First website - using flash

[herc182]

Hi all,

Was looking for feedback on my new and first website. It can be found here:

www.philipduartephotography.com

Thanks and feel free to express opinions

[ikonik12]

Hi phil

Just gave it a quick glance over..

im running firefox 3.6 with latest flash plugin on 2ghz windows xp system with upto 10mb broadband speed

for me its taking a long time to load the main screen up and when it does my browser works on go slow !

( i have cleared out all temp folders on firefox as well ) so theres nothing in the temp folder except your web page

hope thats of help to you :-)

[swanseadave]

Yep,I found the same.Painfully slow to load and navigate.

I too am running XP pro 2gb ram on 10mb broadband(Opera)

[ermintrude]

Yep same here, really REALLY slow.

Also I am not a great fan of flash, but if you must use it at least get a Next button or something to get to the next photo instead of it taking you back to that dreaded slow panaorama to have to individually pick from would help too.
EDIT: I see you have a Next button in the Budapest series - however once you're in the Budapest series you then can't get out either...

[herc182]

unfortunately it seems that others are saying the same thing about the site being slow.

I am not sure why it is. I have contacted wix to see if they can help. If not I might do away with it altogether.

Really annoying as it wasnt like that before

I have a smugmug account linked to it (to purchase pics) and may just resort to that one only.

Thanks for looking everyone.

[ikonik12]

I am not sure why it is. I have contacted wix to see if they can help. If not I might do away with it altogether.

Phil



Ive dealt with flash website creation before and it is a real pain sometimes...

there are a few things that cause load times and flash websites to run slow ..i have found !

1 .is that you need to embed html code with the flash page

2. is the animation frame rates.. buy that i mean the way that the flash animates on the screen ..for example choosing a picture to view in a slide show... you cant really have the frame rate any bigger than 12 frames per second

3. the colour pallet also have to be under the 16million

4. the screen size for animations shouldnt be any bigger than 640 X 480...as a rule


but yet again im not familiar with the Static Wix way of doing things so i dont know how easy it is to edit your code etc !

mainly ... ive found that the larger the size of anything with regards to flash ( BE IT picture file size and screen size etc ) the slower everything begins to work.

the only page that does load up quick for me ...is your contact page if thats a starting point for you ?

hope thats give you a bit more to look into !

Pete

[herc182]

Thanks ikonik12

I have updated the website slightly and it loads faster...however individual pages are taking a while...especially the bigger pages (London and Budapest).

There is no code whatsoever (that I wrote), its all built into wix. So I wouldnt know what to change (or even if i can access it).

Thanks for your comments, I think ultimately I need to upload much smaller files. At the moment it links to flickr photos, and am not sure what size its using from Flickr (i.e. original, large, medium etc).

[ikonik12]

At the moment it links to flickr photos

theres your problem :-)

you need to have the photos embeded into the flash web pages

your are trying to link photos from another website server .. onto the server your hosting your website from ... thats why its taking forever to load your pictures up and slowing your website to a crawling speed.

this is because you are relying on two websevers that are probably half way round the world from each other to operate and access data at the same speed... to then draw it up on the end users screen over the internet
and ( as you rightly said ) the images on flickr might also be massive in size? (eg 2mb each ) which takes time to load everything when you are asking it to load 6 photos or more at the same time

i suggest ... you try and get your pictures down less than a 1mb each if not a lot smaller ..or to the point you still have decent quality maybe and load your pictures onto the static wix site itself if you can ?

hope that clears a few things up ?

pete

[ermintrude]

i suggest ... you try and get your pictures down less than a 1mb each

1MB?! Jeez, Id get them down to less than 1-200k!!! No wonder its so freakin slow

[ikonik12]

1MB?! Jeez, Id get them down to less than 1-200k!!! No wonder its so freakin slow

lol i didnt say just 1mb did i! .. i said less than 1mb or a lot smaller

the main problem with the speed is the fact that each photo is linking to the images from another website.. thats why its primarily slow..
JUST Think what would happen if the flikr website went down as there will be nothing to load on the gallery of the wix site !


anyway
hopefully phil will get it going good... soon ;-)

[LargeFormat]

Well, it's some days since this thread started so you may have changed it but it seems to me to skip along at a reasonable speed.

[herc182]

thanks guys. The only thing I did was to split the page up into separate pages. It was all originally on one.

Need to reduce the size of the pics still...but havent had the time!

[JonMcGovern]

Yeah, slow for me too but might I just compliment you on your fantastic eye for a photo. Especially impressed by your Budapest stairs shot.

[RichardPeters]

Really slow here so only managed a couple of images before I gave up. What I saw looked great but the load times really need sorting out for maximum impact