Neverside

Grouping Slices ?

Hello guys and girls,

I am having a big problem and i am hoping someone can help me.

Im working on my web site http://www.effilang.com . Its pretty much done, but as you can observe when the site loads the slices are a BIG MESS!

For example my main menu bar concists of so many slices and it looks very unprofessional when loading.

Is there a way for isntance i can make my animated rollovers for "Home" "Join" "Forum" etc etc.... and then Group all those into one big slice called "Top-menu-bar" for instance? So that when my site loads the Top menu is actualy loaded as a whole and not 10,000 pieces.

This will also help me with updating the site because i plan on updating it through Photoshop, text and all.

Thanx alot guys.

I'm afraid I haven't used slices in a couple of years so I can't help you with that.

But at the same time - are you *sure* about this? the whole idea of creating and updating it wholly through photoshop. That is possibly the least search-engine-friendly site I have *ever* seen. I take it you have no knowledge of HTML & CSS, otherwise you wouldn't be doing this? I realise this is the Photoshop forum and only tangental to your question, but seriously, learn. It's not as difficult as it initially looks and it is easily worth the time you spend on it.

There are so many things wrong with this, I don't know where to start. No page title. No *text*. No alt tags. No TEXT! Things slightly messy and not placed accurately. Do you not care about your bandwidth at all? or people with slower connections? <boggles>

___________________

because lurking is *fun*

I agree with andustar. It wouldn't hurt to learn how to use PHP as well, that way you wouldn't have to upload a new page everytime you add a news piece to the site. As for your question, I don't think it's possible to group slices. However, there are two ways of cutting down on the slices.

1) Make it so that each button has once slice. You end up saving space, trust me. Basically, you have to delete all the other slices you have on the button then create a new slice so the entire button is in the slice. This is the easy way.

2) Make one slice for the entire top bar and use image maps. This way is tougher and you'll end up eating more space than cutting each buttons up into a thousand pieces. Not to mention you'll be spending more time saving the up and rollover state for each buttons only to end up with 6 large images. That will eat up your bandwidth for sure.

If you ask me, I suggest you cut each button up so you have a total of 6 slices for the menu. You might want to slice the rest of the site up that way so that each component has ONE slice.

If you don't understand what I mean, then give me a FLATTENED version of your site in .psd format and I'll slice it up for you

I hope everything up to the last part helps and that it makes sense...I'm horrible when it comes to describing things >.<

___________________

Every complicated thing is just many simple techniques put together.

Oh..man..lol

I havent had harsh critique in quite a while, i guess thats what happens when you try something new

Thanx anyway guys,i appreciate you taking the time to write to me.

This is my first website! And i started working on it this Friday 4:00 PM and it was uploaded by 8:30 AM on Saturday, that is extremely fast for me X_X.

The website, is only directed towards a concentrated current 100,000 people, the only way to access it is to through an animated banner that explains what the website is in 4 seconds or so.

So the people who will visit it and can benefit from the specific information really dont need a name for the site lol, it doesnt have a name i wouldnt say, its like a quick information center.

I agree that things may be jumbled up, by my current experience with web site development and my currently restricted perspective of these matters lets me view this project as successful.

With my amounting experience i am certain that in a few months i will look back to it and see a Million mistakes which i cannot now due to my lack of experience with web site development

This site is gonna be up for a while, then its gonna be converted to my portfolio page, where i will have my animation demo reel and current and previous 3d work, so im not worried.

I appreciate the time and advice guys, thanx alot.

Hi guys do you think i could ask you once more to take a look at my website and One by One tell me what is wrong so i my take notes and fix things, i see you are more experienced with Web Development.

I would appreciate it extremely.

You need a title because Google or other search engines will search your site starting from there. I suggest you make the title the same name as your domain name.

It is better to use text because text is many many times smaller than images. Not to mention some people actually changes the size of the text on sites because they might have trouble reading small fonts. The fact that you've decided to embed the text into the image limits people from being able to change the size of the text to suit their comfort. This'll drive visitors away.

Before I continue, it looks like this site is just a WIP of what the actual site will look like. If this is indeed the final product, then don't put text into images, those textboxes won't work. If you want your site to have dynamic content I suggest you learn PHP and possibly MySQL (database).

If you need any further critiquing, please visit: http://www.silktide.com/sitescore

In fact, I recommend anyone and everyone that has a site visit that site. It actually tests your website and gives you a score. Whether you take their advices and recommendations is up to you

I hope it wasn't too much of a sting and it helped you in bettering the site

___________________

Every complicated thing is just many simple techniques put together.

Quote:

The website, is only directed towards a concentrated current 100,000 people

My great and personal friend runs Stormofcash.com, he goes through almost more than 700Gigs of bandwidth a day. I think you can up your number marginally, if you do it properly. What system are you using? He codes his own using PHP of course, and makes really crap *** layouts for his clients, and ends up bringing in almost $60,000 a year doing NOTHING, but updating and working on his code.

You should deffinately take al ook at learning how to make this an HTML site (i mean to say, not so many images, understand? Not sure if that's comming out weird).

To make it easier, you could even, just take all the text out of your boxe, and simply use div layers ontop of one big image. Not sure if it helps, but i tried

___________________

Neversidian Development Editor

You should check out SiteGrinder. It's a plug-in for Photoshop that converts Photoshop designs to working web sites. It outputs valid XHTML 1.1 and CSS, there's no slicing, and it'll even convert styled Photoshop text to HTML/CSS (instead of the graphics you have now).

Anyway, SiteGrinder, while a big improvement on what you've got now, won't be a panacea. It'll give you a good start, but then you are going to need to move it into DreamWeaver (or some other HTML editor like emacs, or Visual InterDev) and continue from there.

http://www.medialab.com/sitegrinder

Chris Perkins
Media Lab, Inc.

DISCLOSURE: I helped write SiteGrinder, so I'm _not_ an unbiased user. You'll should evaluate it yourself or maybe talk with someone who has used it. I'd be interested in knowing what people think about it.

100,000 people?!? are you paying for your bandwidth here?

To load your index page alone it took no less than 92 images, combined size of 336kb. That is A LOT. And it costs you money. In contrast, text takes up very little space.

Learn how to write HTML & CSS. It's harder than just saving everything as images, yes, but, wow. You've given up a lot of bandwidth, you are invisible to search engines, people on dialup will be unable to use your site, people can't change the size of your text... the list goes on.

It's a shame, because it's a nice design. But please don't just take the easy way out and use photoshop to do everything. It wasn't meant to produce whole websites, only the graphics.

___________________

because lurking is *fun*

use teh crop button, it pwns slices