I have created a nice looking website with 'textured' background. It is infact a modification of a photo used in the header, manipulated (splodged) and the resized as a background for the page. Trouble is that it makes the page really slow to load for 56k modems. ADSL no problem. I have also used the photo modified again for the side bar background. Again problems with slow loading (or so I have been told!). Does anyone have any advice other than solid colours for the back ground and side bar? thanks
The smaller your imagery, the quicker your pages loads. I suppose you've figured that part out already As I see it, you have three options. 1. Optimize your current pictures as much as humanly possible, maintaining your minimum standard for visual quality, and hope the size is small enough for people to download on dialup. (it sounds like you've tried this without success. 2. Replace the image with something more suitable for Web viewing. 3. Concoct some creative ways to use your image, such as "colorizing" it (turning it into a single color with shades), make it a faint grunge-like image, turn it into vector-style art, etc. Can you post the page in question? It'll be easier to give creative input if we can see what you're up against
Thanks for the feedback. Cant post link to page as I have removed the image as it was loading slowly. Suddenly thought I would ask here for any help or advice. The main image size is 199kb! I have manipulated it as much as my limited knowledge allows. The main colour is sepia and varying shades of. So I sont think that changing the colours is going to help much. Thanks for your advice
Erm...how about putting the page back up, and giving it some other name, so others won't try to access it, but we can give better input?
Ok here is the link to the page http://www.indiatrails.com/new/indiatrails/index.htm The other problem is that for itineraries the page may be 3 times the length of this page so the images will have to be extended. Hope this helps? Thanks
Oh my! There's a LOT of room to condense things here First of all, your navigation is only 230 pixels wide. So you can chop the image in the background down to that width. Just crop it down. Second, the same goes for the content area. It is only 617 pixels wide, and any visuals outside of that area are wasted on download. Crop it down. Finally, you could very easily make your background images repeating tiles. Take a chunk of background, maybe a few hundred pixels tall, copy it, flip it vertically and place it directly below the original. You now have images that are approximately 230x600 and 617x600. Given the amount of color used in each one, they should export at about 10 and 15 Kb. respectively, with good quality. Problem solved
Ouch..... Great. Got you on the first two but the final suggestion kind of lost me a bit. My initial attempts at this background were smaller than the actual page size so in effect I ended up with I think what you are suggesting(?). Trouble with doing that is you end up with noticable lines across the page where the images join. Or did I miss something? Thanks for your help on this one!!
I suggest visiting one of the many downloads centers, such as cnet, zdnet and others. There are utilities that help your reduce, optimize and compress image files.
Nope, there won't be a noticable line if you use the flip/tile method. It will all flow together smoothly. Here, I made a tile for you, for the navigation area. The total file size is 5.01 kb., down from 351 kb. That should load up faster That should get you started.