Got to Be a Better Way

[nomopbo]

Can someone look at this page for me. I wanted to use an image that I made for an advertisement as a web page.
Two Issues...
1) I did not want to remove the text from the page so search engines can pick it up. My solution to this problem was to create a table and use the advertisement as the background image. Then I made a table over the image. I typed the text in that table and moved it to where I wanted using "absolute positioning". This accomplished text over the image where I wanted it.

2) Load Time: The load time is terrible even though the image is compressed. I tried exporting the image in slices to remove as much of the dead white area as possible. This only saved a couple of seconds (since most of the image needs to be present) and was not worth the effort at all.

Here's the link...
HELP!!!
http://www.be-bopjoes.com

[(jj)]

The page loaded rather fast for me (less than 10 seconds), considering that the image is 162KB. It would load slower for dialup users, but those on broadband should see a quick load.

[B&T]

. . . but those on broadband should see a quick load.
And we do :)

[David Byrnes]

It loaded in about 11 seconds for me over a 128K DSL.

[Mighty]

Big stretchs of one color, like white, compress down to next to nothing. So you're probably gaining bulk in image header and request overhead than you're saving.

The load time was fine on my cable modem. A 168k image over a dial-up might be considered somewhat heavy. I was gonna send you to this webpage optimization site (http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/), but it misses your big background image for some reason.

[Ajarn]

It loaded in about 11 seconds for me over a 128K DSL.

About a minute for me, over a dialup 56k (28k) from the Heart of the Golden Triangle

Worth the wait, though :)

[Autoload]

You can adjust the quality of the picture to 80 (I used Fireworks) and cut the file size from 210 kb to 137 kb without sacrificing anything noticable.