Hi Metro, every link in your site leads to http://www.danshome.com/index_33.htm
Is this intentional?
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Hi Metro, every link in your site leads to http://www.danshome.com/index_33.htm
Is this intentional?
Yep - even the black background is linked to the same file and mouse action.
I agree with Egg you managed to screw something up:(
Last time I viewed your site it looked great.
I really like your delayed fade in fade out graphics.
I would get rid of the asterics by your names because they are really distracting to an otherwise very professional looking website, unless you need them for legal reasons;)
WELL! That's totally bizarre! When I load up it show's every link properly! It might have something to do with that curse.....
Regarding the asterisks... it's all because we're so blessedly controlled in Real Estate in Ontario, Canada. For instance, I can't say Daniel & Rosemarie Marchuk, I have to use our registered names so it has to be Daniel Marchuk & Rosemarie Marchuk. I can't just say Sales Representatives underneath for both, but for each one unless I use the asterisks. And on and on...
Regarding the linkage, I'll have to look at that weird situation.... unless internationally you get my update later than I and so reflect an older update... but that doesn't make sense. My browser is set to download the site completely each time I put the address in the browser so I don't think it's stale on my computer.
It turns out after checking all the links and then rembering what Sledger said about the background. It was linked! Hopefully it works this time. Thanks for letting me know!
http://www.danshome.com/
That's better Daniel, the links are working correctly now.
I have now become an expert in Xara for website creation. If you want to know anything about how to do it wrong, ask me. For all other questions pertaining how to do it right, as sledger, egg and all the other knowledgeable supporters of this site.
I've only been working with Xara html for a few months, so be gentle with me;)
http://www.oldclubcondo.com
http://www.jimhanus.com (Still under construction)
Both sites look pretty good Jim.
Re: jimhanus.com, the alignment for the lower row of thumbnails and the white image display area above is a little out?
One thing to watch out for are your on-mouse-hover images which appear in the larger image display area, these are all .png and make the pages slow to load. Try naming them 'JPEG' in Xtreme so they export as .jpg.
Sledger,
Not sure what you mean by a little out. They all look OK to me in Firefox and IE. Can you show a screen capture?
Sledger,
All the large images were imported as .jpg's. Do you know why some would be exported as .png and some .jpg? I wasn't aware of doing anything different for any of the layers or pages. Is there a way to globally have them all export as .jpg? About half of the large images exported as .jpg and half as .png.
Sure Jim.
Probably a personal design thing, but the mis-alignment looks awkward to my eye.
If you resize, optimize, edit, add shadows (or watermarks) etc to the imported JPGs I believe that's when Xtreme changes the export type to PNG.Quote:
All the large images were imported as .jpg's. Do you know why some would be exported as .png and some .jpg?
Not yet, so you need to name each image for export to jpg as 'JPEG'
Xtreme will warn you that the name already exists, just ignor that and keep going :)
Sledger,
Thanks for the alignment suggestion. I thought of that early on, but thought it looked too linear. But now that I look at it, I may move the bottom 4 thumbnails to be centered under the white rectangle.
http://oldclubcondo.com/xara1.jpg
Nice stuff Jim! I like both sites and Lucy should be quite happy with what you've done.
Hi Slinshot
Very nice site... Works well in my Mozilla Browser...
Jim, it would be good if you could do away with the "under construction". Websites are always "under construction"!
Paul
Pauland,
Thanks. Yea, I know. I'm working on it every day, trying to get the Paypal links correct and working (61 items). Hope to have it totally finished within the next week or so.
Jim,
It wasn't a dig about the site needing more work - I just think that no website should ever have those words on them.
Of course people build websites and put them online with page X Y and Z blank or with some kind of 'under construction' message. My opinion (and I'm not alone) is that if a website page isn't complete, it shouldn't be on the website at all until it's ready.
When a new feature or page is ready, just add it and let the site change and grow - that's the natural way to do it. I just think it's a really bad idea to have someone go to a website just to be told it's not ready yet.
All websites are permamently "under construction" - it's the way they are.
Your website is coming along well, so don't take this as discouragement, but "under construction" is a no-no (as is any variant such as 'coming soon').
Paul
No offense taken, but in this case I tend to disagree. The Under Construction was temporary, lasting maybe 2 weeks. It's actually removed on my current version, just not uploaded yet. We all do things graphically for a reason, whether it's the way a shadow is placed or adding Under Construction to a site. In my case, I needed a way to gauge traffic to individual pages, and let visitors know there was more to come. Without it, no page would have been seen, and the 500 plus visitors I've had this month would have seen Zero. I would rather have 500 visitors see a 95% complete page than not even know that there was more than a single home page, and possibly not ever return. I dislike going to a page and the only thing on it is an Under Construction icon. That's a waste of my time. But I feel in this case I was justified in my beliefs, as I was able to show what I was going to have to offer. Just my 2 cents worth :)
Jim, we'll agree to differ.
Looking again at the current site, I see no value to the "under construction" text and the ordering page with "coming soon" I have some sympathy with, but think it would be better without. It doesn't really matter if "under construction" is there for two weeks or two years, many visitors won't bother to return to find out. If the website is going to be "complete" in two weeks, it's best to postpone publishing it until then.
An alternative to the "Under construction" and "coming soon" messages would be to have a blog/news type page where you could talk about your photography and the plans for the website. That way you would give visitors a reason to return which would be to keep up with your news/views rather than just to see if you're website is complete.
I appreciate this is a small scale venture, but mainstream websites just aren't made with "under construction" and that's not because they couldn't be built in stages with placeholders, but because it's not a good user experience.
Anyway, we can agree to disagree.
Paul
Bones
I have Firefox 3.0.5 and the text wrap (repel) works OK.
But as we all know, things can vary from browser to browser and if you don't want to focus your site exclusively on IE users, simple is often better.
:confused:
Which post by BONES are you referring to Gary?
This is my first post and my first Xara-created website. Love Xara and have done since it was ArtWorks on the old Acorn :)
Would appreciate anyone's thoughts on this little effort:
www.fyles.com
I'm curious as to why many (most?) modern websites (blogs and forums) only use about 1/3 screen width and the rest is justy plain colour or blank space.
We have these 'new beaut widescreens' imposed upon us by those in the know and yet we use so little of it's width.
I asked this question one of my program's new Forum site as it was rather tedious scrolling through the postings, but it was met with silence.
regards
Printer friendly
Does that mean we get to be dominated by that insatiable appetite of the eternal printer, despite the fact we probably never print a page from Forums, Blogs etc?
I'd suggest if thats the case then the device drivers should be made program friendly.
There must be a way we can have a full page width and still be 'printer friendly'.
I just tried one of my full width forums - print to PDF and it actually printed OK.
By the way - this 'rant' isn't a shot at dantheman's site.
I thought that looked well done.
regards
I think also blogs (and some forums) try to be smartphone friendly. Which is fair enough.
Though personally I dislike my 24" screen to be filled with a single browser window.
The need to print a website shouldn't be a valid excuse to design websites with a fixed width:
Design a flexible print layout with a (X)HTML/CSS Framework like YAML.
Remi
I don't think an excuse is required Remi. I think it's a design choice.
I personally dislike self expanding 'dynamic width' sites. I see no point, just as I'd see no point to expanding word docs or PDF files. Fixed width maintains a design concept.
But that's not to say everyone should share my opinion or preferences.
Anyway...
Nice friendly looking site which seems to have your own style (by browsing at your other works). I like the Hema beads. The push pin might need a shadow though.
Dantheman,
Nice sites, but your file sizes are too big due to exports as PNG instead of JPG. Select your image and use the "create new name" button (shown)
Name it JPEG (all caps). Do that for all appropriate images. Xara will tell you the name is already in use but continue anyway. Your paper header alone will shrink in size from 235k to about 35k equaling faster page load times without any visible loss in quality.
http://www.michiganimaging.com/images/jpeg.jpg
I agree with sledger, I don't like my large wide screen filled either. If there is a lot of content it becomes hard to read long lines. There are also still many with smaller screen laptops.
Here are some made with Xara, 800 pix wide. (They are not all optimized yet)
http://www.portalrvresort.com/
http://www.eagleslandingrvresort.com/
http://rvresortdevelopment.com/
http://www.gilad100.com/
http://www.quickfitsystem.net/
Tom
On the subject of printer-friendliness influencing layout choices, in most cases the two needn't be related, since CSS allows the presentation to change according to the output device in question. This allows flamboyant graphics to be lost when printing to a printer and indeed unwanted sections of the page to be removed from the print, or sections added.
As a layout choice though, the absolute positioning used by Xtreme is going to make Steve's argument more persuasive.
Daneman - nice work - really clear and easy to assimulate sites - good to look at and to the point.
Paul
It's all a matter of taste - as always.
Unforunately Xara Xtreme isn't able to export such flexible layouts, but for Webdesigners who want to learn how to create fluid layouts (pages, that expand and contract with the width of the Browser window), flexible text, scalable navigations and expandable rows, the well known book of Dan Cederholm "Bulletproof Web Design" would be my recommendation. And after studying that, the great (X)HTML/CSS-Framework YAML would be the next step on the way to create modern and flexible floated layouts and to avoid the pitfalls of all the available Browser bugs.
Remi
Hi there
Thanks all for feedback, some interesting responses. Any further suggestions about www.fyles.com very welcome!
Camelot217 I was wondering if there was a way of adding the flash animation within xara (as per the RV site below) or did you have to change the HTML after export from xara?
Thanks again all
Dan
Xtreme does allow the embedding of flash via placeholders and the CREATE A NAME button.
See this thead here