AmbitiousLemon.com

[arn]

One of our moderators (AmbitiousLemon) and several users (kishba, j763, tommy) have been hard at work on the launch a new Mac oriented site, which opens today:

AmbitiousLemon.com (http://AmbitiousLemon.com) is your source for tips, tricks, and information for Mac OS X. Whether you are a novice or experienced user you will find something valuable at AmbitiousLemon. AmbitiousLemon.com (http://AmbitiousLemon.com) also allows you to share your own desktops, boot screens, screenshots, and much more using our user submission page that will dynamically add your design to the archives instantly.

[mac15]

I'm a huge contributer there so I urge you all to post some nice desktops and stuff, cause its a very nice site

Cheers

[MacMaster]

*adds to toolbar*:D

Great site!:)

[j763]

thnx guys!!

we'll be updating the site daily, so there's going to be lots of stuff to browse through soon. plz send in your desktops (http://www.ambitiouslemon.com/usercontrib/desktops.php) and your feedback (http://www.ambitiouslemon.com/feedback/).

[edesignuk]

Originally posted by j763
thnx guys!!

we'll be updating the site daily, so there's going to be lots of stuff to browse through soon. plz send in your desktops (http://www.ambitiouslemon.com/usercontrib/desktops.php) and your feedback (http://www.ambitiouslemon.com/feedback/).
I just submitted a wallaper, but the site is coming up with this error when trying to display it...

[digitalgiant]

Hey congrats!!! looks great!! Its also in my bookmark folder.:D

[digitalgiant]

One more and I will have X posts!!

[digitalgiant]

Get it? X=10 posts. Sorry I had to do it. Wont happen anymore. Sorry

[j763]

Originally posted by verbose101

I just submitted a wallaper, but the site is coming up with this error when trying to display it...

verbose101, our apologies. You uploaded a file with a ' or a " in it. We are working on a fix for this currently, however, in the meantime we have added a notice about this on our submission page. Thanks for pointing that out and again, our apologies. Please try reuploading without the "

[irmongoose]

I also had contributed a few desktop backgrounds before the renovation... And I also sent a few in to Ambitious Lemon while teh renovation was going on.. but its not up on the site.. guess I will have to upload them again.

BTW, it is a great site.. and I am glad it is finally up after the long wait.



irmongoose

[edesignuk]

I have uploaded a picture, but it seems to have uploaded twice.
When I was trying to upload it kept sitting there for ages then going to an error "The page cannot be found", so I went back and tried again, it eventually worked but now when you look at the galley it is there twice.
So one of them can be dleted ambitiouslemon.com staff!

[peterjhill]

The interview with the Adium author is very nice. I will definitely be checking you out, and watching your site grow.

Congratulations

[dricci]

Hmm, which do I add it to?

[Mr. Anderson]

Nice site, what's the requirement for submission? I've got a few backgounds I could donate to the casue.

D

[AmbitiousLemon]

ir mongoose: none of the submissions from the old site got carried over. if you can resubmit thhose that would be just great. your submissions during testing though are there. just look in the desktop archive. the ones you emailed me before the submission page went up will also need to be reuploaded.

verbose: taken care of. uploading can take awhile. just wait it out. as long as that browser throbber is going its working. the errors you got before were the ' character. we will be correcting that problem soon. thanks for the support.

dricci: :) we spent awhile trying to figure out where we fit in too. we arent a rumors site (though we will be syndicating MR news on the news section of the homepage (coming soon). we are trying to fill a new niche really. a lot of places have stuff like what we have but not quite in this combo or presented in this manner. i basically wanted to create a site that i could use myself and find useful.. a site that when a friend needed something i coudl send them to my site.

[Mr. Anderson]

well, I just went and uploaded a desktop image and it was quite easy, nice job guys.

D

[mnkeybsness]

hey guys i think you may want to do some crunching on the images on the front page...they took me what seemed like forever (probably more like 1 1/2 minutes to load just the front page :mad: otherwise i like the site

[ibjoshua]

Originally posted by mnkeybsness
hey guys i think you may want to do some crunching on the images on the front page...they took me what seemed like forever (probably more like 1 1/2 minutes to load just the front page :mad: otherwise i like the site

i have to agree with the monkey
your home page was so graphics heavy i lost interest and shot through. big heavy graphics are old news. sorry, just being honest.

josh

[j763]

Originally posted by mnkeybsness
hey guys i think you may want to do some crunching on the images on the front page...they took me what seemed like forever (probably more like 1 1/2 minutes) to load just the front page :mad: otherwise i like the site

Originally posted by i_b_joshua


i have to agree with the monkey
your home page was so graphics heavy i lost interest and shot through. big heavy graphics are old news. sorry, just being honest.

josh

Hi Guys,

All the images on the site total just over 500K, which is not really very large. I have paid special attention at making the site accessible for dial-up users, because I am on 56k myself. We're also moving to a new faster webhost sometime next month, which should improve the loading time. Thanks for your constructive criticism, more attention will be focused on loading times in the future.

[AmbitiousLemon]

I was very concerned when I first read your reports that the site is 'graphics intensive.' It certainly wasn't created with that in mind, in fact we spend considerable time and effort making certain the site loaded well on a 56k modem.

So I took some time just now to investigate this. All the images on the site add up to a total of 592k. The entire site (html, php, DB, and images) totals 1.6MB (that is every page and image).

We checked load times of AmbitiousLemon.com versus Apple.com [another site I assume you frequent being a MR reader and apple fan]. Un-cached on a 56k modem apple's home page takes 45 seconds to load. Ambitiouslemon.com take 65 seconds to load its home page. Not great but we have considerably more info on our home page. So we decided to look at Apple.com/store/ load times. Clicking apple.com then clicking store takes 77seconds (this is cached now). clicking ambitiouslemon.com then clicking designs (the largest page- the page with all the big user contributions) also takes exactly 77 seconds to load. So at this point it seems browsing ambitiouslemon.com is the same, as far as load times go, as browsing apple.com which is designed by experts and hosted on akamai (one of the fastest links in the world). Not bad if you ask me.

Ambitiouslemon.com loads instantly on a dsl or cable modem. too fast for me to really time. compared to sites such as cnet, cnn, newtscape, weather which often take up to 15 seconds to load i think we are doing quite well.

I think many people just go to a site, see a bunch of images loading and freak out. Please give us a chance. The load times are actually very good compared to other websites. We have taken great care to get things to load quickly and will continue to do so, but you need to give us a fair shot.

[sfoalex]

I checked out the site, and if I can be honest without getting shot at, I just do not see the need for this site. The Mac community for what ever reason appears to have a ton of new web sites devoted to the Mac, rumors and everything else in between. One rumor site repeats what another site reports and before you know it, another repeats that repeater.

The hints section has Mac Vs. PC? Does this make any sense? The site is a miss mash of all things off topic. It lacks a theme and a reason for going to the site.

Look at Mac Central for example. You have news, and people like to comment. Why do we go? News and Comment. It is obvious where the news is? Yes. What about the comment? Yes. Is the site self explanatory? Yes.

MacMinute, the same designer of Mac Central got it all wrong on the second try. Where is the comment? In a whole different section. Result: hardly no one goes to the comments. The reality, his site does not do anything that MacCentral doesn’t already do better.

Your site is more of the same thing. What are you doing that others are not already doing? Your software spotlight, should be a section not a casual graphic hidden in the hints section. You guys spent more time trying to make the site attractive then making it functional and logical. It is as if a major part of the site is devoted to desktops... Sorry guys, but that is boring. Your top story is an interview with an AIM alternative? Yawn.... Your articles are things everyone already knows. You are not educating anyone, you simply appear to be talking to some ignorant audience that doesn’t really exist. Apple has started an aggressive ad campaign? No kidding guys, really? Your reporting on something way after the fact.

I am very sorry to appear to tear into you guys. I have no doubt you try very hard, but unless you want to go beyond what is out there all ready, I have to say do not bother. I know, many will say, hey don’t go there if you don’t like it. That is true, what I am trying to do is just be brutally honest here. I thought of not saying anything at all, but I thought you might want to know what some, maybe just me, people truly think.

I think we have too many sites devoted to nothing that adds value.

Sorry guys...

Alex

[Liske]

Originally posted by j763




Hi Guys,

All the images on the site total just over 500K, which is not really very large. I have paid special attention at making the site accessible for dial-up users, because I am on 56k myself. We're also moving to a new faster webhost sometime next month, which should improve the loading time. Thanks for your constructive criticism, more attention will be focused on loading times in the future.

I was curious about some peoples complaints so I grabbed an image from, the home page. Its not too difficult to get these images down in size these days. Do you use adobe photoshop? all you have to use is the save for web feature built into photoshop. I would recomend GIF format for your homepage graphics since there are alot of solid colors, jpeg is better for photos. Maybe try a 64 color gif on all your homepage graphics. I am a web designer you should be able to get all the graphics I see on the home page down to around 40k. See graphic below for more infos! Check my site if you like http://www.redwooddesign.com. Good luck with your site. My intentions are only to help!

[j763]

Alex,

I'm sorry the site doesn't appeal to you. We would like to accomodate you, so what is it that you would like to see? I genuinely want to know, what would, for you, go far beyond what is already out there?

I would like to add, however, that calling our viewers "ignorant", and saying that we are "devoted to nothing that adds value" is a blunt insult and is just simply not constructive.

We're happy to be able to report that it is meeting some users' needs. From our feedback page:


good to see the site coming along the UI is amazing, so keep up the good work and keep rocking


Wow, I know we're gonna get along juuuust fine. Your site just carved itself a premium slot in my daily morning web routine. We needed a good OS X site.

Please add more Mac OS X Advanced tips! The Web Ad Blocking Tutorial was well written, easy to follow and it worked! Keep up the good work!


Nice looking site. Can't wait for more content!

Alex, please post and let me know what you want to see on AmbitiousLemon.com!

Thanks

j763.

[Liske]

i had to do a 4 color gif just to get the post on there so look a the numbers not the image quality. for 13k I got the same exact image in quality as your home page using a 32 color gif, you just can't see it here because the board only allows super small image files.

[j763]

Originally posted by Liske


I was curious about some peoples complaints so I grabbed an image from, the home page. Its not too difficult to get these images down in size these days. Do you use adobe photoshop? all you have to use is the save for web feature built into photoshop. I would recomend GIF format for your homepage graphics since there are alot of solid colors, jpeg is better for photos. Maybe try a 64 color gif on all your homepage graphics. I am a web designer you should be able to get all the graphics I see on the home page down to around 40k. Check my site if you like http://www.redwooddesign.com. Good luck with your site. My intentions are only to help!

Thanks for that, Liske. We are currently tweaking the images, and will be replacing our current images with smaller images so that the site loads quickly

[sfoalex]

There is no insult, I said you appear to be talking to an ignorant audience. Ignorant is not a bad word. It simply means lack of knowledge on a particular subject. For example, if you post something about Apple’s ad campaign and it is already a well known event, then you would appear to be talking to an ignorant audience. That means, you appear to be telling people who do not already know about Apple’s ad comparing. What I said is right on target. Perhaps you feel it is an ugly word but I used it 100% correctly. I also said “appeared”. The article is written as if to enlighten. Who didn’t already know of this subject? Perhaps someone ignorant to the fact that Apple and others have already widely publicized the event? Again, that is a true statement.

Again, I not trying to bagger you. This is exactly what I feared would happen. I really do not want to repeat all the reasons why I feel the site is unnecessary as I have already posted that. What do I think the site needs? Nothing, I think I made the point that there are too many sites already doing what you do. They are in fact doing it better already. The whole point of the site, at least in my humble opinion, is to fill a void and your site, again in my humble opinion, does not fill any void. Again, please do not take offense. I simply think others are already accomplishing what appears to be your agenda.

[Mr. Anderson]

wow, I was amazed at the size of the images - you definitely want to go to gifs - I took the home image (generic_home_big.jpg) which was 188k and made a gif out of if it, looks more than acceptable.

But one thing you need to do is make sure all the images share the same color map - otherwise the rollovers might not have the same background colors when swapping. You play around in photoshop and its export for the web and get great results and then take that main image and slice it up for the pages.

Here's the generic_home_big.gif with 256 colors and only 20k - almost 1/10th the size

D

[AmbitiousLemon]

Originally posted by sfoalex
I checked out the site, and if I can be honest without getting shot at, I just do not see the need for this site. The Mac community for what ever reason appears to have a ton of new web sites devoted to the Mac, rumors and everything else in between. One rumor site repeats what another site reports and before you know it, another repeats that repeater.

Alex I am sorry you do not like the site. The response from everyone else has been overwhelmingly positive. Also this is not a new site. The site is 2 years old and has a small but loyal group of viewers.

I appreciate your comments about sites that should bring something enw to the mac community. This is actually something I thought of a great deal as it is a comment I have made to a number of other website developers.

But you seem to be terribly confused and out of sorts. Perhaps we caught you personally at a bad time, I am not sure. People have been raving about the site design, its quite the hit. So i think comments to the contrary are largely an individual thing. And as far as content, perhaps you did not spend time looking at we have to offer. this is not a rumor site or a news site. none of the content in any way is in regards to news or rumors (we felt that is well covered in the mac community).

What we do offer is information that from my time here at macrumors, other discussion boards, and in the real world, is something that mac users are scrambling to know about. the number of threads here alone dedicated to suggestions on how to use the dock, what disk maitenance apps to use, and what are some good shareware apps is a testament the need for a site that focuses on this. you might call our readers ignorant for asking these questions, but ignorant or not it seems most mac users need somewhere to get this information.

you find desktops boring? i am sorry. most mac users spend a great deal fo time customizing their computing experience. look again at all the threads here at MR dedicated to wallpapers and screenshots (and thats not even the focus of MR). people like to share their work and there isnt a single website that allows people to do that as we do. typically if a site allows submissions there is a 2-4 week wait before it is posted. with a site that dynamically adds content we feel we are offering the mac community something new.

there are a lot of great mac sites out there. i dont visit them all. in fact i only requent 3 mac sites. so if ambitiouslemon.com rubs you the wrong way we are sorry to lose you but find someplace else that suits you better, but please do not insult us or peopel who enjoy our site.

[Rower_CPU]

Are you guys sure about that? I downloaded two of your logos, and they come out to 340K for just the two of them!!!!

[AmbitiousLemon]

i am quite sure. i get info on the folder housing all the images and it is 1mb. (that includes some of the stuff not posted yet and some design stuff).

the largest individual image for the template part of the site is 12k.

there are no 100+k images, and i have no idea why you claim there are.

we have tested the site load time and found that on a 56k modem getting 5k/s (some people get less than that if they have a very poor connection, but 5k/s is using most of the 56k connection) you can load every single page on the entire site (including pages not yet posted in 3 minutes.

all this talk about load time is a little bit insulting. as if you people have not used the internet before. i think some of you see lots of images and assume it will load slow and just give up. as i said before please give us a chance we took great care to make the site laod in a reasonable amount of time (we use 60% .jpg quality which is smaller than gif at similiar quality for most images) and we compressed the html.

please just let the whole image thing drop. contrary to what you may believe we do actually know what we are doing. we spenta great deal of time measuring the quality of various compression schemes and used the one that gave us the best results.

i am sorry some people feel the site is too 'graphics intensive' (odd since its mostly text) but as i have said the we have recieved several dozen emails and only 2 have commented on the graphics in a negative manner.

people will always find something to complain about, i understand that, we are looking for constructive criticism not a flamewar.

[Rower_CPU]

Originally posted by AmbitiousLemon
…
there are no 100+k images, and i have no idea why you claim there are.
…

I don't claim it, "Get Info" does.;)

I think the site is just fine: looks great, loads quick on my cable modem.

[awrootbeer]

Originally posted by AmbitiousLemon

people like to share their work and there isnt a single website that allows people to do that as we do. typically if a site allows submissions there is a 2-4 week wait before it is posted. with a site that dynamically adds content we feel we are offering the mac community something new.


I think AL is a nice site, but I also tend to think there are other sites that do the job already. It's too soon to tell if you can do that better.
However, I take offense in the quoted content. I'm a member at Spymac.com and they have an excellent gallery.
"there isn't a single site that allows people to do what we do," is simply not true, and I think you know that. The Spymac gallery has something like 4000 pictures and more than 2million views, so I'm sure you've heard of it. And only about 400 of those are rumor related.
Please do some research before posting such general statements.

[AmbitiousLemon]

Originally posted by awrootbeer


I think AL is a nice site, but I also tend to think there are other sites that do the job already. It's too soon to tell if you can do that better.
However, I take offense in the quoted content. I'm a member at Spymac.com and they have an excellent gallery.
"there isn't a single site that allows people to do what we do," is simply not true, and I think you know that. The Spymac gallery has something like 4000 pictures and more than 2million views, so I'm sure you've heard of it. And only about 400 of those are rumor related.
Please do some research before posting such general statements.

i knew spymac posts galleries but since they are so disorganized ive never really investigated them closely. i still dont see the submit thing though im sure its there somewhere. frankly i dont think much of spymac, their site tries to do everything and ends up doing nothing well. but thats just my opinion, as you said many people love spymac despite their sordid beginnings.

[awrootbeer]

Originally posted by AmbitiousLemon


i knew spymac posts galleries but since they are so disorganized ive never really investigated them closely. i still dont see the submit thing though im sure its there somewhere. frankly i dont think much of spymac, their site tries to do everything and ends up doing nothing well. but thats just my opinion, as you said many people love spymac despite their sordid beginnings.

:rolleyes:
It's not disorganized, maybe look at it more closely. You have to be logged in to upload pictures (obviously). And what don't they do well? please back up your statements, as I personally feel they have great webmail, forums and gallery. And their gallery is far superior to yours, btw.
Im not trying to start an arguement, AL looks ok for some areas, but I won't be using you gallery feature.

[arn]

Originally posted by Rower_CPU
Are you guys sure about that? I downloaded two of your logos, and they come out to 340K for just the two of them!!!!

You guys are incorrect.

Here's another test. Drag your avatar to the desktop... Avatars are limited to 20k.

If you download it, it appears to be 128k.

I'll leave it to you to sort it the discrepancy... :)

arn

[Rower_CPU]

Thanks for the correction, arn.

It's weird that files "grow" like that when processed by the browser...is it just IE doing this?

[Rower_CPU]

Upon further research, it appears that Terminal shows a "true" file size.

Finder=168KB
Terminal=5904B

Now the question is: Why does Finder report an incorrect file size on these particular files? Files that I've created in Photoshop show the same in Get Info as they do in the Terminal...but these ones, downloaded through IE, are vastly inflated...

[Lz0]

It seems we have a problem with the definition of "downloading" an image.

If you download the generic_home_big.jpg it is 12 KB on disk or a 9,626 byte file in reality.

If you drag and drop the file using IE it becomes 172 KB on disk or 172,659 bytes.

[Finn]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by j763
[B]

'All the images on the site total just over 500K, which is not really very large.'

In fact it is VERY large. Most design agencies have internal guidelines stating that webpages should not be larger than 50K, which is ten times smaller than your 'not really very large'. Of course there ar variables: a homepage is usually larger: it may be 100K (5x smaller) and a contentpage may be 25K (twenty times smaller).
I would try to redesign the 'brandbar' on the top. Make it smaller in realestate, more elegant. This wil get rid of most of the useless kilobytes.

Finn

[obeygiant]

hey ambitiouslemon

at the bottom of your site there is "(C) 2002 Amitiouslemon" Blah Blah

try option+g to get the appropriate © symbol

just a tip

bye

[ibjoshua]

Originally posted by Finn
[QUOTE]Originally posted by j763
[B]

'All the images on the site total just over 500K, which is not really very large.'

In fact it is VERY large. Most design agencies have internal guidelines stating that webpages should not be larger than 50K, which is ten times smaller than your 'not really very large'. Of course there ar variables: a homepage is usually larger: it may be 100K (5x smaller) and a contentpage may be 25K (twenty times smaller).
I would try to redesign the 'brandbar' on the top. Make it smaller in realestate, more elegant. This wil get rid of most of the useless kilobytes.

Finn

Finn is right.

where i work we tell people 30k just to keep them on their feet - knowing few will do it.

240Kb+- is not very modem friendly guys. and the graphics are pretty garish

my 2 cents

josh

[Gaz]

Hello,

I’ve spent a good deal of time studying your site today and I’m impressed that you want to listen to the views of others. As a result I’d like to impart some thoughts that I hope make your site more accessible while maintain your own unique style.

The first thing that really struck me when I arrived at ambitiouslemon.com was that I had no real idea as to what the site was providing. A good way to inform the user is by providing good clear navigation. I don’t know what HCI background you have but research has suggested that structured navigation is not a great thing. I know this sounds strange but a new user does not want to have to wade through every section trying to find the content they are surfing for. With this in mind I would consider restructuring the navigation. For example rather than ‘design’ which is confusing to the user (I initially believed you might be offering a design service) try ‘desktops’ or ‘backgrounds’ if you wanted to group information. Again I’d replace hints with either something more meaningful ‘Mac OS X advice’ and I’d consider extracting certain parts which don’t really relate, i.e. Articles. I’m pleased to see the use of breadcrumbs but they would be better placed at the top right or left of the main page body. I’ve read this in a previous post and I agree that the software spotlight should become a section in its own right. At the moment its placement makes it appear more of an advert than a piece of useful content.

I would suggest you look at the content structure as well. At the moment the layout isn’t consistent across the site. I think you could perhaps make the design page easier to navigate but grouping images. For a suggestion check out my photo-gallery on my site www.gareth-davies.com.

I think the homepage needs rethinking. At the moment it is just a collection of random parts of other pages. I think for the type of site you are trying to create you should use this page as a way to collate all the new changes to the site (see both spymac and MR as goodish examples). The homepage needs to make it clear what ambitiouslemon.com is and the type of content there is. It would be good to provide a brief summary of latest updates and links to those features (like you have done with the recent designs, that’s really good).

I won’t hassle you about the graphics as I think most people have been pretty over the top. I might suggest shrinking them a little as at the moment the users focus is on that and not the content. Really the two should compliment each other. This can be done by shrinking the graphics a bit.

In terms of making it stand out from other sites you need allow the users to interact with each other. Forums would be a good start. Perhaps a way to add comments to desktops pics and screen grabs. Allow users to put up their own work and allow people to interact with it. All the successful non e-commerce sites I’ve seen are biased around building up a sense of community.

Anyway I think you have the basis for a really good site (as you already have regular visitors that’s great). If you want anymore feedback or you’d like anymore views please email at GJ_Davies@hotmail.com

One last thing, don't use graphics where normal text will do. It only slows things downs.

Best wishes

Gaz

[AmbitiousLemon]

Originally posted by Finn
[QUOTE]Originally posted by j763
[B]

'All the images on the site total just over 500K, which is not really very large.'

In fact it is VERY large. Most design agencies have internal guidelines stating that webpages should not be larger than 50K, which is ten times smaller than your 'not really very large'. Of course there ar variables: a homepage is usually larger: it may be 100K (5x smaller) and a contentpage may be 25K (twenty times smaller).
I would try to redesign the 'brandbar' on the top. Make it smaller in realestate, more elegant. This wil get rid of most of the useless kilobytes.

Finn

hahahah. man people love critisizing without thinking first. i didnt say the home page was 500k i said the entire site was. that is the home page and every single content page. considering the limitations yu just arbitraryily set (100k, 25k) i would say we are doing VERY well. as i sadi the very largest image is 12k, while most images are below 1k. i appreciate all the people trying to 'help' but please believe us when we say that all the images have been adequately compressed and that load times have indeed been tested on a 56k modem and found to be quite acceptable (load times are faster than MR pages, so if you can browse this thread you should be fine browsing AL).

Comments such as provided by Gaz are far more appreciated (he is telling us something new and something that is true). Thanks Gaz, I will read that over again when I have some more time.

[Finn]

Originally posted by AmbitiousLemon


hahahah. man people love critisizing without thinking first. i didnt say the home page was 500k i said the entire site was. that is the home page and every single content page. considering the limitations yu just arbitraryily set (100k, 25k) i would say we are doing VERY well. as i sadi the very largest image is 12k, while most images are below 1k.


I stand corrected. You did say that all the images on the site add up to 592K. You also said your site takes 65 seconds to load. Here's another guideline: a page should load within 15 seconds. Usually this is not realistic, especially for a homepage. But 65 seconds is too long, no matter what Apple does. Maybe you should compare yourself to Macrumors. It takes me 30 seconds to load the homepage (modem, no cache). Including ads an A LOT more content then AmbitiousLemon. Maybe this could be your aim?

[job]

never mind.

forget this post. i was having problems uploading but it works now.

nice site.