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AmbitiousLemon.com

arn

arn

macrumors god
Original poster
Staff member
Apr 9, 2001
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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 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 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.
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2002/08/26/ambitiouslemon-com/
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
 
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 and your feedback.
Click to expand...
I just submitted a wallaper, but the site is coming up with this error when trying to display it...
 

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Originally posted by verbose101

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

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

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

D
 
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.
 
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 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
Click to expand...

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
 
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
Click to expand...

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
Click to expand...

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 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.
 
I don't think so guys...

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
 
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.
Click to expand...

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!
 
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
Click to expand...

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.
Click to expand...

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!
Click to expand...

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

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

Thanks

j763.
 
image

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.
 

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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!
Click to expand...

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
 
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