File naming again ..need advice

**mikerawlinson** · 25 April 2010, 09:54 PM

I have been reading loads of posts about the file naming and i am confused.
I have a car site to do and they will be changing the photos every couple of days or as they sell cars ..... all i was hoping to do was to set the site up with 4 diff photos of each car within a nice border....then all i gota do when they sell a car is to drag the new photos in and change the text ..Simple !! or so I thought..... I have tried the way that Sledger used in his video tutorial and its really long winded as there are a lot of photos ......and another thing is I have to change the name to "NoHighSlide"..... another job .
Also the pop up photos open and close really slow now whereas before they was faster...
Another problem was that my thumbs did have a border but now they are used as placeholders the new graphic from file has not got a border so none is seen when exported.
I really cant see way Xara renames all the photos coming in ....
If i use it as normal and i change some photos over a period of time the photo will change but the file names will stay the same and the end user will see old photos .
other than going thro all the performance of using a placehold for every photo is there another way to use a lot of changing photos on one page .

Thanks

Mike

**covoxer** · 26 April 2010, 05:39 AM

Originally Posted by mikerawlinson

I really cant see way Xara renames all the photos coming in ....

I guess I was explaining this many times? Ok. Once more. Xara does not rename anything. All the automatically named images are rendered new bitmaps and not renamed old. If you do want to use your own images instead of rendered by Xara you have to use placeholders.
Why don't inherit the name of the bitmap used for the fill? Because there may be a lot of objects using the same raster fill. There may be objects using multiple rasters for the fill. Combinations are unlimited. Thus it is unacceptable approach for general use due to the possibility of file name clashes.

As to slow pop-ups in your case. Since you are using your own images now, Xtreme does not optimize them for the proper resolution. So before you feed the image to Xtreme you have to resize it to the resolution you use on pop-up. If you leave it as 12MP orinal from the camera, it will stay this huge in your site.
This is usual thing for the classical web authoring workflow. If you want to use it, you'll have both advantages and disadvantages implied. But you have a choice with WD.

**ChrisBro** · 26 April 2010, 07:50 AM

Hi Mike

A couple of things for you to think about:

1/ What is the reason for "needing" to name the images? The reason I ask is the only clear benefit from being able to do this is for SEO purposes and getting indexed in google images quicker etc, if the images are to be changed frequently ie anytime within a 4 week period naming the images will have next to no impact on this whatsoever. If this is the case for "ease" you may be better just using the normal new photo pop up's then they are real easy to replace as and when you need to.

2/ If you are really organised and know where the ball is at so to speak you could use the placeholder method easier, after you set the initial placeholders up as John says make sure anu replacement images are the same size then as all you would need to do is click the placeholder, right click, web properties, placeholder, in the replace with image section simply browse to the new image and apply. Although you will not see the result on your design they will be there once uploaded, you should not need to do the nohighslide thing again as this is applied to the placeholder and not the image but test this to make sure.

Hope that helps

Chris

**mikerawlinson** · 26 April 2010, 07:36 PM

Thanks for both your replies..... Its much clearer now .....the only problem is when i use the placeholder I cannot see the image that I am updating so if i wana tweak it or move it within the placeholder frame i cant...

Mike

**ChrisBro** · 26 April 2010, 07:50 PM

Yes that is your problem as I said you would need to be holding the ball and be organised or there is the longer way where you would drag the image in then make it a placeholder but as you said fro regular updates there is a few steps.

As long as you "tweak" the image to the right size before replacing the image file in web properties all should be well, you can still move the placeholder anywhere in your design and the image will follow

hope that helps

Chris

**mikerawlinson** · 26 April 2010, 08:14 PM

Chris ...do you think its worth just risking it without placeholders?

Mike

**ChrisBro** · 27 April 2010, 08:17 AM

Hi Mike

If it were a site I was looking after, considering the frequency the images are going to be changed I would go the non placeholder route then have it all displaying in a very pleasing manner to the client ie the slideshow. As said earlier there is no real plus's to having the images individually named in this case purely due to the frequency of them changing the SE's wont have a chance to index any of them before they are gone.

You can of course name each image within the clideshow and also take advantage fo the alt attribute.

I dont know how you bil your clients, after the initial cost of building the site I bill mine on an hourly basis and from experience they alwasy prefer things to be done as quick as possible, also if you tie too much of your own time up updating this site it cuts down the amount of time you have left to concentrate on new business.

Speed is of the essence

Hope that helps

Chris

**mikerawlinson** · 27 April 2010, 12:53 PM

Thanks for your time to answer Chris ....
This is the site in question.....I uploaded it last night .....its a very simple site to do and they will change the photos whenever they sell a car thats what i thought my problem would be with the refresh issue...
There is no slide show .

www.stadiumcarsales.com

Thanks again.

Mike

**ChrisBro** · 27 April 2010, 01:37 PM

Hi Mike, no problem glad to have been of help

The site looks cool I love your design very impressive

I would definately use the images in the normal way there are a lot there and if they guy has a great week and sells say 5 cars you could find yourself with a bit of a nightmare trying to organise placeholder etc at least with the old way you can just drag and drop away.

ALso the mouse over on the phone icon in the top left hand corner isn't working apart from that its a really nice clean crisp design.

Is the client pleased?

Chris

**mikerawlinson** · 27 April 2010, 04:38 PM

Thanks for your comments Chris....it gives me great hope ..ha ha ha ...
The phone is just a icon with no link....was just to balance out the email icon.

Yes they are pleased .....its only a simple site but does the job they want ....I used placeholders for the graphic behind the photos and car info ...just cut down on the amount of repeating the same object.
its interesting when I look at the index_htm_files to see how many times it duplicates some images ..... I guess that why we should use the placeholder as John was telling me.
XWD is still loads easier than DW .....I been using it for around 6 years and was still only just getting to grips with CSS.....

Anyway thanks again

Mike