Fireworks - Progressive download of .jpgs

Cannot achieve

[Brougham]

Using Fireworks MX, trying to achieve progressive download of .jpgs - have selected the PROGRESSIVE JPEG option - but this does not seem to work for IE6. Have to wait for the file to fully download before appearing. Have taken to slicing larger images so that viewers can see something is happening. Surely, this shouldn't be?

Have searched on Macromedia site for an answer - to no avail.

Am considering switching to another imageing software out of frustration but would rather stick with Fireworks as it's integrated with the rest of Macromedia Studio MX. Have I missed something basic? I'd be most grateful for pointers.

Many thanks.

[davis]

while im not sure of your particluar problem, i thought i'd just give a quick post about progressive jpegs...

me personaly, as a designer, and an end user, i cant stand them. i would rather look at no image (for a few seconds), then a horribly pixelated image.

also, the size of jpegs really shouldnt be _too_ big, that it would force me to wait for long. even on a 56k modem, it shouldnt take more then a few seconds.

just my opinion :)

[tedster]

IE6 is the problem, not Fireworks. The current Microsoft implementation of progressive jpeg rendering is faulty. Test in another browser and you'll see.

One of my pet peeves since the browser was released, they've turned an advantage into a disadvantage.

davis, I do get your point and agree with you on the aesthetics of a progressive rendering. However, if the end user can't see that something is happening, then you may loose them, aesthetics or no. In the end, marketing considerations trump art, and "ugly sells".

So I don't use progressive jpegs at all these days, thanks to IE. The small file size savings it can also give isn't worth the trade-off of having an empty space while all the packets get assembled.

[Brougham]

Davies and Tedster

Thanks for your info - the thing is though that if I look at other sites with my IE6, I can see the jpegs downloading progressively, thus I assumed it the pics that I had created with Fireworks. I remain puzzled. I wonder if you have any further thoughts on this.

Many thanks.

[Brougham]

I think I've solved this (for IE6 at least)By accident I uploaded a .jpg with 'progressive' turned OFF (sharpen turned ON) and what do you know - on viewing it, it progressively downloaded. So the moral seems to be, if you want it to download progresively, turn progressive OFF not ON. Am I going mad or am I missing some salient point here. Not sure if the 'Sharpen ON' is making a difference here - don't see why it should. Don't know how this is showing in previous IE. Anybody else found this?

[Brougham]

Davis, something you said should have put me on the right track.

I think that I have been misunderstanding the exact meaning of'Progressive'. I always thought that the IE way of displaying Progressive was displaying .jpg in horizontal bands top down until completed whilst Navigator was by displaying 'blurred' .jpg, improving with successive passes until completed. Perhaps I was wrong.

Done some tests, created two new large graphics in Fireworks MX,one (A)with progressive NOT selected in Fireworks and the other(B) with Progressive YES selected. Uploaded.

In IE6 and in IE5.5 & Netscape 4.6(the latter two on another computer),(A) downloads in horizontal bands from top down - great just what I am looking for. However (B) in both IE 5.5 & 6.0 doesn't display at all until download is complete whilst Netscape 4.6 displays 'blurred' image improving with successive passes until complete.

Conclusion - I had misunderstood what 'Progressive' means and what I need to do to ensure .jpeg s appear band by band in IE and Netscape until completed is NOT to select 'Progressive'.

Please, somebody pat me on the back and say I've got it right now - or put me right if I'm still misunderstanding. Regards.

[killroy]

Moral of th estorys: Quick mockups and tests solve most problems the best.

Congrats :) *pat* *pat*

SN

[Brougham]

With thanks to Killroy - sticky mail

For anybody else in the future following this thread :-

top to bottom is serial.... progressive is increamental qualitatively instead of quantitatively

Easy when you know - and now I know.