My Drupal Blog - Lhmdesign Redesigned! - Comments

Thanks Eric - I guess it

Laurence — Sat, 10 May 2008 11:48:40 -0700

Thanks Eric - I guess it would be wrong to rate myself... ;)

Laurence, Sorry, I must've

Drupal Museum — Sat, 10 May 2008 08:16:14 -0700

Laurence,

Sorry, I must've looked at the image above the background in the "view image information" page of my firefox web developer plugin. Anyway, nice site... I just added it to Drupal Museum.

Hi Eric, thanks for your

Laurence — Fri, 09 May 2008 04:39:18 -0700

Hi Eric, thanks for your comment about the design. However, the background image already is a JPG (and has always been so). I've actually now reduced it in size from its original 180KB (when I launched the new design) to the current 95KBish.

With regards the portfolio images you may have a fair point, although even for these images PNG files are not always larger than the equivalent JPG, and can sometimes have both a smaller file size and better quality.

I guess in both cases it's the old problem of balancing quality vs file size
- I'm still working on that one ;)

I really like the design!

Drupal Museum — Thu, 08 May 2008 07:58:40 -0700

I really like the design! You could make the background image a whole lot smaller if you make it a jpg. Same goes for your portfolio images. Png's are great for gradients but excessively large for what you're using them for. Just a suggestion.

Hi Chad, that's a good point

Laurence — Tue, 06 May 2008 14:43:33 -0700

Hi Chad, that's a good point you make about the right-clicking and opening in a new tab - I'll see if there's a way to resolve it.

I'm not sure why the pages are scrolling slowly for you - they scroll fine for me. If anyone else has this issue please leave a comment.

Thanks.

Hey Laurence, Looks good,

Chad — Tue, 06 May 2008 14:05:10 -0700

Hey Laurence, Looks good, one quick thing.. you can't rightclick "open in new window" on your node title due to flash, a lot of users work in tabs. Also, the pages scroll very slow? Looks good though!

Hi, the sidebar block h2s

Laurence — Tue, 06 May 2008 13:09:15 -0700

Hi, the sidebar block h2s are Helvetica Neue LT Std, 65 Medium, 14 point, with sharp anti-aliasing - try saying that quickly!

Hey Laurence, What approach

Guest — Tue, 06 May 2008 12:20:22 -0700

Hey Laurence, What approach did you take to creating the text images for the sidebar headers? By approach, I mean Font and aliasing. It looks really clean.

Thanks Sebastian, that's

Laurence — Mon, 05 May 2008 03:55:37 -0700

Thanks Sebastian, that's really helpful to know :)

I think I will cut the background image down a little - to at least under 100KB.

Looks great! Only thing I

sDaniel — Mon, 05 May 2008 00:50:44 -0700

Looks great!
Only thing I personally miss is a little more guidance where to look at.
Came to this site via planet drupal the first time and I believe the first thing that leapt to my eye was the white search area - which really looks nice but maybe the focus is on it a little too much ;)

Regarding the speed - just rough tests using firefbug and a broadband connection in Germany:
Time until FF starts rendering: about 4 seconds
Time until page is fully loaded: 6 - 12 seconds
60 requests 355KB

The background alone is 185KB and could be compressed to 35KB in my opinion as it doesn't actually needs to be pin sharp.

Glad you like the design. I

Laurence — Sun, 04 May 2008 15:04:52 -0700

Glad you like the design.

I assume you're referring to the file size of the background image when you say 'too big'.

If other people are having an issue with this as well please let me know - I'm happy to look at reducing the file size, and finding a different balance between file size and quality.

I'd also be interested to know how long it's taking for the image to load on different setups.

It's nice designed (visual),

Drupal Theme Garden — Sun, 04 May 2008 14:03:24 -0700

It's nice designed (visual), but ...
Tooooo big background image !?

Lhmdesign Redesigned!

Laurence — Sun, 04 May 2008 09:18:54 -0700

After a few weeks of tinkering, I am pleased today to launch the newly redesigned Lhmdesign.

I'll be posting a detailed explanation of the site's construction (particularly the theming :) in a couple of days time, so please stick any questions you have about the new site in the comments.

Thanks!