memory and picture issues XWD6

Dear all,

I have several questions, I hope there's someone out there willing to help.
I've made a website for a good friend of mine, a photographer. I'm experiencing several problems:
1. First of all I'd like to know if there's a size limit to the .web file that XWD6 can handle? I have a file of over 150MB (due to all the galleries and I even 'chopped' them up in several galleries) that's giving me hard times to upload. I'm not sure if it's the program or lack of memory in my pc. i'm experiencing problems as 'access violation' messages, scrambled up pages when it does upload, 'out of memory' messages.
2. Is there a way to protect pictures on this website from being downloaded? Or at least a way to hide that the pictures are in the www.domain.nl/index_htm_files when I click on a picture in a pop-up gallery? Now the folder is shown in the bottom left corner of the explorer.
3. I also experienced coincidentally (wanted to move the position of the pop up photo) that when I'm checking the pop up photogalleries on this site when I click and drag a picture all the way to the top of the screen a new explorer window opens with just this particular picture. Is there a way to prevent this?

I hope I described my problems in a clear way, but even more that there's light in my darkness...

Best regards, Sandra

Welcome to TalkGraphics Sandra

150MB is getting pretty large for a website. One thing you can do is select fro the Utilities menu, Optimize all JPEGs.

All of the images you are using are saved at their original size and resolution whereas they only need to be screen resolution for the web. So if you do this, you will save a lot of memory and file size.

I use a utility called Encrypt Web Pro to secure images and text on gallery websites. It is shareware and I believe you have to pay for it. It is fairly easy to use and can protect images, text, from right click, drag and drop, and other forms of copying. It is not a perfect solution but it will keep most people from copying images and content. There are other solutions as well and you might want to check them out first. Do a Google search website image protection.

I am not sure what is happening in your third question but it sounds like what happens if you right click on an image and select View Image.

I don't know if 150MB is considered a big web site - probably not by most?
But it certainly is a big Xara file, that may be difficult to work with.

But there is no need to make an entire website inside one single Xara file.
Make the site from several Xara files, and you can build as big a website as you like.

Hello Gary,

Thank you so much, this helped a great bunch. Optimizing the pictures brought the 157MB file back to 19MB...what a difference!
I always was in the supposition that XWD did the optimizing automatically.
If you are allready using Encrypt Web Pro I won't bother doing a google search. I'd rather trust your expert opinion in this area. So that I will buy tonight and I'm sure that'll work out great too.
As for my last question: you're right it is the right click on an image. I think this'll be solved with Encrypt Web Pro as well?

But thanks for everything, I'm a happy webdesigner again!

Hi Bjorn,

Thanks for your answer. I allready figured I could do that, but that's just so much work and I kept shoving it forward and forward...
But in the end I realize that is really the best options. But for now I'm happy with just 'optmizing' the pictures.

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Originally Posted by Sampie

Optimizing the pictures brought the 157MB file back to 19MB...what a difference!

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I am really surprised that the site is as large as 19MB. Seems really big to me. Most professional photographers select the images they wish to show and take care over the size of them, so they show their best work with a limited resolution.

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If you are allready using Encrypt Web Pro I won't bother doing a google search. I'd rather trust your expert opinion in this area. So that I will buy tonight and I'm sure that'll work out great too. As for my last question: you're right it is the right click on an image. I think this'll be solved with Encrypt Web Pro as well?

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Don't imagine that these systems will stop a knowledgable person taking an image. If an image is viewable on a computer it can be copied.

Sorry Paul, but from my POV 19 mb is a tiny site for a professional photographer or graphic designer. Many sites are gigabytes big. I have three that total about 5 gigs (though a lot of that is not for public viewing). Certain files are only for some clients to view or download. Other times it is simply the size of videos etc. I have viewing pages for single clients containing images, videos and zipped files (for them to download), that are each more than 19 mb’s. Which reminds me – I must delete a few of those. I receive emails that add up to more than 19 mb every few days. People send funny videos that are usually about 2 mbs each.

It’s true that if you are designing a simple site for a small business that is not much more than a brochure, mostly text with a few small pics, you only need a few mbs, but for any business that has pages added on a continuing basis, especially involving photos, videos etc., it should soon be a lot bigger than 19 mb.

I hadn't considered the site being used as a repository for client galleries/proofs/whatever and I wouldn't consider that function as being part of a public facing photographers site, nor really as manageable by using xara software in one humungous site. I would have thought that sites involving so many assets would be better served using a CMS not Xara software.

For a static site I still consider 19MB on the large side for a photographer. Less is more as it were.

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Originally Posted by pauland

For a static site I still consider 19MB on the large side for a photographer. Less is more as it were.

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Back in about 1990 I bought a 286 ‘compatible IBM’ with 4 mb of ram and about 20 mb of hard drive. Discussing this with a couple of science/physics teachers at a barbeque that night, they both swore I would never need more than one megabyte of hard drive. One teacher had a tiny Apple with 1 mb, and insisted it was all he would ever need. The more I talked about future software, the more they insisted one mb was all anyone would ever need. I thought it was funny then, but it is more hilarious with each passing year. ;)

James, I won't go into all our yesterdays, but I will stick with less is more. Either way, it matters not.
[edit - your teachers comment might be fair enough in the context of what people were doing with computers at the time. He may not have meant forever. ]

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Originally Posted by pauland

your teachers comment might be fair enough in the context of what people were doing with computers at the time. He may not have meant forever. ]

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They both emphatically said 'Never'. One MB was more than enough. Their view was essentially an anti-corporation rant. They believed that all the bluster about computers was just advertising, designed to make people spend money. Bill Gates was an ebil capitalist, etc.

Anyhoo, regarding website size, apparently the average size of UK websites was 25 MB back in 2008 for the ‘domain harvesting model’, and 180 MB for the permission-based harvesting’ model, and that doesn’t include the non - .UK domain names.

- From Archiving the UK Web (British Library)

Over the last few years the average webpage file size has been growing quickly, and with technology constantly being improved, I think very large websites will be common soon enough.

Quality is always better than quantity and rarely do both go together.

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Originally Posted by pauland

Quality is always better than quantity

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Agreed, but you don’t have to have only one or the other. I think quantity and quality will both continue rising exponentially.

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and rarely do both go together.

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As with Television before it, I think the goal is to continually improve. Some garbage will go along with it, but that usually accompanies anything good. ;)

Hi Gary,

I know this probably is not the place to discuss functionalities of other software, but I was hoping I might ask something about Encrypt Web pro. I'm not sure how to combine this with XWD 6. I tried to encrypt the webpages. I checked after uploading and the results were webpages with red crosses everywhere where a picture should have been. After that I tried to encrypt the images in the index_htm_files but with the same result. May I ask for help in this matter as well?

Beste regards,

Sandra

I have been having similar problems with RAM being gobbled up when I convert to htm. My site is currently at 86MB and growing. If I had known that Xara couldn't handle large files I would not have purchased it for my sales website which, by the very nature of it, contains many graphics. I was particularly impressed with your comments on making the site from several Xara files rather than one single one. What I can't get my understanding round is how the various files would be composed, and linked to when uploaded as I assume that each would require its own htm_files folder. You obviously can only have one 'index' file so how would you navigate to the other files which, I assume would be independant from each other in construction. Thanx in advance.

This may help: http://www.talkgraphics.com/showthre...splitting+site

All software has boundaries/limitations. Xara makes it easy for people with little knowledge to build websites. Usually the websites are small to medium sized. Larger websites do tend to slow the program down and aren't the core market for the program. Often people don't help themselves by optimising the graphic content presented to Xara beforehand, so that Xara isn't handling print-resolution images for a web project.

Xara is about building websites, which it can do very well. Large files slow down the software, but there are ways around this that require a little more effort and knowledge of the user. This is why the forum is here.