Semiomantics XO 2011 Author Blogs
Semiomantics XO 2011 Author Blogs were the main topic of this month’s extensive and demanding Ycademy Seminar – an appropriate topic for the end of an eventful year of learning and producing on our mutual “Path to Profitability”.
Semiomantics XO 2011 Author Blogs
The new WordPress based Semiomantics XO 2011 Script for the Semiomantics XO 2011 Author Blogs – while keeping its focus on high performance on Search Engines and improved user-friendliness – allows us to focus even more on an image- and media-oriented Web Design.
To this end, we acquired new knowledge for the integration of attractive Flash Components, be it slide shows, galleries or carousels.
Semiomantics Web Design
With my focus on Semiomantics Web Design, my first shot here is – possibly was – to integrate a slideshow featuring a way of introduction to my Web Design Showcase. The idea is that interested parties coming to my Author Blog, namely its Home page, would be attracted by the rotating images and stimulated to click on one or the other, which would lead them to my Showcase.
Accordingly, all 7/7 slides were produced as screenshots in the format to be shown and reduced to minimum weight in Adobe Photoshop.
First hurdle: as I am working with a brilliant poppy-red, reducing these slides is dicy – but it needed a try as the idea is right. Though I was skeptical about the result. However, one never knows without trying…
Then the slideshow was created in the new Wonder tool and turned into a .swf file that was loaded to the flash folder on the server and the code correctly adapted as to its name and size in the header-home.php.
The result made me gasp: it was not what I expected in terms of size – especially after those beautifully smooth slider-filling Greek landscapes -, although not without interest for a possible project in the future. I made a mental note of this and observed the rest…
When it stopped on a black player screen…. as you see on the image here … this was definitely not my intention and needed urgent remedy – but where?
All sizes were correct… what had I overlooked?
Well, it suddenly dawned on me: the Settings in the Wonder Tool had completely drifted out of my mind – and once the size (width/height) had been corrected here and saved (it hopped out in the first round, so this one can be tricky), everything appeared in the correct size and shape – albeit the result did not reflect the quality I had expected and hoped for… nor the sharpness and elegance of the originals on my Semiomantics Evolution.
Interestingly, the screenshots and pictures in Photoshop are absolutely clear… and I had set the quality to 100%/best in the Wonder Tool.
So my conclusion is: probably I reduced the quality too much when saving them for the web. As mentioned, red is not an easy color to work with – we know that. Turning down the quality to optimize them in terms of opening speed for the display leads to bleeding and fuzziness… and it’s most probably the crucial hook here. Hmmm….
So I will try something else. . .
Changing the Look
Changing the look of a website has many unexpected implications that obviously all bear the seed for discovery and invention.
When one finds oneself suddenly with a wide space without the many columns we so much got used to lean on, meaning with the whole page as a playground for content – text and pictures agogo – one has to find other anchors as balance and harmony still lead – at least in my view. Of course, pictures could appear in much larger formats than the 460 px we adopted mainly also in view of syndications… and opening speed of course.
Perhaps there is a possibility to change the inner pages to having columns . . . one day we’ll know!
