Fading slideshow with rounded corners

Legacy ActionsDev
21

Well, now that you’ve published this in More Readable format, I can
see why the corners aren’t curling.

Change the hand-coded CSS to this:

#Frontpanel1, #Frontpanel1 div, #Frontpanel1 img { ...your corner

styles … }

The Action appears to be creating a set of nested DIVs, and all of
them have to be curved in order for the effect to work. So the second
part of the selector (which means all divs that are a child of the
item with the ID Frontpanel1) will match those nested DIVs, too.

As far as contacting the developer, I think it would be a good idea to
mention to the developer of the fading slideshow that their preload
doesn’t appear to work. Each image is preloaded (which makes for a
huge blast of memory use and a very slow page load) and then loaded a
second time from the server when the image is first shown (doubling
the memory footprint for the page).

Walter

On Jan 27, 2011, at 3:02 PM, tonzodehoo wrote:

I’ve made the changes you suggest i.e saved and loaded as jpegs. No
change to the corners.
Is it worth me dropping a note to the Action developer at all?

actionsdev mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options

22

the client likes it.

There was a time when “clients” liked flashing text and animated gifs all over the place - the trade off you always have to make is one of form over functionality.

No point in the client having a site that they like the look of if it doesn’t work for the visitors.

Visitors are very fickle - you get one shot at them and then they are gone - never to return.

D

actionsdev mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options

23

Thank you both for your contributions and the benefit of your vast experience, honestly I really appreciate it.

I made the change to the handcoding and indeed the corners initially appear curved but then the square corners return.
I’m not too knowledgeable about DIV’s and how to deal with the nested ones you mention. Is this something I can code in or is it more to do with the code in the Action itself?

I shall be cutting the number of photographs soon. There won’t be as many once the client decides which they prefer.
I didn’t really think that it was such a busy design. The drop down menu and the fading slideshow were the only real bits of activity/motion. The wee swinger at the top I didn’t think was too much.

Thanks again.

actionsdev mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options

24

Just lest it is lost amidst the other entries here, is there another script you know of which can achieve the same effect plus give the curved corners?

Cheers for now.

actionsdev mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options

25

The easiest way to do this is to round all the corners of your images,
either in Freeway or Photoshop. This will give you an opportunity to
really work the angles of compressing them, too. And it will work for
IE, unlike the CSS3 trick.

Walter

On Jan 28, 2011, at 9:12 AM, tonzodehoo wrote:

Just lest it is lost amidst the other entries here, is there another
script you know of which can achieve the same effect plus give the
curved corners?

Cheers for now.

actionsdev mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options

actionsdev mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options

26

Is it possible to round the corners in Freeway other than with the box shape?

I’ve compressed the images down and the largest is about 250Kb. My broadband connection is not that great but it seems to load quicker over my connection than sites like the BBC.

With your suggestions I reckon it is running a lot quicker and smoother. What do you think?

The idea of the big splash of photos on the homepage is to act as a big friendly shop window to the services which can be found via the menus.

Thanks again.

actionsdev mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options

27

On Jan 28, 2011, at 9:44 AM, tonzodehoo wrote:

Is it possible to round the corners in Freeway other than with the
box shape?

That is the one way I know of in Freeway. If you set up a scratch page
in your document, with each of the photos placed and corners rounded,
you can export them from there in their compressed form, then bring
them back into your home page as pass-through images. They will retain
their curved corners, and all will be well in all browsers.

If you do it in Photoshop, I would drag all of the individual photos
into one PSD file (as separate layers) and use the rounded-rectangle
tool to draw a mask layer with your desired corners. Move that layer
all the way to the bottom of the stack, and then option-click the
boundary between that layer and the next, and so on, so that all of
the photo layers are “clipped” to the rounded rectangle. Then use Save
for Web to export the top photo, then switch off its visibility,
export the next layer down, etc. until you’re done. Again, bring the
images back into your home page as pass-through images, so you don’t
introduce any double-compression artifacts.

(Fun fact: if you compress a JPEG image over enough times, like
running it through a copier and then copying the copy…, you will
actually end up with a larger file in the long run. All of that JPEG
crawly-edges crud looks like detail to the JPEG algorithm, so it tries
to sharpen and enhance it as it saves, compounding the issue and
reducing the number of smooth areas in the photo that JPEG does such a
brilliant job of compressing.)

I’ve compressed the images down and the largest is about 250Kb. My
broadband connection is not that great but it seems to load quicker
over my connection than sites like the BBC.

That’s really great. If you’re going to do a fair comparison of
download speed, though, you might want to compare with a page that
doesn’t have a server-side application running to assemble the latest
news in response to your click. Even on the Beeb’s speedy servers,
that process does take some time.

With your suggestions I reckon it is running a lot quicker and
smoother. What do you think?

The idea of the big splash of photos on the homepage is to act as a
big friendly shop window to the services which can be found via the
menus.

I think it looks good, I think it will perform much better once you
and your client weed the number of photos down to 3 - 4 total. Explain
that you’ve put that many photos up because “they were all so good, I
had trouble choosing” and then assert your professional authority that
more ≠ better.

Cheers,

Walter

Thanks again.

actionsdev mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options

actionsdev mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options