From here it looks like a page cut into a dozen parts with scissors
and pasted back together in random order.


I don't understand what the problem is.
The pages look just fine and load plenty fast,
not one of them takes more than 4 or 5 seconds
to fully open.
Maybe you guys are using some non standard
browser. All of my pages are optimized
for I.E.

Ron

It's just fine with me once I helped get the semantics and spelling fixed.
I'm not going to nitpick about the "gap" in the box on the right side where
the background unexplainedly shows between the text panel and the border. I
think it's an interesting subject and hope you'll add to it soon. Reed Park
and I think Lou G. want to add test equipment items to it and would be happy
to talk to you. I think it has a lot of potential good use. Thanks for
pointing it out to us!
"Ron, KC4YOY" wrote in message
. com...

From here it looks like a page cut into a dozen parts with scissors
and pasted back together in random order.


I don't understand what the problem is.
The pages look just fine and load plenty fast,
not one of them takes more than 4 or 5 seconds
to fully open.
Maybe you guys are using some non standard
browser. All of my pages are optimized
for I.E.

Ron

Ron, KC4YOY wrote:


I don't understand what the problem is.
The pages look just fine and load plenty fast,
not one of them takes more than 4 or 5 seconds
to fully open.
Maybe you guys are using some non standard
browser. All of my pages are optimized
for I.E.

Ron


Here's the same image after some tinkering....50k file size instead of
298k and it looks better to me.
http://www.sparkbench.com/CBtext1revised.gif

Not a problem for me, just a point of discussion.

Two things occur to me, Ron. First, only about 50% of web subscribers
are using 'broadband' in the US, and certainly less in the rest of the
world. So it still behooves one to opt for download time preference
where it is possible and its a no-brainer if the quality can be better
in the process.

Secondly, the format you are using constricts the image into a 'frame'
and on a common 800x600 monitor thats resulting in about 50%
compression. Might not look so bad on a 1024-wide format. Things like
this always look better when blowing upwards as opposed to downwards.
800x600 still seems to be the norm these days.

"What-you-see-isnt-always-what-you-get" when it comes to folks with
different internet connections, different size monitors, etc. I looked
at the home page in both Netscape 7 (Mozilla) and IE. In my Netscape
the "From a 1941 catalog..." is spilling outside of the box. Not a
biggie but you can see the implications with some of the IE-only webpage
designs. Optimizing for one browser only usually implies that it might
not work with others. No need for things to be that way when a page can
be made to work correctly on all browsers.

Regards,
Bill M

Optimizing for one browser only usually implies that it might not work
with others.

On Homestead you either optimize for Nutscape or I.E..
I use I.E., which do you think I'm going to pick.

Ron

Just finish it. If somebodies' browser ***** it up maybe they'll be smart
and read the INFORMATION instead of groaning about the format. I was pleased
to help. Nobody ever built their webpages based on anything! I have ever
said or done : )

"Ron, KC4YOY" wrote in message
. com...

Optimizing for one browser only usually implies that it might not work
with others.

On Homestead you either optimize for Nutscape or I.E..
I use I.E., which do you think I'm going to pick.

Ron

Ron, KC4YOY wrote:
Optimizing for one browser only usually implies that it might not work

with others.

On Homestead you either optimize for Nutscape or I.E..
I use I.E., which do you think I'm going to pick.

Ron

Thats all well and good but the fact that you use IE doesn't restrict
you to webpage creation software that only works correctly for IE.
Its really a generic thing, not a matter of optimizing for one or the
other. Out of the 3 or 4 billion pages showing on Google only a small
fraction are "only works properly with IE". I've never seen a page that
"only works with Netscape".
Generic is best or we wouldn't be dragging out this thread.

-Bill M

Here's the same image after some tinkering....50k file size instead of
298k and it looks better to me.
http://www.sparkbench.com/CBtext1revised.gif


Bill, I used it, looks great, thanks a bunch.
I've also added some more stuff, check it out.
http://radioheaven.homestead.com/CloughBrengle.html

Ron

Ron, KC4YOY wrote:

Bill, I used it, looks great, thanks a bunch.
I've also added some more stuff, check it out.
http://radioheaven.homestead.com/CloughBrengle.html

Ron

Glad it helped.

-Bill

Here's the same image after some tinkering....50k file size instead of
298k and it looks better to me.
http://www.sparkbench.com/CBtext1revised.gif


Bill, explain to me what you did to get it so small.
I'm sure I'll need to do again for some future page.
I have some Clough-Brengle catalog pages that
I'd like to put on, but the scans are more than 2 meg.
and still are hard to read the small text.

Thanks,

Ron
http://radioheaven.homestead.com/CloughBrengle.html

Ron, KC4YOY wrote:
Here's the same image after some tinkering....50k file size instead of

298k and it looks better to me.

http://www.sparkbench.com/CBtext1revised.gif



Bill, explain to me what you did to get it so small.
I'm sure I'll need to do again for some future page.
I have some Clough-Brengle catalog pages that
I'd like to put on, but the scans are more than 2 meg.
and still are hard to read the small text.

Thanks,

Ron

I resized it to 500 pixels wide - it was 1083 wide so that alone reduced
the file size to about 25% of original. No point in having a 1083 pixel
wide image that has to scrunch into the box provided on the page. That
causes it to compress and may look 'funny' depending on a guys browser,
video card, monitor, etc. At 500 pixels maybe it still compresses (or
expands) a little bit. I can't tell from the script what the size of
the rectangle is supposed to be but on my browser it appears to be about
500 wide.

Next I took it down from 8-bit/256 colors to 4-bit/16 colors. As
mentioned before, thats a no brainer for a black and white image. That
reduces the file size even further. Then just for looks I changed some
of the 'almost' white or 'almost' black pixels to true black and white
leaving the greys in the middle of the range.

For your 2 MB scans try something along the same lines. If they are 2MB
it sounds as if they were scanned as color??. Get them into black and
white for starters and gradually step down to 256 and then to 16 color
black and white and see how they look. Old yellowed pages are sometime
difficult to handle but there's ways.
After you get it looking good, resize it down to whatever width is
appropriate for the page. If there's a lot of fine print you might not
be able to get it as small as you'd like. The alternative here is to
put a reduced size clickable link on the main page that can carry an
interested surfer to a full size version. That way the main info page
doesn't get bogged down.
Crop the edges appropriately. You can often knock off a bunch of the
file size just with simple cropping.
And if its a fine text page, don't try to put it in a box like the
letter on the home page because thats gonna really scrunch down the fine
print.

Hope this helps, drop me an email if you'd like to discuss it further.

-Bill
exray at coqui dot net