Page Background 'Shimmer' Upon Initial Page Display

**Technoir Design** · 08 February 2011, 07:02 AM

Hi All,
I'm working on a site for a client at present and have noticed something I haven't come across before. So, I'm wondering if anybody else has seen this and has come up with a solution or can at least shed some light upon why this is happening.

Upon first display of any given page the page background appears to 'shimmer' - by that I mean it appears to shift position a little (right to left) and then settles in place. It's only visible upon initial display in the browser, subsequent views of the page do not demonstrate this behaviour. I mainly use Frefox but have seen the same effects in Google Chrome and IE too.

A custom page size of 990x585 pixels has been used. The background image is exactly that size and having been through the whole site, I believe I have corrected any instances where page elements were extending outside the page area. So, I believe it must be the background...

Furthermore, I have used exactly the same approach on other sites and yet never seen this happen before. Hence, my bewilderment.

You can view a demo of the site here.

It's not a huge problem but it's really starting to bug me. My client hasn't mentioned it thus far but that could change.

Any and all suggestions will be gratefully received.

Just in case somebody spots it, I am aware that the navigation rollover for the 'Contact Us' page is misbehaving and that's something I will need to address. It appears within the WD6 internal browser but not when published. Doh!

Very Best Regards

TD

**pauland** · 08 February 2011, 10:00 AM

I've looked at the site through three browsers and see no sign of "shimmer". The only thing that I can think of is that if your web connection is slow, then the graphics will take time to load - the graphics can certainly benefit from optimising for download speed. The background image alone is 292K and it's possibly the cause of your "shimmer".

**Technoir Design** · 09 February 2011, 04:07 PM

Hi Pauland,
thanks for your reply. I have lightened the background image considerably now and retested at a variety of different times of the day. I still see the effect but it is not consistent in it's behaviour, even on initial page display, so maybe there is an element of internet delivery going on. I just can't fathom it...

The odd thing is that I've had the same connection speed whilst working on other projects and never seen this before.

Appreciate your time & effort in responding.

Best Regards

TD

**pauland** · 09 February 2011, 05:37 PM

That's better - now 75K, but if you used a repeating background you could make that 15K (as a single vertical strip repeated horizontally). Some of your smaller images are 30K+ in size when for the size of image about 10K should be enough and some of the pop-up images on the site are over 300K when they could probably be ten times smaller.

There is plenty of scope for image optimisation without compromising your site quality. This will help your loading immensely.

[Edit: In fairness, I can see that you have optimised a lot of thumbnails, so it may be a work in progress. The strip of images on the home page has some images that are twice the size of their neighbour but are the same size]

**jimhanus** · 09 February 2011, 06:55 PM

I do see it some pages and not on others, but only the first time the page loads. I'm guessing it has to do with the background file size/repeating background.

Jim

**Technoir Design** · 13 February 2011, 01:38 PM

Hi Pauland & Jimhanus,
thanks for your replies.

Jimhanus, I'm glad you've spotted the same effect - it proves I'm not imagining things - and yes, it's not on every page. The wierd thing is it doesn't seem to be repeatable on any particular page.

I'll try and optimise pages further. I'm using the default image optimistaion in WD6 but maybe that's not sufficent. I could treat all images in Photoshop and "Save For Web" but I was hoping not to have to do that.

Can either of you suggest the best settings for WD6 image optimisation? That would be a great start point.

Many Thanks for your continued assistance and Very Best Regards

TD

**pauland** · 14 February 2011, 12:09 AM

Hi, I went through the website with a cleared cache and didn't see anything resembling a "shimmer". Some pages take a bit longer to load than others and you can see the page images poping into place.

I've attached a list of the largest images on the website..

Paul

**Technoir Design** · 14 February 2011, 03:43 AM

Thanks for the info Pauland. I'll go through these later today and see about 'lightening' these particular images. Really appreciate your help!

Very Best Regards

TD