Restaurant Menu and Order Cart Summary

[dongbongchong]

Dear Users,
I am building an on line ordering tool for a pizza restaurant. I want to take
advantage of the restaurant?s already beautiful menu.. I scanned the menu as a
jpg about 1 Mb..I can tolerate my end users (pizza eaters) having to download
the menu once... I overlayed the menu with hot spots on each item that the end
user can click on to populate their order cart summary which is located on a
separate page

I want my users to bounce back and forth between the order summary page and
the menu...... this bouncing back and forth will be a problem is the menu is
actually a large jpeg (as mine is ) if it has to download each time..

I don't want to use frames because it will destroy the style I am looking
for...

So my questions are
How can I design my website so my end users only have to download the fat menu
once despite bouncing back and forth between the order summary cart and the
menu...

When they click on the menu should it load in a new window that remains open
but still linked to my order summary?

Finally is there a way to make the menu load in the background as soon as the
customer comes to the site so when they finally click on the link to the menu
it be there realy fast?
Thank you in advance for your time
Sincerely
Terrence Donohoe

[Excavatorak]

At least give us a look at the menu.jpg. A link to the website would be better.
Have you optimized it for web viewing yet? Does it really have to be 1MB?

[dongbongchong]

I was told that a solution to my problem would be Java Beans


Here is the menu [url]http://www.madmex.com/pdf/madmex_mainmenu.pdf[/url]

[dongbongchong]

Wouldn't it possible to simply have the menu open in a new in window but have
it link back to a window with the order summary cart on it... the user would
sort of bounce back and forth between windows... clinking on a menu item would
then bring the user to the order cart page updated with the new menu item from
MySQL?

[Michael Fesser]

..oO(dongbongchong)

> I am building an on line ordering tool for a pizza restaurant. I want to take
>advantage of the restaurant?s already beautiful menu.. I scanned the menu as a
>jpg about 1 Mb..I can tolerate my end users (pizza eaters) having to download
>the menu once...

Your users won't tolerate it. Modem users will have died of starvation
before the download is complete. Even ISDN users will have a hard time
and probably head for the next McDonald's. After coming back they might
order a salad, though ...

Seriously - first you should drop the idea of just taking a print work
and putting it as-is on the Web - that's not going to work. Both medias
are completely different and require different methods of doing things.

Some estimated download times for your 1MB monster:

Modem: >4 minutes
ISDN: 2.4 minutes (still >1 minute with two B-channels)

Your target time is 10 seconds(!) to have something usable on the user's
screen. After that it becomes very likely that the user will move away.

First you should think about how to structure the HTML, forget the
presentation for the moment. A two-column layout, some headings, some
lists, some links to other sections, an order form. Nothing special.

Then you can think about the presentation. Giving the site a look like
page 3 of your menu PDF for example is doable with CSS. Some background
images, some cleverly cut border images, maybe PNG alpha transparency
effects (requires a workaround in IE <7).

Adding something like "Los Wingos" is possible as well without using too
many images and blowing up the page size.

High-quality full-page background images like photographs and collages
usually don't work well. In some case they _could_ work if the quality,
color brilliance and sharpness is reduced intentionally. Such images can
be stored with just some 10KB instead of >100KB.

Try to reuse as much images as possible to save download time, don't use
completely new images on every page like it's currently in the printed
version.

* * *

This were just some general hints.

After all if you really want to make it a usable website and not just a
printed flyer then you have a lot of work to do. Mainly graphical, the
HTML will be rather simple.

Micha

[dongbongchong]

Micha
Thank you for the response.... I am aware of the possible set backs but
nonetheless I'd really really like to know if there is a solution to my
question? I want to download the aforementioned menu, creat hot spots on it
that will relate to a MySQL database and then populate an ordering page... The
question is how do i engineeer my site so that a redownload the menu is not
necessary each time the end users return from there shopping cart to pick a new
menu item ... Frames is a possible solution but I hate frames... I want
separate pages or separate windows... How do I do this? Thank you for your
response