if you were watching the State of the Union Address (http://www.whitehouse.gov/state-of-the-union-2013) you would have seen graphic supplements that appeared alongside of the video stream of the President that served to illustrate his key points.
The video on the site is a composite of this, but during the live streaming these were handled separately.
My question is: what is the best approach for doing this? especially if one wanted very tight control of the appearance of the graphics (i.e. right when the point is made, not before and not long after).
I'm wondering if any tools exist to facilitate this? I've been scouring google, but I don't think that I have the correct technical vocabulary for what I'm describing because I'm coming up blank.
I imagine AJAX would be a good starting point, but I'm not sure how to achieve the level of control that they had, or how to handle the back end of things.
For anyone who might encounter this challenge we devised two ways to solve it:
The first is a bit mickey mouse: It requires that you know how many images, etc you want to use beforehand (which in most cases you would). We wrote a script to repeatedly request an image and inserts it into the page, and on finding an image then request the next image in the chain.
Ie. Display default image -> request image 1
then, displaying image 1 -> request image 2
etc
From your end you can simply drop the images into a folder on your server when you are ready for them to go in. An advantage of this is that the images can be interactive, with links to other content, etc.
The big disadvantage, of course, is a lot of unnecessary requests to your page. In our case we anticipated enough traffic that it didn't seem wise. Also, there are plenty of opportunities for mistakes and depending how frequently your timer fires there are likely to be timing discrepancies.
The Second costs money: we found the program Ustream (http://www.ustream.tv/producer) which allows us all the image control we require in terms of timing with the advantage of providing support for media clips etc. And it allows you to record everything streamed.
The disadvantage is that what the user sees is an integrated video on your site, so that you have to handle links to related content and provide images (if you want your users to have access to them) separately.
Hope this comes in handy for someone
I would still welcome any suggestions on how to make the first method more effective
Related
I am new to coding and wanted to get some hands on practice with a project I have in mind. Here it is:
Let's say you have blank page and on the side of a screen you have several items you can choose to draw on the blank page. For example the background can be mountains, the ocean, a forest etc. On top of that you can place a house, a church or another selectable element. Whatever you like.
It is like a picture editor where you can put together a picture with different pre-given elements. Or like in video games where you can create your own character.
What would I need to build a web application for that kind of thing?
This link should get you started but it won't be the complete answer to your question - http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2013/08/how-to-use-html5s-drag-and-drop/
Essentially, you can achieve your image dragging and dropping using similar techniques. It will require a bit of Spike work from yourself, and looking into how HTML5 can handle drag and drop. I discovered this resource fairly quickly and I think the solution you want isn't as complicated as you may think, it just requires a bit of know-how regarding drag and drop operations within HTML5 :-)
Also, there may already be some JavaScript based API's that do this sort of thing easier but I'm not too aware - I suppose starting this way could be a great introduction for you and you may wish to expand once you've done some work for it :-)
Hope this helps you and your coding journey!
My website for architectural visualization: http://www.greenshell3d.com
I noticed on the networking tab / incognito it takes 15 seconds or so to load the above-the-fold content. (most notably the image slideshow.)
Some of the images in the slideshow load at the very end instead of the beginning of the website load process. Now I understand the browser handles this order, but perhaps there is another way. As it stands, the bounce-rate is too high and I expect it is because of load time.
I've seen a jquery snippet on github that allows one to control the order of image loads - do you think this is a good option? I'd be glad to hear any opinions before investing the time to fix this.
Any ideas? Thanks!
You said you are interested in any opinions as well, so first some general thoughts: There is no page fold. The web that we produce content for exists in so many different screen sizes + resolutions that it’s impossible to say "The fold is below this big image!". Yes, Google changed the pagespeed insights tool to make people load stuff on top of the page first, but I think their wording there is really bad.
Now to your image loading issue:
The first thing I would recommend is to reduce the size of all the images. They seem to be around 280 - 300 kb per image and you have a few of them. Since there is a translucent overlay over them anyways you can probably get away with reducing the image quality without people noticing it (because they don’t see the image directly). Play around with the values here.
I would then look into optimizing the code for the slider to load the first image first, then the rest of the page and the other images asynchronously maybe after that. Another trick could be to increase the slide fade time from the first slide to other slides so the slider doesn’t change if the next image isn’t ready yet. You said you found a jQuery script to implement that, that’s where I’d start.
As a general guideline: the position of requests in the source code usually determines the load order of things on the page. If your images are requested by JavaScript at the end of the page, that lead to the images being loaded later than you want them to be loaded.
I'm building an art gallery website that updates its images via AJAX, for those who have javascript enabled, rather than request multiple page loads. I assume this will appear as though my site has a high bounce percentage. I understand that search engines will not be able to index dynamic content, but will such a misinterpreted bounce rate hurt my search engine ratings, even if I have many return visitors?
Short answer, no.
Bounce rate is (if even relevant here) is the least of your problems. Worry more about the content on the page. The search engines are much better at reading dynamic content than they used to be.
If your site is 100% dynamic ajax... you might have problems. IF it's just a gallery, you'll be fine IMO. Use nice titles on pages, text on pages, alt tags etc... give the spiders lots to read.
it actually may have good bounce rate via ajax which do not normally counted by normal anlaytics ( google or whatever) systems. bounce rate is normally indicator of user activity on your site and does not depend on how much time the url changed.
I use GWT on my penwag.com website, and for some time used the approach where it was nearly 100% AJAX. I did a revamp not too long ago (see http://penwag.blogspot.com/2010/04/april-penwag-update.html) basically to change who's in the driver's seat. Now, The basic navigation is controlled by HTML, there's a lot more HTML content than there used to be. This helps in a number of ways. First, search engines have more to work with. Second, the navigation is simpler. Third, separation of concerns is easier to achieve, since each page is its own module. Fourth, integration with third-party tools is more seamless. Things that specifically affected penwag.com were Google Ads integration and Google Friend Connect integration. This is probably true of most gadgets out there: they're designed to be embedded in HTML, and embedding them into a GWT component is harder.
Some of what I said here is specific to GWT, but a lot of it is true whatever AJAX framework you're using.
I'm creating a web crawling application that I want the 'average' user to be able to use. I'm concerned that a web crawling application is probably just too complex for most users though because users need to:
Understand URL structure (domain, path, etc...).
Understand crawling 'depth'.
Understand file extensions and be able to setup 'filters' to narrow their crawling to achieve better performance (or they'll be frustrated with the program).
Understand where URLs are found in pages (image srcs, links, plain text URLs, etc...).
What can I do to help users get quickly acquainted with my program? Or even better, what can I do so the program is intuitive enough that users just 'get it'? I know this seems pretty broad, but if you can confine your answers to web crawlers that should help. I've read up on general usability, ui design, etc... but I'm struggling with the domain I'm working in. Thanks.
Just because a web crawler is complex in implementation, doesn't mean it has to be complex to use. Only offer what is really necessary, use sensible defaults for the rest. That will get you 80% of use cases, and then rely on the other 20% being more willing for have a deeper understanding.
Why should they have to understand this? Depends on the expected usage, but I would of assumed most uses where crawling a full website, so only the domain is needed.
Gert G's suggestion of a slider with extending folder structure was a good one. This doesn't have to be dynamic with the site in question, just an illustration of what it means.
Forget exposing file extensions, instead offer common types of file with icons, possibly even grouping them (e.g. all common image types, jpg, png, gif, go into one 'images' type). Only give raw file extension settings under an advanced config section, those that need it will understand it.
I don't really see why they need to understand this? Surely that's a job for the crawler.
Some ideas:
Make an interactive user interface (e.g. a slider for depth, which shows a small picture of folders and subfolders opening as they move the slider)
Avoid clutter. Divide the settings into logical tabs.
Make video tutorials for the things you need to teach them.
Perhaps you could have a picture of "the web" showing two or three pages each from two or three websites. As the user selected where to find links (for example, images, plain text, links, etc), the parts of the page they selected would be highligted in the images.
I'm going to be going to be meeting with a number of programmers and custom software companies to get bids on creating a website for a company that I'm involved with. My question is this: What should I prepare for the programmers so that they can give me an accurate bid, timetable, etc. for the development of the website? I have a clear picture of how I would like the site to work and the features that I would like to have included.
I'd suggest using something like balsamiq to put some simple sketches together as suggested elsewhere.
Quite often the act of putting your requirements down on paper in a way that represents the actual site will flush out all manner of issues you hadn't considered before, and will give you a much clearer understanding of what you're after.
Also consider the sources of the data you're displaying. From a functional spec aspect, simply saying something like 'show this figure here' is easy. From a programming point of view, coming up with the figure in the first place is often the hard bit.
The best you can do is to put the end-user's hat on and describe what you'd like the system to look like / work.
Imagine all pages and create a new frame for each one. Make as many annotations as you can so all bidders know exactly what you are expecting.
I'd also add at the end if it's likely the site's requirements to change during development, so everybody's warned in advance.
Details Details Details.
You might think you have a clear picture, you don't. You need to write every single step down no matter how trivial. You will see there are things you haven't thought of.
Try to write down as much information as you can think of. Go through all the scenarios a user would when using your site. Use steps such as
1) User clicks on Buy Button
2) Screen shows up with 4 items, Link to details, price, quantity and a 32x32 thumbnail.
2a) If User clicks on thumbnail full resolution image i s displayed
etc etc.
Don't try to gloss over the "simple" stuff and you will get the most accurate bid possible!
Basically draw out what you want (ie textboxes, drop down lists, controls, etc) in very simple manner. Then add little numbers around each area that has some functionality. In the margins or on another sheet, describe each point you numbered on the controls with simple instructions on how that functionality should work.
Think of it as a skeleton to describe the application you want.
Not a complete list, but here a couple of thoughts:
Do not forget the back button.
Back button behaviour is an issue on every site I've ever worked on. Specify exactly what you want to happen on every page if the user gets to that page by hitting the back button. Often it's easy, but sometimes it is not at all trivial.
Security:
Do people need to log on, how, how do you create accounts, reset passwords etc. What pages need you to be logged on, what happens if you hit those pages without being logged on.
You could read Joel Spolsky's Painless Functional Specifications for ideas, but I've just tried to summarise what that means for web software too.
I usually do this in 3 stages:
a list of contents, under the headings they'll appear on the site. Get this firmly agreed by all parties before doing any wireframes;
a greyscale functional wireframe in plain HTML/CSS, using examples of real-world content and dummy static pages for dymanic content, with everything where it should be. This is the first thing programmers want to see;
a purely visual graphic mockup of each type of page - this is the next thing programmers like to see, as in 'show me how you want it to look and I'll make it happen'.