Need advice on how to give advice

[Big Craigie]

Hello usual suspects and not to usual peeps. The local gala-day comittee in
my home town have created a website puely for the Gala-day. This is great as
I don't have to devote as much time to the day on my Whitburn On The Web
site. They also want to put a link to mine in the hope I will add a link to
theirs. I'm more than happy to do so. However, upon looking at the site, I
found it was shocking. Typical newbie effort (I assume he si a newbie) with
animated GIFs all over the place, wrong sized pictures, the picture on the
home page although small in dimension is over 3.5 Mb in size ( as you all
fall over laughing).
I want to help the poor guy but I need to find the right laguage and tact to
advise him of what's wrong. I remember when my site first went on-line. I
got a roasting from many in here but I learned so much.
Anyway the galaday site is at www.whitburngala-day.co.uk
Mine is at www.eh47.freeserve.co.uk

Just to add to the woes, the local West Lothian news site is at
http://www.westlothiannews.co.uk/
Now tell me, have you ever seen such an awful site especially for banner
ads. Shame, as the news content is actually very good.

Big Craigie

[Gazza]

Post by Big Craigie
Typical newbie effort (I assume he si a newbie) with
animated GIFs all over the place, wrong sized pictures, the picture on the
home page although small in dimension is over 3.5 Mb in size ( as you all
fall over laughing).

Ouch.

Post by Big Craigie
I want to help the poor guy but I need to find the right laguage and tact to
advise him of what's wrong.
Anyway the galaday site is at www.whitburngala-day.co.uk

Actions speak louder than words.

Get this guy onto a computer with a 56k (or slower if ya feeling really
cheeky) dialup, and then load the page...then go make a cup of tea,
explain the Theory of Relativity, and then check that the page is
roughly halfway through loading (I'm sure you get my drift...).
I'm on a 750k broadband connection, and it was still painfully slower.

As for the code - get him to bookmark that page. As the title is less
than informative (New Page 1), close the browser, then ask him to find
it within all the other New Page 1's/ Insert Title Here's / Page Title's
etc.

Depending on how long the site has been up, show how you'll probably
need quite specific search terms to find the site in a search engine.
The more general a word that can find a site, the more successful the
site (think general like "books" and Amazon would probably appear
somewhere close to the top).

Oh, and as I've just noticed, get him to look at the site with the
images turned off!! Remind him that this is what a search engine would
see (not strictly true, but he won't need to know any different based on
his current showing of ability). Lovely green background...or not.

The final thing would be to transform just the homepage into an
all-singing, all-dancing, CSS, XHTML, image-light, table-free,
standards-validated, cross-browser-compatible, usable and accessible
page, and then explain to him why his version isn't upto scratch.

Speaking of which, by the time you've done all that, his original page
might have finished loading... ;o)

[Big Craigie]

Post by Gazza

Post by Big Craigie
Typical newbie effort (I assume he si a newbie) with
animated GIFs all over the place, wrong sized pictures, the picture on the
home page although small in dimension is over 3.5 Mb in size ( as you all
fall over laughing).

Ouch.

Post by Big Craigie
I want to help the poor guy but I need to find the right laguage and tact to
advise him of what's wrong.
Anyway the galaday site is at www.whitburngala-day.co.uk

Actions speak louder than words.
Get this guy onto a computer with a 56k (or slower if ya feeling really
cheeky) dialup, and then load the page...then go make a cup of tea,
explain the Theory of Relativity, and then check that the page is
roughly halfway through loading (I'm sure you get my drift...).
I'm on a 750k broadband connection, and it was still painfully slower.
As for the code - get him to bookmark that page. As the title is less
than informative (New Page 1), close the browser, then ask him to find
it within all the other New Page 1's/ Insert Title Here's / Page Title's
etc.
Depending on how long the site has been up, show how you'll probably
need quite specific search terms to find the site in a search engine.
The more general a word that can find a site, the more successful the
site (think general like "books" and Amazon would probably appear
somewhere close to the top).
Oh, and as I've just noticed, get him to look at the site with the
images turned off!! Remind him that this is what a search engine would
see (not strictly true, but he won't need to know any different based on
his current showing of ability). Lovely green background...or not.
The final thing would be to transform just the homepage into an
all-singing, all-dancing, CSS, XHTML, image-light, table-free,
standards-validated, cross-browser-compatible, usable and accessible
page, and then explain to him why his version isn't upto scratch.
Speaking of which, by the time you've done all that, his original page
might have finished loading... ;o)

Cheers Gazza. BTW, I have started working on my music again after a pretty
barren spell, so hopefully it will not be too long before I have something
to report to you regarding Connextion (or however the spelling went)
Back to the above. I might not be able to get the site into an all singin,
all dancin etc etc but I should be abl to get it...well ...better. I grabbed
the main image and resized it properly and got it down to 26K but could go
even lower but don't want too many JPG compression artefacts. I suppose just
about everyone started off this way but most did it on their own personal
sites. This one..to Whitburn...is relitviley importnat (you have to live
here to understand !!!)
BC

[Gazza]

Big Craigie mumbled the following on 01/02/2005 22:13:

<snip Gazza's advice>

Post by Big Craigie
Cheers Gazza. BTW, I have started working on my music again after a pretty
barren spell, so hopefully it will not be too long before I have something
to report to you regarding Connextion (or however the spelling went).

Ah, good news. Not sure if it was my sig that prompted you to think of
it, or just coincidence. I've only recently got around to putting the
content back up online. They're not heavily styled (although there is a
print stylesheet), but, apart from my development area, they do have
their own site now (as you suggested they should many moons ago!).
Actually, it was one the the prisoners (I teach on a prison ship) who
showed me his creative writing, and it reminded / inspired me to get my
works back up, even if I haven't written any more for a long while.

Post by Big Craigie
I grabbed
the main image and resized it properly and got it down to 26K but could go
even lower but don't want too many JPG compression artefacts.

The alternative is to take a screenshot of it at the size it is on the
webpage, then crop it to see if that actually comes out as better
quality than taking the original and resizing it yourself.

Post by Big Craigie
I suppose just
about everyone started off this way

Well I know I did (maybe not quite as bad) - you should have seen my
site just after I discovered javascript!!!

[jake]

Post by Big Craigie
Hello usual suspects and not to usual peeps. The local gala-day comittee in
my home town have created a website puely for the Gala-day. This is great as
I don't have to devote as much time to the day on my Whitburn On The Web
site. They also want to put a link to mine in the hope I will add a link to
theirs. I'm more than happy to do so. However, upon looking at the site, I
found it was shocking. Typical newbie effort (I assume he si a newbie) with
animated GIFs all over the place, wrong sized pictures, the picture on the
home page although small in dimension is over 3.5 Mb in size ( as you all
fall over laughing).
I want to help the poor guy but I need to find the right laguage and tact to
advise him of what's wrong. I remember when my site first went on-line. I
got a roasting from many in here but I learned so much.
Anyway the galaday site is at www.whitburngala-day.co.uk
Mine is at www.eh47.freeserve.co.uk
Just to add to the woes, the local West Lothian news site is at
http://www.westlothiannews.co.uk/
Now tell me, have you ever seen such an awful site especially for banner
ads. Shame, as the news content is actually very good.
Big Craigie

You could tell him that people having to rely on assistive technology
(screen-readers, talking browsers, text-to-braille devices, etc.) will
not be able to get beyond the first page (and will be able to make
little of that page, anyway).

Just suggest that he takes a look at the page with images disabled.


regards.

[Laurence Payne]

Post by jake
You could tell him that people having to rely on assistive technology
(screen-readers, talking browsers, text-to-braille devices, etc.) will
not be able to get beyond the first page (and will be able to make
little of that page, anyway).

That's a good one! The PC card can't fail with a committee :-)

[Matt Bradley]

Post by Big Craigie
Anyway the galaday site is at www.whitburngala-day.co.uk

Blimey...

I imagine that somebody in the galaday committee with modem connection
will hit the site sooner or later. Perhaps you should drop them a line
offering to give them advice (particularly with reference to download
speeds) if they're having any difficulties, and leave it at that until
they come asking ;-)