How many images is too many?

[mlegg]

I am working on a special website for a $9 million dollar property. It's an island with a home on it. I have about 70 high resolution images taken by a professional photographer on the island and mansion on it.

I will be making a Flash slideshow and also have a link to a non Flash image gallery.

thanks,
Mike

if this is the wrong forum for this question please move it.

[jscheuer1]

If the Flash slideshow does an incremental preload it might not be too bad. Even at that, for flash how much resolution do you need? The more bytes you can trim, the more smoothly everything will go. If the property is as expensive as you say, the market would be for/to folks with higher end equipment and higher connection speeds. However, it's inevitable that someone with poorer equipment and/or connection might have a legitimate reason to view the site. With 70 images on one page for a gallery - it's not the resolution so much as the byte load. Consider a gallery of thumbnails that only load and show the larger image when clicked. Image Thumbnail Viewer II can be configured to do that. Others probably can as well or be made to.

But in the end only so much resolution is useful over the web. If you have huge images with a lot of byte load, these can be made into smaller images with less byte load. You don't want to crush them, but they could probably be brought down to 40 - 80 K each without stepping on them too much. Then make thumbnails of those for the non-flash gallery. The full image could be available via clicking on the 40 - 80 K version, but I would think a notice as to how many bytes they are or some such information should be on the gallery page.

[mlegg]

I was looking at the Image Thumbnail Viewer II but can I arrange the thumbnails to be spread horizontally, say 6 or 8 images wide approx 10 rows high, rather than vertically?

[djr33]

An incremental preload (or just loading each image as needed) would work, or I suggest simply splitting it into a few slideshows. Having a single slideshow for that house sounds like a bad idea anyway-- make it a slightly interactive website where you can tour the island, the kitchen, the bedrooms, whatever.

[jscheuer1]

I was looking at the Image Thumbnail Viewer II but can I arrange the thumbnails to be spread horizontally, say 6 or 8 images wide approx 10 rows high, rather than vertically?

The thumbnails and the 'loadarea' may be laid out however you see fit. That part is just HTML coding. And if Thumbnail Viewer II is configured as I suggested to only load each larger image upon request (upon click of its triggering thumbnail), with small in byte size thumbnails, all 70 images could be on one page. You could even group them - say 7 groups of 10 thumbs. Each group could have its own 'loadarea' or share a common one.

As for the Flash slideshow, Daniel has some good ideas. I have seen some of these Flash slideshows where each image is incrementally preloaded. If you have one like that, there's virtually no limit to the number of images. You should still try to keep each individual image of a reasonable byte size. That also applies to the larger images used in the Thumbnail Viewer II gallery. Think about that part like so - These professional images are probably high enough resolution to be printed and make a good 8 foot by 10 foot image that could dominate a wall of an office or reception area. You don't need all that for the web, though you could still use a relatively high resolution image for each one.

[mlegg]

thanks for your thought!

[mlegg]

An incremental preload (or just loading each image as needed) would work, or I suggest simply splitting it into a few slideshows. Having a single slideshow for that house sounds like a bad idea anyway-- make it a slightly interactive website where you can tour the island, the kitchen, the bedrooms, whatever.

I must have skipped over that part. So instead of a single slideshow are you suggesting making 4 or more based on breaking down the parts (island, the kitchen, the bedrooms, whatever)? I was thinking of doing that for image galleries broken up like that too.

This is the most expensive property I have done for sure, I've searched Google for high end propertied and have come up with some very bland websites. I think mine are much better even for my lower end sites.

I found this lightbox script: http://projects.nickstakenburg.com/lightview
What do you think of that?

[djr33]

Sure, that script seems fine (but it looks about the same to me as other "lightbox" scripts-- I don't get the popularity of all of the versions!).

Yes, if you want, it might just be easier to have a few different slideshows. And it would be easier/clearer to navigate anyway. You don't want to force customers through 50 images just to get to the 10 of the kitchen, or whatever aspect of the house they want to inspect most closely.

[mlegg]

Sure, that script seems fine (but it looks about the same to me as other "lightbox" scripts-- I don't get the popularity of all of the versions!).

I know, I don't really see much difference in them. Is Lightbox image viewer 2.03a the latest version from DD?

Yes, if you want, it might just be easier to have a few different slideshows. And it would be easier/clearer to navigate anyway. You don't want to force customers through 50 images just to get to the 10 of the kitchen, or whatever aspect of the house they want to inspect most closely.

I think I am going to use some sort of the Animated Collapsible DIV to break them up into categories. I will test the page before it "goes live" to the public.

[jscheuer1]

Oh Gawd, don't use Lightbox 2.03a! It's outdated, still uses the bloated prototype/scriptaculous libraries instead of jQuery and was never all that great except for that link feature DD added. That one you linked to looks much better, as is the current Lightbox version 2.51 I think it is. There are other box type scripts, some of which are good as well, more flexible than the official version.