I've been doing this for a few years now but I've never had any web master training. Definitely appreciate any feedback and constructive criticism.

Compass North Group

Hello,

It asks for a username and password when visiting the link, thanks,

Took me a few seconds to load your home page. Maybe it was the flash.

Nice site though! Looks great and is clear. Well done!

Lee,

Sorry about that...I was doing some maintenance yesterday and temporarily had the site offline. It is back online...

I downloaded your most recent tutorial on CSS and the free skin that went along with it. I'm really interested in moving to a CSS skin and am not sure if I want to try to tackle it myself or have someone help.

Thanks again for checking out the site and appreciate any feedback.

Terry

Tex,

 

Thanks for the feedback....

Hi,
Nice site! Just a few things:
1. Site is a bit 'heavy' its 634k initial load.
2. Something is not right with header_streachable_bg.jpg.  It's 99k, it should only be about 3k.  You might want to load that up in your graphics editor and re-save it.
3. The strechable left swf seems to have the images embedded, if you want to cut down on the initial page load, you might want to load the image dynamically.  Maybe even combine the 2 swf modules together.
4. I'd replace the favicon, it's still the DNN icon.

Good Luck!
Mike

Mike,

Many thanks for the feedback and suggestions. I'm going to check out the header*.jpg and see if I can reduce the size. I'll need to look further into combining the two swf modules as well.

How would I have the image load dynamically vs being embedded?

Thanks again.

Terry

Mike,

What are you using to measure/determine the bandwidth used in the initial load?'

I resaved the header_streachable_bg.jpg and was able to squeeze it down to 668bites so it's a little smaller..did the same for all the other images as well.

Where do I find the favicon? What is it's purpose?

Thanks again.

Terry

Mike,

Never mind my question about the favicon....got it...I'll have to see what I can come up with..thanks again for the advice.

Terry

Hey Terry,

              I use  MovieClipLoader to load external images. I have had great success with it and highly recommed it. You can also add listners to capture load time and such. Here is a snippet. MovieClipLoader is usable with ActionScript 1.0; Flash Player 7 and up.....

                var loadListenerbject = new Object();
                loadListener.onLoadComplete = function(target_mc:MovieClip, httpStatus:Number):Void  {
                   //Do something because the load is complete.
                };

               var mcLoader:MovieClipLoader = new MovieClipLoader();
                mcLoader.addListener(loadListener);
                mcLoader.loadClip(imgToLoad, movieClipToLoadInTo); 

Later,

Emit

www.dignuke.com

Down to 536kb! I use firefox and the add-on called firebug. It is the ultimate web-developers tool in my opinion!
Thanks,
Mike