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**pauland** · 19 June 2009, 12:22 PM

Psychro - I'd also suggest optimising some of the images if you can - your 237K pngs could probably be a 25K jpg.

Paul

**psychro** · 19 June 2009, 12:37 PM

Thanks for that Paul - found it.

I thought the photos were automatically optimised for web by Xara?

Rgds
Psychro

**pauland** · 19 June 2009, 12:44 PM

Originally Posted by psychro

I thought the photos were automatically optimised for web by Xara?

Rgds
Psychro

I'm not exactly sure how it decides what format to use, it has to use png images in some circumstances, but it's often better to use jpgs where XWD has chosen a PNG. Software can't always make the right choice - it often depends on the content (jpgs are best for photographs and images without sharp edges and slabs of colour).

Paul

**cursor** · 19 June 2009, 12:52 PM

covoxer, on JPG and PNG: click

**psychro** · 19 June 2009, 02:01 PM

I have now selected XWD to save photos as jpeg's .... faster loading now.

Thanks Paul/Cursor

**Scotty** · 20 June 2009, 04:55 AM

hi,
As previously posted here is an update on my newest attempt.
I am not a programmer or designer tho'
The site is a learning thing.,I tried to incorporate a 'Forum" with out the hassle or knowledge. It is a Guild Wars forum I belong to.
let me know what ya think.
http://dadsdesigns.ca/FireIce/index.htm
select 'Menu' then the last square unde my grandchildren images. It is not completed yet...
Jim

**Pixelart** · 20 June 2009, 03:19 PM

Hi again. First, thank you Cursor for all your time and help. Your instructions on how to streamline things were FAN-tastic! Think I was able to cut a few of the steps with the same end result.

Also, in doing as suggested with the portfolio pages, it solved an issue that has really bothered me in IE and tech support said it was an IE issue and they couldn't do anything about it. It was: when selecting a new portfolio page, the entire page refreshes, which makes it look like the entire page "flashes", just to replace the content area, the only area of the page that changes. It does not do this in Firefox. Doing as you suggested Cursor, this no longer happens and works like a gem.

The bad news now. As I was doing this, I realized a definite issue that will have a sever impact in doing it this way regarding SEO. Essentially, you now have one web page, and the content area changes as if you are replacing an image on the ame page, over and over again. I exported the site with 3 pages on layers in the one page (using popup layer function), and yes, lost those 3 pages as separate html pages. This means seach engines with not have those 20 portfolio pages to crawl, grab keywords or the links to the client sites. It also means the site will be reduced to 5 pages from 25 pages.
Right?

I do basic SEO for clients, in content writing, optimizing keywords, establishing keywords for clients based on their business/industry (use great free version of WebCEO tool). I know the more pages the better, and now fewer keywords per page is recommended. So the site would be penalized if I took all the keywords from the 20 pages and put them on one in the source code, especially if they were not in the content crawled.

If anyone has any other information on this issue, I would welcome the input. As of now, while I can fix the portfolio menu to work like it should, REALLY hesitant to continue changing the site as Cursor recommended. Although it works GREAT, and solves a broswer issue, it appears there will be a huge tradeoff with search engines??

Thanks again Cursor!
Pixelart

**cursor** · 20 June 2009, 03:32 PM

You're certainly welcome, Pixelart. I'm glad that things worked out for you.

Frankly, I know little about SEO (but am always anxious to learn more). In the case of using 20 coincident popup layers (on a single page), with significant text (not just pics) on each, is there in fact a problem with search bots crawling through all of that textual content? Certainly the text strings have to be embedded within the exported HTML, without loss.

I'd like to hear meaningful input from covoxer, or some other reputable source on this matter. Thanks.

E D I T
After thinking about this for a while, I'm thinking that while search engines might find the embedded text within the exported and published HTML, references offered would take a searching user to the base layer (where he/she would have to guess which link leads to the right popup layer. Not convenient.

Along the same theme, awhile back I asked for a tweak to call a page and activate a specific popup. A discussion ensued about general design, and a working solution was offered by covoxer.

**cursor** · 20 June 2009, 06:32 PM

Originally Posted by slavelle

I looked and saw one thing missing, and that is a black box object at the back of each of the portfolio layers - the text from the mouseoff layer is showing through.

At first, I didn't understand what you meant. While pulling the file back up this morning and reviewing it, it's now clear. Thanks for the correction.

I noted one additional problem. When any of the popup layers on the Portfolio page are clicked, (like to highlight text for copy) the popup layer disappears (as it should). This behavior can be adjusted by employing covoxer's 'Locking Popup' tweak. You can see it properly working in the attached .web file. There is a discussion about the application starting here, with some valuable advice from covoxer.

**Pixelart** · 20 June 2009, 08:24 PM

Cursor,

In the test I did, I figured out I needed a black rectangle behind the text & image of each portfolio layer to overlay the original text of the portfolio main page.

And yes, that was what I was trying to say in my lengthy explanation, the user and search engines will only have search criteria applied to the portfolio intro page. From what I can tell the popup layer is being saved and treated like an image, including the text. Right?