My only OSC store -- criticism welcome!

[jpweber]

My site is already being spidered by googlebot, yahoo!, and MSN, but it's never too late to change.

 

I have some weaknesses that I'm aware of, such as how to deal with multiple product attributes in my lenses category -- Master Products was too difficult to integrate, and I don't feel it met my needs. Regardless, I do a lot of answering on here in the forums, but not a lot of asking, so I'd appreciate any constructive criticism anyone could offer regarding any aspect of my website.

 

Special thanks to Monika, the kindest person who really took the time to help me out when I really needed it in my infantry stages of OSC, to Jackmcs, who has always answered a diffciult question when nobody else would, and to all the makers of the wonderful contributions on OSC, which makes OSC as great as it is.

 

Okay! Fire away -- let me have it! Thanks to all (in advance) for any advice you can offer.

 

The Vision Depot

http://www.thevisiondepot.com

[Guest]

My only critism is that you definately need a image thumbnailer installed, your product_listings take a while to load as the images are quite large.

[jpweber]

Thank you Stu! I honestly was thinking the same thing. I just installed Image Magic On The Fly Thumbnails and although I'm not 100% sure it's working properly, I believe it is, and I appreciate your input!

[Guest]

Hi again, unsure its working, when I check this page:

http://www.thevisiondepot.com/machine-visi...ras-c-1_25.html

 

Your three thumbnails are:

363Kb, 196Kb and 243Kb for an image size of 100 x 80 pixels those files sizes are massive, bearing in mind on a 56K dial up modem, those download times will be huge, I would suggest trying this contrib instead:

http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contributions,2226

[♥Monika in Germany]

wow what a difference ... I'm very proud of you Jason.

 

2 little things:

1) in my browser, the top bar images are not correctly spaced (images are same height, so they should all align at top, and it seems width is not same either)

 

2) the right column infoboxes seem to be a bit wider on the right side

 

good job!!!

[jpweber]

Hi Stu. All taken care of. I had better luck with on-the-fly auto thumbnails than I did image magic. Great suggestion, thank you -- all set. Faster loading times.

 

Hi Monika! Thanks for the compliment(s), and for all your help throughout my "young OSC years". I'll work on that darn right column. The top category header images are part of the category-banner contribution, and they're spaced out based on text characters in the category description. So I'll have to adjust that in order to get it to space perfectly evenly on all browsers, but thanks for pointing that out, Monika.

 

I'm still stuck on the Lenses -- have multiple product attributes that I'm still not yet sure how to handle. I'm still open to many suggestions -- any more would be welcome! Thanks all!

[Guest]

Your three thumbnails are:

363Kb, 196Kb and 243Kb for an image size of 100 x 80 pixels those files sizes are massive, bearing in mind on a 56K dial up modem, those download times will be huge

 

Much better:

 

File sizes are now reduced from

 

363Kb to 6Kb

196Kb to 7Kb

243Kb to 6Kb

 

:)

[Guest]

Your 6 images at the top are not space out equally, I would use

 

<td valign="center" align="center" class="main" width="17%">

 

for each of the 6 <td>'s in the table spacing

 

e.g.

 

<table border="0" width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
<tr class="boxText">
<td valign="center" align="center" class="main" width="17%"><a href="http://www.thevisiondepot.com/machine-vision-system-mounts-c-1.html"><img src="images/cat_mount.jpg" width="90" height="63" border="0" alt="Machine Vision Mounts" title="Machine Vision Mounts"><br><b>Machine Vision<br>
  Mounts</b></a></td><td valign="center" align="center" class="main" width="17%"><a href="http://www.thevisiondepot.com/machine-vision-system-fixtures-c-2.html"><img src="images/cat_fix.jpg" width="90" height="63" border="0" alt="Machine Vision System Fixtures" title="Machine Vision System Fixtures"><br><b>Machine Vision<br>
  System Fixtures</b></a></td><td valign="center" align="center" class="main" width="17%"><a href="http://www.thevisiondepot.com/machine-vision-camera-enclosures-c-21.html"><img src="images/cat_enc.jpg" width="90" height="63" border="0" alt="Machine Vision Camera Enclosures" title="Machine Vision Camera Enclosures"><br><b>Machine Vision<br>
  Camera Enclosures</b></a></td><td valign="center" align="center" class="main" width="17%"><a href="http://www.thevisiondepot.com/machine-vision-industrial-bracket-kits-c-3.html"><img src="images/cat_brk.jpg" width="90" height="63" border="0" alt="Machine Vision Bracket Kits" title="Machine Vision Bracket Kits"><br><b>Machine Vision<br>
  Bracket Kits</b></a></td><td valign="center" align="center" class="main" width="17%"><a href="http://www.thevisiondepot.com/machine-vision-system-lighting-c-38.html"><img src="images/cat_lts.jpg" width="90" height="63" border="0" alt="Machine Vision Lighting" title="Machine Vision Lighting"><br><b>Machine Vision<br>
  Lighting</b></a></td><td valign="center" align="center" class="main" width="17%"><a href="http://www.thevisiondepot.com/machine-vision-system-lenses-c-22.html"><img src="images/cat_lens.jpg" width="90" height="63" border="0" alt="Machine Vision Lenses" title="Machine Vision Lenses"><br><b>Machine Vision<br>
  Lenses</b></a></td></tr>
</table>

[Guest]

Argh just read post 6, could you not add a <td width="17%"> to the contrib used for creating the header