Hello everybody,
We are very happy to announce the launching of the Design Radar, a new platform that we hope will be very useful to buyers and sellers. We have been preparing this new service since many months. It was hard work and we hope that you will enjoy it.
Of course, we are interested in reading your comments, questions or suggestions about this new tool.
Wow -- what a
handsome revision of the home page ! I'm duly impressed and pleased. Your collective design sense just keeps getting better and better. What nice colors -- and a refreshing page to arrive at. So much to see. . .
For a long time I set my bookmark to open directly to the forum -- but now I'm glad I changed that, last year, to take me first to the home page.
As I am not among the collectors here, I may not be the first to take advantage of the Radar function -- but you have my heartfelt appreciation for taking the lengthy (and no doubt costly) step to provide such a service. Thank you again and again.
Now to go exploring. . . Stephen
I am not a collector...
...but the radar is a wonderful tool. I even found some Friso Kramer Revolt chairs from the time I worked at the "Cirkel" factory...no not as a designer, as a steel press operator!...and before working hours as distributor of subversive pamphlets at the legal 25 meters away from the entrance...
It is nice to see them back-and very comfortable to sit on.
Congratulations Alix & Patrick for a job well done and for the efforts behind it!
This is a great extension...
This is a great extension to the site. It fits right in with the rest, and like SDR I love the simple and functional design.
I am also not a collector, but I don't see that one has to be as long as the rare and exclusive objects are accompanied by more reasonably priced pieces. There seems to be a good number of sellers and ads already, which is promising. I will no doubt be checking out what is on offer from time to time.
So congratulations on the new site family member and thanks!
Edit: I would rather scroll down a single page than click 'next' several times. One suggestion would be to offer a way to display various number of ads per page, say 25/50/100. If that is too much coding hassle, I would prefer to have the default value set at 50 or larger. But that is just a personal preference.
P & A
The new look is great and very classy. However, I'm predicting there will be a bit of chafing at the "price on asking" option. Too many people really hate that, IMHO. I'm a buyer and a seller and I think it's just plain pretentious to tease the customer. If you've got something to sell, put the durn price on it and sell it.
Thanks for your first...
Thanks for your first comments!
For those who are not collectors, here is an information that will probably interest you. The Design Radar is conceived to be interconnected with the Index. Soon, we will add an option in the Radar submission form that will allow sellers to give us the authorisation to use their images in the Index as well. It will be a great way to quickly fill the many gaps in the Index and to make out of it a reference tool that will be the most complete possible.
In the meanwhile, everyday we will discover objects and/or designers that we didn't know before visiting the Radar. We find it very enriching and we hope that you will experience the same.
Concerning the problem of the 'price on asking'. The subject has been debated already in the forum. If one likes it or not, it is a reality that one must accept. We cannot force the dealers to change the way they handle their commercial practices. We tried to circumvent the problem by giving them the possibility to indicate a price range if they do not wish to give a precise price.
Besides, in the submission form, we remind the sellers that buyers prefer to see the price. We hope that, sooner or later, the use of the mention POA will become rarer.
Regarding the number of listings per page, it is possible to increase the number of items per page. But DA visitors don't all have a quick bandwidth. It is the reason why we prefer to avoid the loading of too heavy pages. We will check if it is possible to easily give the possibility to the user to choose the number of items per page.
Thanks again
I'm intrigued to know what Patrick & Alix's home looks like....
I was thinking that it might be interesting for the people who created and opererate this terrific website to show off their lifestyle to all of us addicts.
I imagine that it's sleek, sophisticated and spare.
What'd'ya think?
40 items on 1 page
Gustaf,
The number of items on one page has been increased from 20 to 40.
Barry,
When we will have less work, we will try to find some time to put together a few pictures that we have of our house. In the meanwhile, maybe Gustavo will be able to make a description because we had the pleasure to have a visit from him, his wife and son while they were having a European trip. It was great fun to have our Argentinian friends at home.
Thank you for your kind...
Thank you for your kind comment, Olive.
Yes there is an article about our house in the blog but the pictures are from the sixties when my parents were living in the house. (link below)
Back to the radar now.
http://www.designaddict.com/design_addict/blog/index.cfm/2007/8/23/Evera...
An absolutely beautiful...
An absolutely beautiful residence, and how great to have the history/photographs from the sixties. I recognize the stone fireplace from your recent holiday photo. Is the upper level bedroom/bath space? Interesting to see your t/g ceiling running with, rather than perpendicular, to the beams. Do you/your family have the model yet?
Really like the new site features, Patrick & Alix. And thanks for posting the great photos of your residence.
Best,
hudsonhonu
Bandwidth is a valid...
Bandwidth is a valid concern. I think 40 images make for a considerable improvement while still keeping it speedy for those on slower connections.
A few years ago when I designed websites for a hobby, I often used the Web Page Analyzer service (see link). It is a really useful tool that provides estimated load times for different connection speeds and recommendations for what to do to decrease them. I was happy to see that it is still around.
At the risk of giving unsolicited and unneeded advice, I ran the radar page through the Analyzer and also had a look at the source code. The code alone is 170KB, which is a lot for what is really a simple page (in terms of visible layout and structure). The main problem seems to be that all the style parameters and recurring images are hard coded into the page instead of in external stylesheets. The code also uses table markup for layout, which adds to the size. The best word I can think of to describe these techniques is 'vintage' 🙂 A total of 79 images then add a fairly substantial though not unreasonable 500KB to the total page size. Here both size and number of images (or objects, to be more generic) add to the total load time. The page makes 81 HTTP requests, each taking a little extra time beyond the actual download time. One could also look at the order of elements in the source code. It is generally preferable to have "value adding" content near the top, to make it load and display as quickly as possible. The actual download times can be seen on the Analyzer page. There are of course other more sophisticated ways of reducing page load time, but these are usually good places to start.
http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/
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