consider doing business with a vendor for the first time, I evaluate the presence they project, whether it be a brick-and-mortar store or an Internet web site. Sure, other things will be considered too. But I believe the care and expertise that are evident in a web site may say something about the care and expertise that go into other elements of the business.

a faster page may make you happy but it also means having smaller pictures, maybe with lower resolution..there is no way around this issues..LARGER files require longer downloads..more 0's and 1's flowing over the copper wiring that runs from our server to you

I'm using Microsoft Internet Explorer 7. The comments that follow are based on viewing your web page using that browser. Right now, IE6 and IE7 account for about 57% of all browsers out there, so my browser isn't all that unusual, and it certainly accounts for a very large segment of your viewing audience (Firefox is third with about 34% of the market).

You have taken enormous files and then (I presume unknowingly) asked your customer's browser to scale them down, negating any benefit the huge files might have held in the first place. For example the "MacLeod Hunting" image (image021.png) you show on this page - http://www.thefrugalcorner.com/samples.htm - started life as a 1280 x 1024 pixel 24 bit PNG image that consumes 3 MB (PNG include lossless compression, otherwise it would be about 3.75 MB). It took my Internet connection and your server 26 seconds to get just this image on my screen.

Your Word-generated HTML squeezes the original MacLeod Hunting image (image021.png) in to an HTML table cell that resizes it to fit in a custom textbox object that is 225.75 points x 205.5 points. First off, if the image had been scaled proportionately, it would have retained the 1.25 ratio of width to height, so your textbox object (with a ratio of width to height of 1.09) compressed and distorted the width of the image - certainly not something you'd want to do when showing a tartan. Second, if you had resized the image to display at the same width as your HTML forces the image to, it would only consume about 147Kb, about 5% the size of the large file.

Not only is there no point to squeezing a really large image in to a really small table, but asking the browser to resize images often results in less than optimal renderings. Here is a screen shot of another image from http://www.thefrugalcorner.com/samples.htm showing the MacKenzie Modern tartan as squeezed down into your HTML table:



Here is a screen shot of the source image (image023.png) displayed at 100% size:


Look at the first red intersection below the hanger in each photo . . . they are quite different colors (magenta vs red), aren't they? You are much better off resizing images in a graphics program rather than letting a user's unknown browser do it for you. Resizing an image in even a high-end graphics program does induce color shifts, but this effect can be minimized, a much better situation than the uncontrolled environment of a browser.

So here are my recommendations:

1) Stop using Microsoft Word as an HTML editor. It produces some of the worst HTML in existence - it's bloated, unnecessarily complex, difficult to control and difficult to maintain.

2) Resize your images in a graphics editor, adjusting the resulting color as necessary. How big should the image be? If you're happy with the current sizes rendered in a typical browser, then about 300 pixels wide.

3) Consider obtaining information about designing web pages for usability. This is a tough subject for which either a lot of study and practice or professionals are usually required.

These recommendations aren't revolutionary - you'll find much the same information in a lot of other places. Rather than debate with me, here are some references you can consult:

Jakob Nielsen has written several good books on usability:
http://www.useit.com/

There are lots of sites that describe the issues regarding images and their display on monitors. Here's one I found at random searching on "dpi print monitor":
http://www.sphoto.com/homedd/

I sincerely wish you the best of luck with your endeavors.

Abax

[pipesndrumsnun]

Hi, Mark...
Nice photos.
Please, please, please answer my PM...I'm biting my nails here!
Thanks!

[keith_b]

I really like the Douglas Blue; I think that'll be my next kilt purchase.

[ConfusedPollock]

I'm sorry if I started something about the pics....I have a mid range DSL connection, I dunno how fast exactly. I think my computer has an evil gremlin in it somewhere though. It acts up when and if it feels like it. I tried waiting but still no luck.

I enjoy the Hitman PC games and it refused to show the images but I could hear the music of the start menu on one of them. Who knows? My computer could be just evil, I think it is. So I didn't mean to be a pain in the a$$ about it, I just wish I could see the pics.

[Hamish]

A couple of points of mine to throw fuel on the fires:

The first thing I noticed about the Frugal Corner web pages was the use of the Royal Arms to H.M. Queen Elizabeth II. My immediate thought, having at one time been a member of The Royal Warrant Holders Association, was that this cannot be right, and then I began to wonder about the legality of their use overseas. I have not had time to check this but my gut feeling is that it is not permissable to use the Arms in this way. I am extremely pleased, therefore, that you have decided to replace them.

Your photos: Like everyone else, I found them to load extremely slowly and, in fact, I gave up waiting when the second one - way down the page - began to appear. Also, I assume that they are all photographed 'in the flat' (correct me if I am wrong). This, I feel, does not show a kilt to its best advantage. If you were photographing them specially, would it not have been possible to have had them modelled for the camera? I am sorry, but to me, they looked as if they had been borrowed from Ebay!

Just trying to help......

[Roan Carter]

The pictures loaded fast for me just now.

I'm glad you uploaded them. I can stare at tartans for hours. *drooly drool*

[McMurdo]

I just tried it from my computer at home, before I was at work, anyway I am running an AMD 4000 64bit on a high speed connection with firefox not ie, and the photos on the sample page loaded perfectly I have nothing else running at the moment.

[Woodsheal]

The pics loaded fast and fine for me, too, and offered a useful look at the appearance of Frugal's kilts. Don't quite get all this "feeding frenzy" of nit-picking. Relax for crissakes...!

[cloves]

FWIT, pics loaded slow for me too.

[bunchdescendant]

The pages load fast for me, but I only have a cable connection and not a real good one, either.

Comcast in the SF bay area, to be exact.

FWIW, I will second not using M$ Word for HTML-it sucks at it and makes a bloated file to boot.

I use Evrsoft 1st Page 2000 for HTML. I used it to build my websites. Clean HTML that is easily edited with notepad if need be.

http://www.modelautoracing.com
http://www.geocities.com/raystankewitz

I will say that for those who cannot hack HTML code, OpenOffice is a good substitute. It's free and if you can use M$ Office, you will be comfortable with OO. HTML from OO is a little less bloated, IMHO.

http://www.openoffice.org

(edit)
BTW, I'm a Firefoxer so I fired of Internet Exploder 7 and lo and behold, it did a about a minute for the page to load. This is at 3.84Megs/sec worth of bandwidth.
(/edit)
Ray