May 27th, 2009
No one likes websites that take ages to load. You won’t disagree that long wait always irritates. In the world of severe competition it is extremely important to make your website comfortable for the users. Make sure that your visitors won’t leave your so-very-informative page before it actually loads. What can you do to make your visitors lives more comfortable and safe their time with your fast page loading? Well, here are some useful tips for you to use on every stage of web site development – designing, programming and maintaining. Following these tips you’ll for sure make your website loading fast, more comfortable for your users and thus will leave your competitors behind.
* Optimize your HTML code.
Errors, broken links, unwanted tags, all these things slow down your page load. Make sure your website doesn’t have any errors and is optimized for load time.
* Lessen the use of images, graphics and Flash.
This is the easiest and most optimal solution for designing the fast loading page. The more images you have on your web page the slower it loads, thus try to reduce the use of graphics. Of course they are important for the attractive appearance of your website, but try to be reasonable. The simpler design is better.
As for the Flash animations, well, they indeed are catching and rather useful for attracting your visitors, but if not properly utilized they can slow your page load immensely.
* Create simple icons with tables.
Do not neglect the simple ways. Using tables creatively can bring brilliant results, thus you can get not only great designs but also achieve the faster loading time.
* Use text links.
Try to reduce the use of graphic buttons. Instead use text links. To be able to make them attractive learn some CSS.
* Optimize heavy files.
Reduce the sizes of the images, Flash files and scripts if possible. You can easily do that with the help of Photoshop, Adobe Flash or Fireworks software.
* Stick to simplicity.
The minimalistic and plain designs are more and more popular nowadays, thus your website will look more modern and stylish and will load faster. Isn’t it an awesome plus to the great and professional looks?
Well, have I missed something? Feel free to add your tips on making websites load faster in the comments below.
Tags: CSS, designs, flash, HTML, web site development
Posted in General Talk, How To | 13 Comments »
December 30th, 2008
While HTML is perfect for creating static websites where all the content is placed at fixed positions Flash is the best tool for creating dynamic sites, where images, texts and animations are moving.
These effects can also be achieved with GIF images or java applets.
Lets compare these two to Flash.
An animated GIF is practically several images saved in one. The browser simply loops these images when the animated GIF is loaded, i.e. if your image has an area that moves in 20 small moves than the animated area is saved 20 times. Thus, it takes ages to load even a small animation.
Besides GIF does not support interactivity and is limited to a 256 color palette.
With Flash you can control your animations. For instance, you can make your animation start when a particular button is clicked. Flash movies load much faster that GIFs and can use more than 256 colors.
Apart from animated GIFs there is another way to achieve dynamic effect – java applets.
Java (the programming language for applets) demands programming skills.
Some programmers created free applets that can be customized though.
Among the most famous ones is the lake applet. It gives a wave effect to any image of any size. But to add anything to the applet you’ll have either to program it yourself or find a ready applet that does the effects you want.
Flash movies are very much alike java applets. They both are small programs that can be put into the HTML pages. But it’s very easy to create movies in Flash without any programming knowledge.
Besides java applets are often programmed so that it takes all the resources of your computer and as a result you’ve got a “freezed” browser.
So, compared to java applets Flash is much easier to create and is more stable in web browsers.
To create Flash movies you have to buy the Flash program developed by Macromedia, the latest version is Flash Mx.
As soon as you’ve installed the Flash program start completing the 8 lessons that come with it.
* Introduction
* Drawing
* Symbols
* Layers
* Type
* Buttons
* Sound
* Animation
To run these lessons get the Flash started then click Help in the top menu and choose Lessons.
These lessons will teach you the very basics of the Flash.
What to do after you completed the lessons I’ll tell you in my next post.
Tags: flash
Posted in General Talk | No Comments »
