Ok, so I downloaded the trial version of VSD. After several hours of trial and error, and much reading of the help menu, I think I'm getting the hang of it! But I do have a few questions.

What I'm not sure of, is when I "preview website", is that what will appear as the actual size of the web page, or is it the size after I "maximize" it?

I started building the page with the dimentions of the window that first appeared, but when I preview and maximize it, I have A LOT of empty space on each side of my screen. (it sure is a pretty red though!)

When I first start the creation, should I maximize the window that opens and build off of THOSE DIMENTIONS?
Thanks, Bill

Hi Bill,
I would recommend that you buid your site to the max, I would also suggest when you start out to make sure that the "centered" box is checked, and all your link colors are set. what a pain afterwards. Also you can manually change the size of your pages-you don't nessesarily have to use the default settings you see in the "Standard Settings" page. just hightlight them and change them. You may still see the spaces on both the left and right sides of your build if your looking thru a 19" screen (1024x768) but you could also do a search here for the sizes that are recommended by other users. I personally use a 19" screen and set up my pages at 800x 1000 but that's my choice, others say make them 900x whatever because customers do not like to scroll left and right but don't mind up and down. however everything is up to how you want it, you da master http://emoticons4u.com/cool/cool37.gif

Thanks Bruzer, I did a search and got the low down on screen size desing. There sure is a lot of things I don't know about this whole web design stuff, but everyone here on CC has been real helpful and I appreciate it.

The posts that I looked at were from 3 and 4 years ago. I'm sure with the advancement in lap tops and desk top monitors since then, most people are using wider screens these days. I'm building the site on my lap top which had a wider screen. If I use a width setting of 1200 it fills my screen quite nicely but if even half the people visiting my site are still using square monitors then they are going to have to scroll side to side aren't they?, which I want to avoid. I hate scrolling sideways too!

I don't suppose there's an "industry standard" that most sites are built at so as to suit most monitor screens? I didn't find anything on that subject in my search. Thanks

I would still take into account people using a screen size 1024x768. Think of the amout of people on laptops that have the 1024x768 screen (there are a lot of them out there). Not to mention people in countries where a 19" may still be too expensive.
From my overview in Google Analytics of my own website I can tell that from all the visitors over the 12 months that a total of 45% are still on the 1024x768 screen standard.
This is the reason why websites are centered and kept within the 1024px margin, so that it is viewed full a 1024x768 screen but on a larger screen it is centered with space on the sides. To avoid a while space on the sides just give it a colour that goes well with the rest of your website.

Hope this helps with your design.

Thank you, yes it helps a great deal.

How about pictures on my site. I'm going to have a good deal of them. The camera I use turns out images that have 8 million pixals each so if I don't re-size them I think it may take forever for them to come up on the pages on my site, and most links on the pages are going to take you to an image(s) with instructional text.

What's a good image size to use? My image editor has a quality setting (image quality) of 1 to 10, an output setting (output resolution) in dpi, (what's dpi?) and a re-size setting, height and width.

I guess what I'm after is a size to use that will work for the average Joe, not just the folks that have ultra high speed download capabilities. Thanks.

I've found that 800x600 images tend to be pretty reasonable in file size, and are still large enough to be enjoyed. DPI is "dots per inch" and if I recall correctly a good web-friendly resolution is 72dpi.

For serving up a lot of images (and batch-resizing them first) have you considered the CoffeeCup PixConverter

http://www.coffeecup.com/pixconverter/

and the Photo Gallery?

http://www.coffeecup.com/photo-gallery/

If you don't already have favorite solutions for those chores they might be helpful.

One of my sites has about 10% of the visitors viewing at 800x600. For that reason, I tend to resize my images to 480x360. That is still large enough to view on my 1200x800 monitor.

First, make sure you are working with a copy of the image. Many times, I have started to work with my only copy, and fortunately I have caught it in time to still have the original unedited.

I would say to play with the image quality and size until you see a setting that if you reduce the quality, the picture degrades enough to notice, and then go back up a quality setting.

It sounds like you have an image editor, but if you are going to be sizing many images, check into doing it via a batch processing feature. Some programs will ask for an output folder, and will save the resized images into a different folder, leaving the large size untouched.

I did a search into my querry about image sizes after I posed my question on this thread and gained some insite to it. It also helped explain the above posts. Now I know why I got the warning that said I was putting something "rather large" onto my site.

My original images were, ready for this?
Output Resolution-350 dpi's
Image Size- 3456 X 2304
Image Quality- Fine
File Size-2582 kb

I have Canon Digital Photo Professional. It came with my camera but until now, I really haven't had a use for it. Guess I better figure that out too.


On an unrelated subject, why can't I use "text" as a "link"? I noticed, rather by accident, that I first have to make a circle, or some such, before the Link Inspector will allow me to use that feature. On the left side of my front page I have a column of words indicating different sections of my site the visitor would want to get to. I would like to just be able to click a word in the column and have that take you to a specific page, but I can't seem to make it do that. Am I missing something?

You should be able to highlight the desired word or phrase and then click the Link button on the top menu of VSD, just like if you had an object highlighted.

Ok here's what I have. A column of about 12 words and/or phrases, each made independently from the other. Only the last phrase in the column allows me to use the link feature. I even tried deleting one of the phrases and then re-writing it but it still won't let me use it as a link. It highlights, with the blue box around it, but when I click the link button and the link inspector appears, it won't let me use it. I tried adding a test word underneath the phrase that works as a link and it won't let me use that one either. I can use the whole body of text on the front page as a link, that it will let me do, just not the words on the left side, except that one?

I'm not seariously worried about it for now since I'm only playing around still getting used to all the features and functions. Maybe I've been playing too much because about a half dozen times so far, sometimes when I click on a blank part of the page, the software "stops working" and needs to close.

I know the link feature works, but why only on that one phrase in the column? Makes me think that I didn't do something right. Any ideas?