Web Designer 365 demo site questions...

[hoja]

I have not yet downloaded the demo but just watched / inspected the Charity Demo site. Some quick observations/questions.

@Highslide Plugin: (for Popup-Images) The plugin version that ships with Xara provides no way to output images with
predefined names, which is not acceptable for SEO. This still seems to be the case. Could you modify the code or contact
the Highslide guys? While at it: The visual style of the gallery is nicely customizable overall but the gallery controls and in particular
the pixelated lowres cursors (zoomin.ico/zoomout.ico) look cheap and very dated. I also find these gallery controls not particularly
suitable for usage on mobile devices.

@parallax effects: Nice addition! Are also looping video sequences supported or just static images?

[Acorn]

I have not yet downloaded the demo but just watched / inspected the Charity Demo site. Some quick observations/questions.

@Highslide Plugin: (for Popup-Images) The plugin version that ships with Xara provides no way to output images with
predefined names, which is not acceptable for SEO. This still seems to be the case. Could you modify the code or contact
the Highslide guys? While at it: The visual style of the gallery is nicely customizable overall but the gallery controls and in particular
the pixelated lowres cursors (zoomin.ico/zoomout.ico) look cheap and very dated. I also find these gallery controls not particularly
suitable for usage on mobile devices.

hoja, don't hold your breath on changes to the plugin - this has been a "feature" for years.
As it is a "licensed" plugin, and therefore not anything to do with Xara, I would not expect it to rank high on their To Do list.

I am at a loss to find the actual licence conditions. I expected them to sit in Help > Legal > Acknowledgements.
All I can find is: http://support.xara.com/index.php?/K...se-information.

I wouldn't worry about SEO aspects of not being able to name the images; in my experience (limited), it is not a high ranking issue for good ranking: content, content, content.

Acorn

[hoja]

Thanks for your reply Acorn,

As it is a "licensed" plugin, and therefore not anything to do with Xara, I would not expect it to rank high on their To Do list.

I see this similarly, but this issue should rank higher. If making Highslide fit for todays demands is out of reach for any reason one should rather throw the legacy
3rd party plugin out of the main app and make it loadable on demand.

Creating a sample site for the latest release however, which makes heavy use of HS in a way which looks poor on Desktop and performs badly on Mobile
is not exactly a good idea, if you ask me.

...I wouldn't worry about SEO aspects of not being able to name the images; in my experience (limited), it is not a high ranking issue for good ranking

Apart from big G strongly suggesting spending time on narrative image names I find that anyone who publishes unique artwork online should have a vivid
interest in placing the most important keywords in the file name. There's image metadata too to place such info, including copyright, but a lot of Internet Users
are not aware of this concept. In times where site visitors just grab what they like to republish it somewhere else, on Blogs or Pinterest and such, a narrative
image name helps identifying the source. Additional artwork appearances on high ranking pages such as Pinterest seem to get evaluated by search engines
and there's whole industries which make more use of image search than regular web search.

My personal experience with respect to a Xara exported large site (online since 2012): Named full size background images are ranking fine in image search.
Hundreds of images which all were properly named before they got exported (and auto-named) via Highslide aren't found at all. One can only see the images
if one actually visits the website in question.

Here's btw Highslide portion as it appears in the .htm file for each page:
One can see the proper source file name and the auto-generated file names for thumbnail and extended image. Don't laugh – I have already spent time manually
renaming everything back to something meaningful!

<a href="index_htm_files/8.jpg" class="xr_rn_ highslide" onmouseover="hs.headingText=''" onclick="return hs.expand(this, { headingText: '' } )">
  <img class="xr_rn_ xr_ap" src="index_htm_files/my-awesome-filename.jpg" alt="My cool caption" title="Testtest" onmousemove="xr_mo(this,0,event)" style="left: 182px; top: 167px; width: 396px; height: 182px;"/>

How does the 365 version deal with normal images (not using Lightboxes). Are they finally output with their file name inherited or does one still need to use the
filename="desired output name" workaround for every single image?

[Acorn]

Are they finally output with their file name inherited or does one still need to use the
filename="desired output name" workaround for every single image?

Unless there has been a big change, the latter, I'm afraid.
I am still checking the "Page & Layer Gallery - Object Naming", for which I had high hopes.
Yes, it does what it says but it does not cary across into eith the source filename, the id or the alt text.

Acorn

[hoja]

Unless there has been a big change, the latter, I'm afraid.
I am still checking the "Page & Layer Gallery - Object Naming", for which I had high hopes.
Yes, it does what it says but it does not cary across into eith the source filename, the id or the alt text.

Acorn

Thanks Acorn!
If you're checking 365 anyway could you have a quick peek whether parallax bg video is an option?

[Acorn]

Thanks Acorn!
If you're checking 365 anyway could you have a quick peek whether parallax bg video is an option?

It's not a biggie on my To Do list, but I will check.

Acorn

[Acorn]

It's not a biggie on my To Do list, but I will check.
Acorn

hoja, first look suggests video parallax is possible.
Acorn

[hoja]

hoja, first look suggests video parallax is possible.

Oh, nice! They should have shown this one in a demo site...
Thanks for having a look.

[hoja]

hoja, first look suggests video parallax is possible.Acorn

Hmm, I've just tried setting video to "full width". Seems not to work as placeholder generally may not be "stretchy".

Probably I wasn't clear here: I wanted to use short looping clips at full browser width, without visible playback controls
and have text and other graphics on top, parallax style.