Thread: nav buttons any way to change size

i love the buttons i have on my site but they are very slow to load. i've tried to change their bite size in photoshop - they seem to change but when i go to styles to put them on the site they are not there - when I look in the file they are there - help ann

Which site of yours are you referring to?

Regards

Teri

Originally Posted by asirimarco

i love the buttons i have on my site but they are very slow to load. i've tried to change their bite size in photoshop - they seem to change but when i go to styles to put them on the site they are not there - when I look in the file they are there - help ann

I don't know if this helps but i optimize over 300 different buttons in a couple hours just so I can play with them in BlueVoda using the styles drop-downs of the navbar properties dialog. What I have stuck my self to is the color settings of the originals....
---Go to BlueVoda's Program Folder: C:\Program Files\BlueVoda Website Builder\navbar\.....right click any of the images(navbar)..view properties...
Now click in the middle or left side, either "advanced or simple".

--You sould see the pixel dimensions of the navbar as well as its COLOR DEPTH, etc... and lemme check real quick....

UMMMMM>>.>> i just realized that I have been publishing my pages from BlueVoda 8.0.1.0, but my navbars that have been showing up in the styles are being pulled from the navbar folder of BlueVoda 8.0.0.0 and I somehow overlooked this??? Ok, sorry I have an emergency, i've got some clean up to do

there is a post in the forums on how to add more navbars to BlueVoda so they can be selected using the dropdown styles selction as well as info on the image specs for them....somewhere around here. LOL

gotta jet, so sorry

Hi teri - the www.beadedcustomdesigns.com site - forgot that there were 2 now
Robert - not sure what you were trying to tell me - i have changed their size in photoshop and saved them back to same folder but when i go to styles they arent there?
ann

Ann-
What folder are you putting them into? Also- what format are you saving them as?

Cheers,

Andy

bluevoda>menu bars (these are the ones that come up under styles) saving as gif and as jpg - they are in the folder when i open it and look but not when i got to styles ann

Ann - you need to put them in the navbar folder - if you want them to show up in the nav bar. -

So save them to your c files - blue voda - nav bar

Again thank you Beth - that was one of those DUH moments that i kept repeating and repeating - menu - nav ;menu- nav - what didnt i get? ann

LOL you have to forgive me...I had Photoshop, ImageReady, my scanner, blue voda, ie7 goin with, well...too much at once. I was quick to assume you had simply saved it back to to the same location, same file.

See, I have many of my navbars saved with different dpi's, depths and , color profiles.

Honestly, I do most of this so fast and naturally, It would take me some time to break down what makes them work...I do get alot of "no shows".

There is another post about this same issue...perhaps he put his bars in the menubar folder too, lol

some day i hope to be able to do all of this fast and naturally - now it is slow and agonizing - but i'm learning -i did manage to get it right and reduced their size some but it didnt seem to help with the loading time any suggestions ann

Originally Posted by asirimarco

some day i hope to be able to do all of this fast and naturally - now it is slow and agonizing - but i'm learning -i did manage to get it right and reduced their size some but it didnt seem to help with the loading time any suggestions ann

Ann ... I do not believe it is your nav bar creating the lengthy time for page loading ... it is your photos, they are too large in size (not physically, but most are 100 kbs or more and are taking 10 - 15 secs per pic to load, so you really do need to scale these down in size to somewhere between 15 - 20 kbs per pic) this will help enormously.

The way to do each page so that the nav bar does not take any time to load, (yours seems only to take about 8 secs or so, not a big deal) is to have the nav bar already on your page, set as a template, therefore starting each page with that in the same position, so when a viewing opens that page, it is remains in their cache and does not have to reload again, saving you time for page loading each time again .... but now that would mean redoing all your pages, and I would not say to do that ....
work on your photos ... this will make the difference ....

http://tools.dynamicdrive.com/imageoptimizer/index.php

If you upload a pic to this link, if will show you about 7 options and what the pic will look like and the amount of kbs saved for each ....

I agree with LadyEye - the nav buttons are so small as to not cause a dip in loading time - but pictures have to be optimized to the lowest resolution possible while retaining their quality - because pictures will certainly slow it down.

Ann, all learning processes are slow to start - and have a learning curve - higher for some than others. You are doing great.

on all except the first two pages the nav bar is in an iframe with the title and (trying to be) headline they come up fine - the whole page comes up and the nav buttons are last up - weird - still working on sizing down pictures - didn't seem like so many when i was doinging it at first - i did run them all through pixresizer before putting them on pages, guess now i'll put them in photoshop and "save for web" that will reduce them still more again many thanks will be back ann

Damn not having very much Internet access at the minute! didnt get to answer in time! lol Glad the problem is sorted. Cool site by the way!

Regards

Teri

Originally Posted by asirimarco

on all except the first two pages the nav bar is in an iframe with the title and (trying to be) headline they come up fine - the whole page comes up and the nav buttons are last up - weird - still working on sizing down pictures - didn't seem like so many when i was doinging it at first - i did run them all through pixresizer before putting them on pages, guess now i'll put them in photoshop and "save for web" that will reduce them still more again many thanks will be back ann

Ann ... If the nav bar is the last item you inserted on the page, it will be the last item up .... most pages loaded okay for me, but i think you are going to achieve even greater results doing what you are doing .....

Originally Posted by LadyEye

Ann ... If the nav bar is the last item you inserted on the page, it will be the last item up .... most pages loaded okay for me, but i think you are going to achieve even greater results doing what you are doing .....

Live and learn!! I didnt know that!! lol

Teri

so the fact that the nav buttons and the title and h1 are all in the same iframe and that is the last thing I add to the page, they will always come up last - okay - guess in future when i make a new page the iframe will go on first - still working on the pictures though
ann

You could take the h1 header and place it in the page html- that way, it will come up first. Page properties>Page HTML and then click on the "Begining of Body" tab. Paste your code there.

Then save-close and publish. Now look at your source code. It is at the begining.

Andy

Originally Posted by asirimarco

so the fact that the nav buttons and the title and h1 are all in the same iframe and that is the last thing I add to the page, they will always come up last - okay - guess in future when i make a new page the iframe will go on first - still working on the pictures though
ann

This may be a better way for people to understand how this works...

With BlueVoda, we can layer(overlap) objects, images, shapes,etc...
---If you carefully examine the HTML code for your finished page, you will notice that each element you used for your page....ex: text box, shape, image... has a refference to the "z-index" 0=the BACK, 1,2,3,4, and so on to the FRONT.

When a page is loaded into a visitor's browser, it loads "bottom - up", meaning page background(and page settings), then layer in front of background, then next layer from the previous, and so on.

--The way that I have accustomed myself to design my pages comfortably without having to remember what went where, is to:

1. Place all your elements any way you wish, to your hearts content.
2. With all your elements in place, decide which ones to want to load first..
---select the object, right-click, and choose "Move to Back"
*if you are using a template or image as a background or header...follow those steps first to ensure they are at the very back. What I do is Send my background image to the back, lock it, then go select the next object and simply hit the "-" minus sign until it disappears and bring it back up by hitting the "+" plus sign once. And so on....

=)

----so if you wanted your menu or your iframe to show quicker..have them closer to the back... also, the file size of these elements play a part in how fast they load too.

Interesting note, I have been trying to learn more about how some of these factors(z index, etc...) are applied effectively .... for specific types of visitors:

What if they didn't have a mouse? When the TAB key starts to get a workout, what sequence of elements do I want the selection to follow. Make sense?

I'm not going to argue about using iframes but NO text specific to any page should be in an iframe - you should have a different h1 for every page - never repeat the same one on any pages.

You can paste the h1 codes at beginning of body like Andy stated. Just always check the pages that they appear exactly how you want them.

Hi Beth - oops! - well more changes in store with the headlines - tomorrow is another day
Robert will have to study on what you had to say - i think i am getting in over my head here if the z index is 23 - that means it loads last????
ann