xara slide show widget

[behzad]

Hi folks,

Do I have any control as to the size of images in bytes produced with the slide show widget? I always optimize my images outside of xara and then import them into the widget, but not sure if they are re sampled again and made larger?

Also I read somewhere that using progressive jpg's are much better for seo and speed of a website. Is this true?

[Acorn]

behzad, if you are talking about the Xara Slideshow widget then Xara is hosting your images and it will make choices that you may never consider. Xara doesn't know where and how large you want the slider to be so it cannot readily optimise the images. I doubt they are resampled.

Hosting you images in your own site is better for speed and possibly SEO.
Progressive JPEGs are useful when large files or slow download speeds occur.
The main advantage a progressive JPEG offers is early on the height and width are determined so a web page doesn't bounce around. This doesn't happen in a Xara design as all dimensions are explicitly declared.

Acorn

[behzad]

Cool Acorn, I did not know they are hosting the images. Wow, not liking this, I mean how hard would it have been for them to all us to store the images on our servers? Simple code you would think? Sometimes I am amazed as to why they reinvent the wheel.

[behzad]

Also noticed major slow down on getting the images loaded. I think in the near future I may have to use another slider/placeholder.