SpeakBold.com 2.0

Oh, I see. You’re talking about the long and narrow previews for the photo albums. Yes, the photo is supposed to lay over the frame, and yes, they’re much bigger than the inside of the frame. I suppose I was a bit lazy when I made that border, figuring that it looked right once it was downloaded, so who cares. Perhaps I should fix it so that there is a cavity in the middle that is the same size as the picture.

it looks fine as is, it was just something I noticed and wasn’t sure if that is how it was intended….

shadow: You said that it falls apart at 800? What browser? Like I said, I checked it in several browsers at several resolutions, and had no probs. I designed the theme to be multi-res friendly, and your findings really concern me…

I just checked it on Windows and Mac on and 800×600 setting in all browsers including Netscape, Mozilla, Opera, Firefox, IE, and Safari, and it appears to be maintaining integrity. The main content even centers and, for the most part, there is no horizontal scrolling to speak of. Isn’t this the ideal scenario? What am I missing? ??

Perhaps my wording was incorrect. It doesn’t fall apart as such but it loses it’s appeal dramatically.

Here is a screenshot of your header which shows how in 800×600 res, and using FF 1.0 on a 17″ screen, there is a side scroll bar action and you lose the whole effect of the left and right edges.

https://shadows.os42.com/speakbold.jpg

Maybe this is the effect you were after and if so, I am sorry if I seem a bit harsh in my analysis.

HTH ??

No, shadow, you’re not harsh at all. Sometimes tones are hard to detect in text chat, and I think you may have misconstrued mine. I wasn’t upset, just perplexed. ??

Your screenshot is very helpful, and yes, that is what I expected. There is a bit of scroll, which I can eliminate by reducing the width of the content area a bit. Right now, it’s exactly 800px wide, which means it’s too wide on 800px monitors once you take into account the width of the vertical scroll bar and the borders of the browser. And yes, you do lose the total effect, but, at least in my opinion, it’s still fairly attractive, and still a big step up from what I had before.

My goal was to build a nice design that bordered my content, without losing any of the 800 pixels of room that I have for content. This way, it looks good on most monitors, which are larger than 800px, while still utilizing the entire area of an 800px monitor for raw content. I don’t know how other feel, but after putting a lot of thought into, I found this to be the ideal scenario.

If you have a different philosophy, I’d love to hear it. Perhaps I’m overlooking some essentials.

Anyway, I hope that all makes sense, and thanks loads for the input.

Very nice looking website…especially any of those header images seem so perfect match..

Good work !

This site is beautiful. Sure, it’s rich in graphics, but it loads up quick on my cable modem. Being a site primarily for photos I see the need for all the graphics. It’s like a rock band site, you don’t want a rock band site to look like Kubrick. Sure it’ll load faster, but the folks visiting are looking for eye candy. Your site has lots of eye candy, and I mean that in the best way possible.

Thanks a lot for the comments, sadish & dividespace. ??

I’m still wondering, does anyone agree or disagree with the design philosophy that I proposed in this post, i.e. the philosophy that I used when laying out my new theme?

loads great on my side. Good job. Did you create the template in photoshop then add the loop?

That’s a very neat site! Load times weren’t too bad. The site still functions when the window is small.
I think it is best to design for 800 width (approx) as you have done. Even though I could maximize the browser, I generally don’t because some text heavy pages end up with sentences that go the whole width, so I browse with a smaller window, your site comes up just fine.
About using the space, the top of the page is a little wasted. I realize you got some graphics up there which are part of the overall theme, but generally that is quite an important piece of real estate (what in newspapers is called ‘above the fold’) and you need to think if window decorations are the best use of that space.
And of course, I had to hover the mouse over the hinges, clasp and so on, to see if they do anything!

beautiful site, wonderful execution. In response to which images to reduce size in, i would make ALL images web friendly. But it seems you have already. But because of the number of images it will always lag on dialup users. 50kb + 50kb + 50kb etc.

however, if this doesn’t matter to you then who cares! It would be a shame to limit this sites imagery. I opened up some of your images in pshop and couldn’t really reduce the file size without reducing the quality. At least on the bg images.

good job.

Nice, but with my Maxthon/IE6 (res. 1280 x 1024) the menu starts under the posts.

very very nice… what pluggin are u using for the images at the topo of each post?

@ 7milesdown: Thanks. And yes, I did create the template in Photoshop, but there was a little more involved than just putting the loop into it. My rule is, create your dream look in Photoshop, and don’t worry about how to make it happen in html. Figure that out later.

@ jalal: Good points, my friend. I think I may remove the top banner from any page but the front page. I don’t know; I’ll have to think about it.

@ joey: Thanks for the encouragement. I spent quite some time making the template graphics as small as I could, and even sacrificed some degree of crispness, figuring that most people aren’t going to get as close to the screen as I do. As for the photos themselves, I agree; I won’t make them any smaller than what Photoshop or Picasa decide is “high” quality, which is just a bit less than “maximum” quality, and usually does not make any visual difference in the crispness or integrity of the image.

@frenchie: I can’t replicate the problem your getting on any of my computers, and I have two PC’s and two Macintosh’s total at work and home, with five or six different browser types. Is this happening to anyone else? That’s a bit disturbing, and I’m sorry it doesn’t look right for you.

@juan: Thanks, man. ?? Are you talking about the main image at the top of the photography posts? That, along with the thumbs, are done with Exhibit. If you’re talking about the image at the very top, that changes randomly when the page is refreshed, and has the title over it…that’s just a floating layer with relative positioning and php random function to choose which image loads in it.

Also, whoever changed the name of this thread so that it isn’t in all caps: sorry about that. I didn’t put it in all caps to get attention; that’s just the way I write the name of my site. But I understand why you changed it.

Cheers.