Specify loading order of JPGs?

  • Thread starter Chris Tomlinson
  • Start date
C

Chris Tomlinson

Are you sure? because I downloaded the "highstreet" as a single image.

That would be very odd if so. Take a look in your cache and for the
Richmond page you will find 6 sliced JPGs. Unless your browser has
Photoshop built in ;)
Agreed. Personally I don't like scrolling - but that's just my preference.
If you want to keep the scroll then consider modifying the site so it
isn't a fixed width. The monitor I'm using at the moment runs at 1600
pixels wide, so whilst I would still need to scroll, it would help if I
didn't have a white border down the left and right hand sides. No, don't
design for a

It's a good idea which we are already planning.
larger width, just allow your page to adjust to the browser width. (By the
way, I don't normally run my browser window full screen, and at my
preferred size I have a horizontal scroll bar just to see the rest of your
page.)

The site will work without a scrollbar at 1024 upwards, so your preferred
width must fall just a bit short of that. Oops, sorry.
Something else that might help (with loading times at least) would be to
reduce the size (height and width) of the image.

We have struggled with this, but it is the optimum height from testing where
users felt they were getting a realistic experience. It also is the
absolute minimum where the smallest ePosters (120x60) actually fit in the
shops' windows. There are many other factors too. And just reducing them
what looks like a lot only resulted in a small reduction in file size. We
are also compressing them to 40%.
Connection speed here is 512kbps, which is shared amongst the office (12
of us). Clearing my browser cache and reloading, I think it was about
12seconds to load everything, although the outline of the site came up
much sooner than that.

That is consistent with our market research. Also the general consensus is
anything under 15 seconds is acceptable to the user, anything more is a
worry. So, whilst we are glad you are within our target range on a shared
slow broadband :) we still want to make the page 'usable' if not fully
loaded, sooner.

The idea there is to present the first JPG slice ASAP, and the rest can
follow as the user doesn't need them until they scroll or cross the road.
The disadvantage of a table (in IE at least) is that IE won't display
anything (of the table) until it has finished reading/downloading all the
html for the table. This means that if the entire page were contained
within a table then IE won't render anything until it has read to the end
of the file. (This doesn't mean it needs to have downloaded the images,
just the HTML.) I take my original comment back, because I see now that
you do indeed have three separate tables and I had originally thought you
had just one. Leave it for now, and ignore my comment.

Thanks, but for the future, what method do other designers use for
presenting such info as our instructions table etc.? There are a lot of
sites which load pretty graphic 'tables' around the page, but they are
usually divs. Is there a program they use to automatically create these
graphical elements and align them in WYSIWYG? E.g. our partners at
www.GreasyPalm.co.uk

Appreciate your support Brian, many many thanks.
 
C

Chris Tomlinson

Here is part of the actual code where I do just that:

function gradel(n) {
if (document.images[n].complete) {
grado(n,0);
} else {
setTimeout("gradel(" + n + ");",200);
}
}

The key, of course, is the "document.images[x].complete" method. You
should be able to figure out how to make a progression from this to suit
your needs.

Thanks very much indeed. We will look into this.
 
B

Brian Cryer

Chris Tomlinson said:
That would be very odd if so. Take a look in your cache and for the
Richmond page you will find 6 sliced JPGs. Unless your browser has
Photoshop built in ;)

I stand corrected. The image I grabbed was 6907x290 pixels (416KB). I had
assumed it was the full "street", but visually comparing it it looks like
about the first third.

The site will work without a scrollbar at 1024 upwards, so your preferred
width must fall just a bit short of that. Oops, sorry.

Yes, not sure exactly what my browser is normally set to, but its less than
1024. I suppose it must be nearer 800, since I can fit two side by side on
my monitor. I accept I'm unusual wanting to see multiple browser windows at
the same time, 1024 seems to be the norm although some sites I've worked on
have targetted 800 (if anything).

Thanks, but for the future, what method do other designers use for
presenting such info as our instructions table etc.? There are a lot of
sites which load pretty graphic 'tables' around the page, but they are
usually divs. Is there a program they use to automatically create these
graphical elements and align them in WYSIWYG? E.g. our partners at
www.GreasyPalm.co.uk

Personally, I think your instructions look fine as they are.

Which software are you using to create the site? (i.e. which wysiwyg?) For
my hobby site I use FrontPage 2000 (my commercial stuff is almost
exclusively .NET and thus Visual Studio). I don't know about FrontPage 2003,
but FrontPage 2000 doesn't handle div's very well if you use them for
layout. I've been playing with Microsoft Expression Web Designer (the beta
is a free download) and it seems to handle these very well.
 
V

Vincent van Beveren

You'd create the images map just in the NOSCRIPT and write a SCRIPT to
copy the content (atleast the images, including image map references) of
the NOSCRIPT. So you just need one set. The advantage of this method is
also that users without JavaScript see the images. You might also
consider using the lowsrc attribute for images
(http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/author/dhtml/reference/properties/lowsrc.asp),
though I have the idea FF doesn't listen to it.

Vincent
 
J

Jonathan N. Little

Chris said:
The site is currently in beta and the entire reason we started this thread
was to learn ways to make the page loading more convenient, so we don't
really understand your comments that we do not want answers.

It is obvious that you have settled upon your conclusions before doing
your research. You are not respecting your medium or your potential
customers. Do you really know how many of your potential customers have
access to broadband? Also even 3D gaming on the Internet does not push
bandwidth as your site. Firstly they don't push whole images but use
compressed texture samples and build their environments. Second most of
the work is done client-side on a compiled, optimized application (the
game) and the interactive communication is optimized and coded to be as
minimal as possible, many even use speculative routines to help with
bandwidth problems. HTML is not problem and a web browser is not at all
like a game.

Now the suggestion was made that your project might be possible with
Flash. I'd say much better that the way you are attempting. If you
reduced your images to smaller texture bits and reused to build the
scenes Flash has the advantage reusing a images so that each would only
have to be downloaded once but with scaling, inverting and clever
recombining can give the appearance of large scene of unique object at a
faction of the bandwidth. The multimedia events handling is also
superior to want can be done with plain markup.

Another possibility would be a downloadable application, like a game,
where everything is specifically programed to do what you wish.
Downside, upfront development investment, OS specific, and requires user
trust for installation.
Obviously we do not want answers that say 'don't build this web page' or
'don't make it this way'. That is just negative. We are still refining the
page loading to speed it up a lot.

I am not being negative, but realistic.
But we don't accept that waiting a minute for a page to load would be
quicker for people than getting in the car and driving into town, parking,
maybe getting out the umbrella, pushing through crowds, carrying heavy bags,
etc. We hope you appreciate our point. But we agree, we need to make the
page loading better and more acceptable to the user, which is the entire
reason for our question.

1 minute, hell it is not even possible with dialup. And it better be
*good* fat pipes.
Vincent and Brian gave us very nice answers to the actual question, which we
are currently researching. Sorry to disappoint you about this Luigi fellow!


You have speakers on the library computer? Strange thing to do. But yes,
obviously we considered many factors which is why we made it 25% as quiet as
normal sounds, and put a clear 'sound off' speaker button right there on the
page.

Yep, little games, Reader Rabbit and Pooh's Adventure type educational
games for the wee ones.
Thanks for your feedback. Again, the subject of this thread should make it
clear to you we agree. This site is pre-launch and we are here to refine
that. It is great that Brian and Vincent were willing to help us with
answers.

Good luck!
 
C

Chris Tomlinson

It is obvious that you have settled upon your conclusions before doing
your research. You are not respecting your medium or your potential

Sorry you feel that way. What we decided on was a niche in the market.
Sadly one cannot create niches, they are either there or they are not. The
only question we had was whether or not to fill it. We are rising to that
challenge...
customers. Do you really know how many of your potential customers have
access to broadband? Also even 3D gaming on the Internet does not push

At least 50%.
bandwidth as your site. Firstly they don't push whole images but use
compressed texture samples and build their environments. Second most of
the work is done client-side on a compiled, optimized application (the
game) and the interactive communication is optimized and coded to be as
minimal as possible, many even use speculative routines to help with
bandwidth problems. HTML is not problem and a web browser is not at all
like a game.

Perhaps we could add aliens and laser fire to the streets ;)
Now the suggestion was made that your project might be possible with
Flash. I'd say much better that the way you are attempting. If you reduced
your images to smaller texture bits and reused to build the scenes Flash
has the advantage reusing a images so that each would only have to be
downloaded once but with scaling, inverting and clever recombining can
give the appearance of large scene of unique object at a faction of the
bandwidth. The multimedia events handling is also superior to want can be
done with plain markup.

We researched Flash thoroughly, however sadly recreating Oxford Street in
photo-quality as you will see in our site over the next month would simply
be close to impossible, and incredibly painstaking using texture bits. And
that's just one street! We wish to add dozens. So, we looked at the
evidence, the fact that broadband continues to grow and is now in many cases
free for life, and that our site will grow into that market. This was a
decision made intentionally and knowingly, to preserve the ease of building
new streets using photo-realism instead of Flash simulations. Remember, we
are aiming this at people who love real high streets but have not yet delved
into web-shopping. They do not want computer game visuals, they want the
real thing. You can trust us as we did the market research :)
Another possibility would be a downloadable application, like a game,
where everything is specifically programed to do what you wish. Downside,
upfront development investment, OS specific, and requires user trust for
installation.

Sadly downloading it as a game would be much worse than the current 12
seconds it takes to load at the very slowest broadband speeds. Next time
you install a game, or drive into town, time how many seconds that takes
you. Could you fly to 5th Avenue in 12 seconds? Or even 1 minute
(dial-up)? For this reason, whilst we appreciate your input, we are not
seeing any faster suggestions here than the one we chose for that very
reason.
I am not being negative, but realistic.

The realism of the situation is 12 seconds on a site designed for broadband
is not at all bad, and we are here to try to speed that up even further by
controlling image loading. We have some great ideas from other contributors
here, so thanks to them for their can-do attitude.
1 minute, hell it is not even possible with dialup. And it better be
*good* fat pipes.

By controlling image loading, you will see the first part of the street
faster. The rest will load in the background before you need to scroll or
cross to it. That is the idea - to present the start of the street to the
user quicker.
Yep, little games, Reader Rabbit and Pooh's Adventure type educational
games for the wee ones.

Very sweet :) But if there are speakers on a computer, that means you are
accepting sound in the library. Our sound is 25% the volume of those games,
and can be turned off in an instant. But market research and testing showed
that the user is more likely to stay and have their interest 'caught' if
they 'arrive' at a full sensoral version of a high street, with the senses
they would normally experience, namely the photo-realistic visuals, and the
sound of being there. Silent streets did not impact on them as greatly.
We're sure you understand, although we are still toying with the idea of
starting with the sound off. It is a dilemma as we could lose visitors
either way.
Good luck!

Thanks. We are already getting great reviews from those in the Google Maps
communities, and commercial interest from other 'local info' web sites.
Sorry you thought it was so awful, but you can't please all the people...
 
C

Chris Tomlinson

Thanks Vincent, we're going to look into this method. Really appreciate
your support and ideas.
 
C

Chris Tomlinson

Personally, I think your instructions look fine as they are.

Which software are you using to create the site? (i.e. which wysiwyg?) For
my hobby site I use FrontPage 2000 (my commercial stuff is almost
exclusively .NET and thus Visual Studio). I don't know about FrontPage
2003, but FrontPage 2000 doesn't handle div's very well if you use them
for layout. I've been playing with Microsoft Expression Web Designer (the
beta is a free download) and it seems to handle these very well.

Thanks for the heads-up on that one. We do use FP2003, but Expression looks
far better and seems to be based on FrontPage, and an upgrade of it.

What we hope you can tell us is if Expression will easily allow us to
'convert' our site to CSS retaining its look and feel. Is there some magic
button that will take our <font> attributes for example, and move them into
a CSS format?

Same question but for converting tables into CSS and divs?

Thanks Brian.
 
C

Chris Tomlinson

If you look at my original example
(http://www.cryer.co.uk/resources/javascript/script3.htm), something along
the lines of the code used behind the "reset" button - although resetting
to a blank 1 pixel by 1 pixel white image is probably better than what
I've don on that page. Call that before starting the load.

But wouldn't that the images would still load the old fashioned way, taking
a long time, and then just blank and load again? :-S
--
Thanks,
Me

Try Google Quik-e-search™ at www.Superhighstreet.com/home
....Finds anything or they buy it for you!
 
J

jojo

Chris Tomlinson wrote:

Sorry you feel that way. What we decided on was a niche in the market.
Sadly one cannot create niches, they are either there or they are not. The
only question we had was whether or not to fill it. We are rising to that
challenge...

I wish you had decided not to fill the niche... I think a virtual street
just for going shopping is really the last thing we need. What do you
think is the reason almost every shop which can deliver their goods to
the customers has got his own online portal? Because people use it! So
why do you think people need a virtual street to go shopping? They just
have to google the name of the store they want to visit to buy
everything they want - without any slide show or sound.
At least 50%.

I personally do not believe this figure.
Perhaps we could add aliens and laser fire to the streets ;)

Yes, not a bad idea at all. And the aliens than can destroy the street
and the customers have to stop them... sounds like a nice idea for a
computer game! Perhaps you better invent games than virtual streets, I'm
convinced that would draw more people's attention.

And I think this is not what Jonathan wanted to say... He just pointed
out your exaggerated high waste of bandwidth.
We researched Flash thoroughly, however sadly recreating Oxford Street in
photo-quality as you will see in our site over the next month would simply
be close to impossible, and incredibly painstaking using texture bits. And
that's just one street! We wish to add dozens.

Sounds like: As far as we do not have much work everything will be fine.
So, we looked at the
evidence, the fact that broadband continues to grow and is now in many cases
free for life, and that our site will grow into that market.

I advise you to take a little more time to improve your site. Maybe, if
you work hard on it, it will be fine before broadband spread that much.
This was a
decision made intentionally and knowingly, to preserve the ease of building
new streets using photo-realism instead of Flash simulations.

And why?
Remember, we are aiming this at people who love real high streets but have
not yet delved into web-shopping. They do not want computer game visuals,
they want the real thing. You can trust us as we did the market research :)

So why almost everybody here tries to stop you developing that kind of
page if all people could not wait for it?
Sadly downloading it as a game would be much worse than the current 12
seconds it takes to load at the very slowest broadband speeds.

As I said before: I've got DSL 2000 (so it's not the lowest speed), but
the site still takes about have a minute up to a minute to load.
Next time you install a game, or drive into town, time how many seconds
that takes you. Could you fly to 5th Avenue in 12 seconds? Or even 1
minute (dial-up)? For this reason, whilst we appreciate your input, we
are not seeing any faster suggestions here than the one we chose for
that very reason.
When I install a game that takes maybe 5 minutes (if it isn't to big
which a street simulation certainly is not). And after installing I can
use it as often as I want to.
The realism of the situation is 12 seconds on a site designed for broadband
is not at all bad, ....if it were 12 seconds...
and we are here to try to speed that up even further by controlling image
loading.

As I said before: the thing which takes the most time to load at my
computer is the sound.
We have some great ideas from other contributors here, so thanks to them
for their can-do attitude.

Of course you *can* do. all we are about to tell you is *please don't
do*. (or at least not this way)
By controlling image loading, you will see the first part of the street
faster. The rest will load in the background before you need to scroll or
cross to it.

And if you scroll before the rest is loaded the browser crashes...
Really nice!
That is the idea - to present the start of the street to the
user quicker.

And if someone does not want to buy anything in the first shop he has to
wait. Nice, too!

Our sound is 25% the volume of those games,
and can be turned off in an instant.

Why don't you do it the way round: first it is off, and if someone
really wants to have "street atmosphere" he can switch it on. I'm quite
confident that this feature will remain almost unused than... Wtf wants
to hear cars and all the noise? I think this is the last thing I anybody
would miss in a street (OK, maybe the smell is last. Why don't you apply
smell to your site?).
But market research and testing showed
that the user is more likely to stay and have their interest 'caught' if
they 'arrive' at a full sensoral version of a high street, with the senses
they would normally experience, namely the photo-realistic visuals, and the
sound of being there. Silent streets did not impact on them as greatly.

Again: What would be the advantage of a virtual street to a "ordinary"
online-portal?
We're sure you understand, although we are still toying with the idea of
starting with the sound off. It is a dilemma as we could lose visitors
either way.

If you really get much visitors you can loose...
 
J

jojo

Chris said:
Out of 1,545 unique visitors to our site so far, 99.45% of them have JS
enabled. On a personal note I know dozens of users with Internet access,
and 0% have it disabled. Where did you find this statistic of 15%?

Just ask around in this NG...
Thanks for the info - much appreciated. We are launching a new FF/Safari
version shortly which may solve this.

Good luck!
Thanks, we appreciate this. Did you find the street noise very loud? It
plays at 25% the volume of normal sounds and is quite soft background noise.

It's not to loud. The problem is that it disturbs my pleasure listening
to the music... ;-)
Okay, can you qualify "a lot of time to load" in seconds please. Our
research shows users will be prepared to wait no longer than 15 seconds for
a page to access. We time our page at 5 seconds for 2Gb.

I need 30 seconds up to a minute to load the page.
Why do you feel the need to right-click the imagery? This will help us
understand whether we should remove this added deterrant and copyright
notice. It also serves as a reminder of how to use the street for anyone
confused enough to right-click.

How many reasons?
-In FF you can add Mouse Guestures. They work by holding down the right
mouse button and move around the mouse. So a right-click is required...
-Add a bookmark to the page
-much other FF-extensions have their options available by right-click
-...

And perhaps you right-click there by mistake...
Please appreciate this site is not aimed at the sort of users who are on
this newsgroup. It is aimed at people who do not like Internet shopping
But virtual streets in the Internet?
and prefer high street shopping. Sure, they could drive into Oxford Street,
but could you get a bus to 5th Avenue when it goes online? And those who
could visit Portobello Road, could they do it without a single other person
there? We have removed all the traffic, crowds, rain. This is a unique high
street experience aimed at people who haven't wanted to shop online until now.

Hope you understand we can't please all the people all the time :)

Yeah, I know you cannot. But ignore the advices of people which perhaps
have experience with websites and how to make them user-friendly? I
know, all the people here are not those who should use your page...
Thanks, we will validate it again before we come out of beta.

Good luck again!
Thanks. SSI loads 3 pages, top.htm (header) and index.shtml (body) and
bottom.htm (footer). Are you saying we should remove <html... from the body
and footer documents, so they will have no HTML tag?
You need to have one at the beginning of your page and the corresponding
end-tag at the bottom of the page. But between these tags there
shouldn't be any other said:
Also which doctype would you recommend as a generic safe bet to try first?
We tried a common one but it added extra line spaces through the document
and made the Wingdings into normal text.

Which one did you use? I have not heard yet that a doctype changes the
content or look of a document anyway.

I personally would advise you to take

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">

and no XHTML.
Thanks, we're looking into that.
Yes, you really should. I wonder that Microsoft is still allowed to sell
FrontPage as web-editor :)
 
J

jojo

Chris said:
Thanks for the heads-up on that one. We do use FP2003, but Expression looks
far better and seems to be based on FrontPage, and an upgrade of it.

What we hope you can tell us is if Expression will easily allow us to
'convert' our site to CSS retaining its look and feel. Is there some magic
button that will take our <font> attributes for example, and move them into
a CSS format?

Easiest and best thing would be to learn some HTML and CSS coding...
Not that there aren't programs which could do everything for you, but
the resulting code (in most cases) is just virtual rubbish.
And besides you would find your coding-mistakes yourself and you do not
need all the people here to tell you what you should or shouldn't do
(And perhaps if you understand HTML yourself you would not ignore all
the advises because you know that most of the are right...)
Same question but for converting tables into CSS and divs?

Do it yourself, best result!
 
B

Brian Cryer

Chris Tomlinson said:
But wouldn't that the images would still load the old fashioned way,
taking a long time, and then just blank and load again? :-S

I wouldn't have *thought* so. If you replace the image then I would *expect*
the browser to cancel its current download - of course what I expect and
what actually happens may be at odds, so it would be worth checking.
 
B

Brian Cryer

Chris Tomlinson said:
Thanks for the heads-up on that one. We do use FP2003, but Expression
looks far better and seems to be based on FrontPage, and an upgrade of it.

That's the only reason I looked at it. Microsoft have stated that FP2003 is
the last version of FrontPage. Their next (new?) product is Expression.

The beta version (which I've only used for a day or two) is free and does
everything I want from FrontPage - but I've always stayed away from
FrontPage's styles and themes because I know it can lead to some real bloat.
Its certainly an improvement over FrontPage 2000.

I'm not sure I want to get too attached to Expression, because I don't know
whether the beta will stop working at any point and I'm not sure if my
budget would stretch to buying it just yet.
What we hope you can tell us is if Expression will easily allow us to
'convert' our site to CSS retaining its look and feel. Is there some
magic button that will take our <font> attributes for example, and move
them into a CSS format?

Same question but for converting tables into CSS and divs?

Thanks Brian.

I don't think there are any quick shortcuts here.

Jojo's post is spot on. It takes a bit of time, but its worth learning about
CSS (and div's) yourself.. Sorry.
 
C

Chris Tomlinson

I wish you had decided not to fill the niche... I think a virtual street
just for going shopping is really the last thing we need. What do you
think is the reason almost every shop which can deliver their goods to the
customers has got his own online portal? Because people use it! So why do
you think people need a virtual street to go shopping? They just have to
google the name of the store they want to visit to buy everything they
want - without any slide show or sound.

We appreciate your thoughts, but over 80% of a random selection of people
felt it was a good idea in our market research. We are not here to gather
more opinions at this late stage, and obviously will not drop the idea
because someone on an HTML group says they don't want to use it. It is not
aimed at your market group so this is fair enough.

To answer your question 'why', tell us how else you could 'walk along' 5th
Avenue New York, and pop into Tiffany's, if you live in London. In fact you
can literally put on your dressing gown and have breakfast, at Tiffany's.
We think this is pretty cool. Sorry you don't.
I personally do not believe this figure.

That is okay, other reports say 60% in the markets we are targetting ;)
Yes, not a bad idea at all. And the aliens than can destroy the street and
the customers have to stop them... sounds like a nice idea for a computer
game! Perhaps you better invent games than virtual streets, I'm convinced
that would draw more people's attention.

Thanks! :)
Sounds like: As far as we do not have much work everything will be fine.

In a way but you have misunderstood -- the more work there is to do per
street, the less streets there will be to explore. What about the comic
shop districts in Tokyo, what about Paris, or Rodéo Drive. The researched
way is the quickest and most realistic. All it relies on is increasingly
common broadband connections. We are not going to spoil it for those able
to get broadband by designing it for dial-up.
I advise you to take a little more time to improve your site. Maybe, if
you work hard on it, it will be fine before broadband spread that much.

Again, it's not even launched yet, just a beta, and we are here to do just
that! :-S

Because people who prefer real high streets, but miss out on the web deals,
showed a desire to have photo-realistic streets that looked and sounded
exactly like those they knew or could never visit in real life.

And it's not just a shopping site, so for virtual tours do you want to go to
a computer-game like 5th Avenue, or the real thing? The answer is pretty
obvious. Even if it takes 15 seconds to load, or longer on dial-up, it is
quicker than flying to NY.
So why almost everybody here tries to stop you developing that kind of
page if all people could not wait for it?

This group is the only negative feedback the idea gets, but we notice a lot
of people's ideas that are posted here get negative reactions. You tell me
why...
As I said before: I've got DSL 2000 (so it's not the lowest speed), but
the site still takes about have a minute up to a minute to load.

There must be something very wrong somewhere. We test on 2Mb connections
and it loads in 7 seconds with a clear cache. Several other computers also
all come in under 15 seconds. Our testers all load in around 10 seconds
even on 0.5Mb.

You say it takes up to a minute.

It is bizarre here how all our testers report good speeds and all our market
research showed 80% positive response, yet *just* at this newsgroup a few
people hate the idea, need an afternoon to learn how to use it, and can't
load it on 2Mb broadband in under a minute! That might give you some
psychology to answer your earlier question why everyone here is against it.
You tell me why..
When I install a game that takes maybe 5 minutes (if it isn't to big which
a street simulation certainly is not). And after installing I can use it
as often as I want to.

The same applies to your web cache. Even when the cache is emptied of it,
you can still use it 25 times before it becomes slower than the 5 minute
game install. That's fine by most people.
As I said before: the thing which takes the most time to load at my
computer is the sound.

The sound is 100K. The street is 300-400K per slice. We'd appreciate any
technical feedback from you as to why your findings might be. Thanks.
Of course you *can* do. all we are about to tell you is *please don't do*.
(or at least not this way)

A bit late for that, and it's not what we're here asking so let's agree to
disagree.
And if you scroll before the rest is loaded the browser crashes... Really
nice!

You obviously have some problem understanding that the site is in beta, we
didn't ask for any testing, and we are here asking one question about JPG
loading. But hey, insult it anyway. Bizarre.
And if someone does not want to buy anything in the first shop he has to
wait. Nice, too!

Or she. (It's not the first shop then they wait, it's the first row of
shops that loads first.) How quickly do you run down the high street in
real life?
Why don't you do it the way round: first it is off, and if someone really
wants to have "street atmosphere" he can switch it on. I'm quite confident
that this feature will remain almost unused than... Wtf wants to hear cars
and all the noise? I think this is the last thing I anybody would miss in
a street (OK, maybe the smell is last. Why don't you apply smell to your
site?).

This is why it is on:
Again: What would be the advantage of a virtual street to a "ordinary"
online-portal?

As above - virtual tours and to attract the many people who hate shopping
sites but love high streets, or could never fly to other world famous ones.
If you really get much visitors you can loose...

I'm sure you know what you meant to type. :p

Anyway, we can't chat all day as we have cities to build ;) Thanks for the
fun debate, let's agree to disagree as it has nothing to do with our
question above, which is already being answered by your colleageus in this
group, in a very positive helpful way.
 
A

Alan J. Flavell

We appreciate your thoughts, but over 80% of a random selection of
people felt it was a good idea in our market research.

Say what you will about Jakob Nielsen (and I know that many designers
pour scorn on his own hair-shirt web page design), but at least he has
the sense to produce actual working designs and try them out on
prospective users, watching them to see how usable the designs are,
rather than merely asking them "in a vacuum" whether they thought it
might be "a good idea". You don't /really/ expect random selections of
people to recognise that, in web terms, you're erecting a pointless
obstacle course that does nothing to promote the (presumed) aim of
selling stuff? I'd say you've received a much clearer answer on that
account from the contributors to this group - too bad that you're
already beyond the clue horizon.
We are not here to gather more opinions at this late stage,

Indeed, you've already made it clear that you started asking late,
after you'd already dug yourself into this hole. But there's a slight
chance that others might stand to learn something from what you're
doing.
and obviously will not drop the idea

Quite.
 
M

mbstevens

Say what you will about Jakob Nielsen (and I know that many designers
pour scorn on his own hair-shirt web page design), but at least he has
the sense to produce actual working designs and try them out on
prospective users, watching them to see how usable the designs are,
rather than merely asking them "in a vacuum" whether they thought it
might be "a good idea".

That's twice you've caught C.T. drowning in his own
statistics.

I suspect that he is trying to use a subject matter he does not
understand instead of actually trying to mislead us.

He might start to correct his deficiency by reading the very short
old 1950's classic by Darrel Huff, "How to Lie with Statistics".

(BTW -- loved that 'clue horizon' crack.)
 
C

Chris Tomlinson

Alan J. Flavell said:
Say what you will about Jakob Nielsen (and I know that many designers
pour scorn on his own hair-shirt web page design), but at least he has
the sense to produce actual working designs and try them out on
prospective users, watching them to see how usable the designs are,
rather than merely asking them "in a vacuum" whether they thought it
might be "a good idea". You don't /really/ expect random selections of
people to recognise that, in web terms, you're erecting a pointless
obstacle course that does nothing to promote the (presumed) aim of
selling stuff? I'd say you've received a much clearer answer on that
account from the contributors to this group - too bad that you're
already beyond the clue horizon.

This isn't meant as offence, but the site isn't targeted to the select group
of CSS, HTML, JS, etc. programmers found in this one group. That is why we
did
not ask earlier for feedback on the site, and have never asked in this
thread. We only asked "Specify loading order of JPGs?" :-S

Our research goes much further than you have bothered to ask about.

The site is as much about tourism and offering people the chance to walk
down famous streets they may never get to see in real life as anything else.
It achieves this in a load time of 5-12 seconds on the slowest broadband
connections the site is designed for and will be marketed at. If that is
insulting to you or gets you all excited, so be it. We can live with that.
Indeed, you've already made it clear that you started asking late,
after you'd already dug yourself into this hole. But there's a slight
chance that others might stand to learn something from what you're
doing.

Very strange comments, but we will leave you to it and agree to disagree.
Good luck with other new visitors to this group. Hopefully you may welcome
them a bit more positively.
 
C

Chris Tomlinson

That's twice you've caught C.T. drowning in his own
statistics.

Were you a bully at school? ;)

Seriously though, why does our hit counter on the server report this
statistic if it is false? Why have other programmers, some very respected
in the Google Maps community, agreed with us that JS is off in less than 1%
of browsers. And those who know how to turn it off, also know how to turn
it back on very easily!
I suspect that he is trying to use a subject matter he does not
understand instead of actually trying to mislead us.

I am not the programmer of the site, but I am allowed to ask the question in
the subject. Forgive me if this has been a problem for some of you. The
majority of replies have been constructive and understanding. Thanks and
kudos to Brian, Vincent, and now jojo too who gets it.
He might start to correct his deficiency by reading the very short
old 1950's classic by Darrel Huff, "How to Lie with Statistics".

Totally bizarre you guys. I'm normally able to think laterally but you've
defeated me :-S Quoting exactly what our server counter says, and what
others have agreed with, isn't really a "lie" now is it. Come on.

Let's agree to disagree, as we have a site to build. It's been lovely
chatting with you all ;)
(BTW -- loved that 'clue horizon' crack.)

What's that smudge on your nose? :p
 

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