Why why why??

[Guy3am]

Why can some customer see the images on the site and others can't see any???

I am getting more and more people phoning up saying they can't see any images on the website. The images are there, the links and the paths are there.

Actinics Knowledge base gives a responce of;

"If the problem is limited to a few visitors then the problem is probably related to the browser that they are using.."

I can't run my business based on probably's. I've built websites before and never had problems with customers viewing images, what is wrong with Actinic??

Can anyone help? Please.

Thanks

Guy

www.housecuts.com

[fergusw]

Guy,
Could you be a bit more specific about which images you/they cannot see?
A quick look at your site shows me all images that are supposed to be there as I cannot see any broken image links etc.
CLicking on the HOUSE NEWS, CONNECTED images on the front page however does take you to an empty section page so maybe that is what people are referring to.
I clicked on these images and went through to empty pages before trying the side menu navigation.

[Guy3am]

Hi,

The poeple who can't see the images have explained they can't see any images at all. None of the header images, products images, titles or anything.

I also sent out a HTML email today to my mailling list through "Sign Up To", which is an email sollutions company and the same people who can't see images on the website also can't see images on the email. Interestingly Sign Up To load the images onto their server so the images on the email don't come from Actinics or housecuts.com and they still don't appear.

This makes me suspect that the browser or the filewall, of the people who can't see images on the web or the email, is stopping the images appearing for some reason?

the images are small in kb, are jpegs and tiffs, are name correctly, I can't understand what is wrong with them that is topping them from showing???

[garyhay]

Yes I agree with the above.

You dont have products in a lot of sections and it took me a lot of clicks to fine anything.

Either hide the sections until they have products or say in the section description that that section is empty.

You also have two different Primary Templates in use as sometimes I see only the top level sections and sometimes I see the sub sections also.

[garyhay]

are jpegs and tiffs,

That will be problem. It's best to use .jpg or .gif as those others are not always supported.

they are .jpg files.

[Guy3am]

The site is split into 3 areas;

Firstly, the front end of the site if 'gas' which is to be a music magazine to be launched in May, which is why there is no content there yet.

The second part of the site is for 3am recordings which is the label part of the site. Customers and subscribers are directed to this section via www.3amrecordings.com and enter via that point

The third part is for housecuts.com which is the store which has yet to be launched or populated.

I know its messy with three sections but its a temporary fix untilI can get a second license for Actinics and allow the 3am recordings site to stand alone.

I still don't understand the lack of images thing. The first page people view when they enter via 3amrecordings.com is made up of just jpegs and its still problematic with some people not being able to view images.

Is there anything else with the images that could prevent them from laoding on some peoples browsers??

[garyhay]

Is there anything else with the images that could prevent them from laoding on some peoples browsers??

EDITED

The splash page is Flash so that will have it's own problems.

The images took an age to load on my 1Mb connection

Whos is your hosting company as I cannot ping the server and get a reply

[Guy3am]

Hosted by Fasthosts on Linux server.

What's pinging ther server?

I've receive the images from mr graphic designer, most of the headers are small in kb size when I receive them, some of the product images are alot bigger when I get them.

I currently edit the dimesions and stuff in Paint

The size of the image shoudn't stop in loading completely though, should it? It would just slow it down, not prevent loading completely on some browsers.

Could it be a Problem with Paint.

I've just downloaded Fireworks to reduce the size of the images and standardise them into jpegs,

[garyhay]

The graphics dont seem that bad in size but the page took an age to load.

PING is a command you can use to see how quickly a server responds.

I guess it could be fasthosts problem. Have a search for them in this forum.

[BeerHunter]

I was able to see all images without any problem. I check several areas. Page loaded fast but I'm on an E10 connection. BTW - I'm using Internet Explorer.

[Guy3am]

Thanks Gary and Lonnie,

I looked under Fasthots but all of the threads tend to be about connections and configurations..

and I don't think it's a Fasthosts problem because the images wouldn't load for the same people on the website but also wouldn't load on the HTML email where the images were through Sign-Up-To's server. That would indicate to me that the customers who can't see the images have browsers or firewalls or antivirus softwares that have for some reason taken a disliking to my images, and not just some of my images but all of them??? I'm guesiing it's an image problem???

I'm stumped, someone give me a clue!

[Mike Hughes]

You can't really expect people who can't see the problem to work out what it is. It sounds like one of two things:

1. The links to the images are broken (in which case they should see an image box and a little red x), but this should be the same for everyone so it doesn't really sound like this.

or

2. The page isn't loading because the images are so large and the server/ vistors connection is too slow. (in emails this can also happen if they're not logged on when viewing the email or the loading of images is disabled to stop spammers finding genuine email addresses).

(Here's a tip. Text and Computer graphics, particularly those using few colours should be produced as GIFs not JPEGs. You can run the number of colours used right down and they'll end up tiny in size).

This might help you diagnose the problem, but in order to be sure you have to be able to recreate it. That means finding someone who has the problem and getting them to help you pin-point it to a specific area that you can then fix.

Mike

[B_Online]

I can see all your images, how many customers are not seeing the images, ask them which images they cannot see, and post the link on here, it would be sorted far quicker and save you pulling your hair out.

Is it the same customers all the time that are unable to view your images, if so ask them to empty their cache and try again?

[johking]

Hi

I wonder if it could be something to do with excessively long filenames...

Your banners are titled things like "GasMagTitleheader1024".

I'm pretty sure I've read somewhere that that can affect whether images are seen (is it on Macs?)

Worth a try changing them to short names - you don't need anything after the gasmag bit.

And BTW I would re-iterate what Mike said above - images with strong blocks of colour like all your headers should be saved as optimised gifs (fireworks is perfect for that) eg choose 8 colours or whatever - change the number of colours to the lowest possible number where you can't see any deterioration of the image. A B&W header like the Gas one can get really tiny that way. Also jpgs is a lossy format which means you lose quality every time you save them.

HTH

Jo

[johking]

Or alternatively it could be because you are using words like titleheader in the image filenames. It's likely that security programs block those kind of words. Norton Internet Security 2004 shipped with adblocker enabled by default - could they be blocking your images for people?

I would definitely try changing one image filename:
(1) Shorter
(2) Remove generic terms like titleheader
(3) Change capitals to lower case in filename and extension

Then send the URL to someone who can't see the images - remember to get them to Shift-Refresh the page so they don't see the cached copy.

If that works, you can sort all the images.

Jo