My friend Carl agreed to test out my new improved pages. He has a “tablet” of some sort (non-iPad) as well as a hard-wired networked computer. The latter seems to behave just like my Dell Laptop but the tablet seemed to take forever to load. Perhaps the wireless-ness of the network connection was part of the problem, but my goal is to have the pages work well for anyone, regardless of the degree of state-of-the-art they represent. As I went back to the graphics (pictures) that I added at the top, I was going to reduce the JPEG quality to “low” to reduce the file size, but I discovered Photoshop has a choice to save pictures “for the web.” The result is a GIF format file. Photoshop brings up a set of choices for the number of colors (256, 128…4, 2, 1) as well as the degree of dither (down from 100%). The number of colors can be reduced while you look at the picture that results and you can see how far to go. I could easily go to 128, but 64 started to go bad for one of the pictures. Dither has to do with how much gradation of color is in the picture. In one case I could only go a little way down before the background started to look like bands of color–a sort of contour map. The general reduction of the file size went from about 150k bytes down to about 36kbytes–better than a 75% reduction.
Also it appears that the tablet shoves the widgets (the information that is to be on the right side of the screen) down to the bottom, making them very inconvenient to reach and use to navigate. So I have revised the menus so much of the information can be reached from there, at the top.
Those of you with older equipment (or phones or othere unusual devices) please let me know how I am doing.
Thanks. I am just stumbling along too. I’ve only been at this for less than a month. Word of mouth is the best!