Our New Site using: Xara Web Designer 10 Premium Supersite with XT-CMS 1.9

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Originally Posted by nazf355

My advice is to optimise all your images before you put them into XWD, preferably using Adobe Photoshop/Elements

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No need to use another program for this task.

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Originally Posted by pauland

No need to use another program for this task.

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Why?

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Originally Posted by nazf355

Why?

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You can either use Xara's inbuilt optimisation feature, or use Xara to take each image and export an optimised image of the right size and compression.

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Originally Posted by pauland

You can either use Xara's inbuilt optimisation feature, or use Xara to take each image and export an optimised image of the right size and compression.

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Adobe Photoshop/Elements does the best job when it comes to image optimisation, and since images tend to make up the most in terms of kb size of a site you really want the best compression you can get, I have yet to see and app reduce image size whilst retaining quality better than Adobe.

You would be hard pressed to see any differrence between a Xara-optimised image than one from Photoshop/Elements.

I would never suggest that anyone even consider purchasing Adobe software for this purpose if you have Xara. If you already have the Adobe software, then fair enough.

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Originally Posted by pauland

You would be hard pressed to see any differrence between a Xara-optimised image than one from Photoshop/Elements.

I would never suggest that anyone even consider purchasing Adobe software for this purpose if you have Xara. If you already have the Adobe software, then fair enough.

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The url http://new.clintonhealth.org/ has 2MB of just images, even if Adobe software was just 10% better the resulting 200k saving would be worth it from a loading point of view, especially so if you are using a supersite (which I don't recommend).
Do bear in mind that Google now takes into consideration the speed of a site for search index ranking purposes, so it's doubly important.

I think that optimisation isn't just down to the software. There's no evidence that Adobe software is 10% better at optimisation.

Some people have single images of 200K.

As for a supersite - the styling of this site I would class as 'traditional'. It would fare better if it had a more modern structured design - the kind of thing that Cloud does so well. I'm not a fan of the design of this site, though I see a lot of work has gone into it.

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Originally Posted by pauland

I think that optimisation isn't just down to the software. There's no evidence that Adobe software is 10% better at optimisation.

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I can take the image of the dog in the slider that is currently 67kb and optimise it to 56k with no discernible loss of quality, that's 16% better in terms of file size, it would probably be higher if I had the original image. I have yet to find any software that beats Adobe for image optimisation, not GIMP, not Paintshop Pro, not PhotoPlus. INMHO it really is the best. Of course I would be happy to test any image against Adobe if that would be evidence for you.

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Originally Posted by pauland

Some people have single images of 200K.

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I never recommend more than 100K, unless you are doing something really image orientated and you lay down the expectation that the user will have to wait for images to load to see them at a reasonable quality, such as for photography sites.

I think most people use Xara to build a functional site that suits their individual purpose and design abilities. In that respect this site is perfect. We can't expect everyone to be open to attending to all of the small details and what is often a matter of personal judgement.

I say "well done" to Karen and while the design is not what I would have done, the site works and will do the job.

Half the dimensions of an image - 75% "compression". Using a pop-up if image is that important.
Use IrfranView (http://www.irfanview.com/ free for non-commerical so read the licence) for good compression.
Compression isn't everything though; it has to be what makes the site zing.

Acorn