Input On Literature Plans? Please!?!?

[Gary Lewis]

Folks - I've just spent way too long adding 8 brochures to the site, as shown below.  That's because the way they were scanned required me to manually crop each and every page - probably a bit over 100 of them.  And given the size of the files that taxed my 'puter.

But, I need your input regarding how I did the brochures.  This time I had them scanned into pdf's at high resolution and put each pdf on its own page.  That way you can scroll through the whole brochure w/o having to click on each page.  And, you can zoom in up to 12x, and the high res still gives you a good pic.

But, there's a downside - the files are large and take a while to load.  Some have suggested that I present you with low res jpg pictures, and give you a link via which you can download the high res file.  But, many people are reluctant to download things like that, and I don't blame them.  Plus, many of the brochures have tables giving specifications that simply cannot be read in low res.  And, to me the beauty of a brochure is all the technical info it gives.

So, please go look at several of these brochures and let me know what you think.  Are the files too big?  Do you like the high res?  What do you recommend?


1983 Ford Chassis-Cab

1984 Bronco

1984 Ford Trucks

1985 Explorer Program

1985 Bronco

1985 Ford Trucks

1986 Trailer Towing Guide

1986 Ford Trucks

[Darksidesm]

I could only get the first two links to come up. The others ones just have blank pages.

I dont mind waiting a min for a good image to load and I also like to download so it's always available. I would say whatever makes your life easier.

I read the 85 brochure you had on here and liked it so much I went on Ebay and bought my own.

[grumpin]

I looked at the 1986 Trucks and Towing guides. I like them. It took awhile to load, not too long though, it took me a second to realize I had to be on the brochure to scroll.

Was neat to see the towing guide!

I use Chrome.

[Gary Lewis]

Hmmm, I can get all of them to load.  However, it does take a while.  Justin - Can you try again, please?

The info in the towing guide will probably get added to the Specifications/Towing page.  It seems to be easier to use than the info from the owner's manuals and also includes 5th wheel info, so I want to add it to the specifications section.

And, I came to that conclusion by clicking the pop-out button and then making the brochure the full width of the screen on this tablet.  It sure makes reading the detail in those tables easy.  In fact, I just tried it on my iPhone X and it works a treat.  I can zoom in and easily read anything on any page, which is not true of many of the other brochures I've added in jpg format.

Anyway, please keep the cards and letters coming.  I need to know if/how it works for you.

[Darksidesm]

It must be my phone. I got them to come up this time and I clicked on them again and I just got a blank page.

[Gary Lewis]

Hmmm.  What phone do you have?  Works good on my iPhone X.

[ctubutis]

The file size doesn't matter to me, but they look like crap on my laptop and some of them are hard to read the text in. It's like they halfway download and you can see what's coming but it never finishes, it looks like there's more coming.

[Gary Lewis]

That's strange.  They work fine on my two Win 10 machines, my Win 8, and my iPhone as well as Janey's iPad.  I've tried Chrome, Edge, and Safari.

So, what pages are you having trouble with?

[ctubutis]

Here is the first one, 1983 Chassis Cab:

[Gary Lewis]

Yikes!  I don't understand.  Here's what I see on all of my tests across 5 devices and 3 browsers.  So what can cause what you are seeing?  Have you tried another browser?

And, is anyone else seeing it?




And then I can zoom in to this size - w/o downloading the file:

[Steve83]

I looked at the '85 & '86 wiring diagrams, and at first they were VERY blurry when I zoomed in.  But after a few minutes, they got REALLY crisp, even at high zoom.  I'm on dish internet (garbage), so I assumed it was just me.  But maybe everyone will have to wait a while for the pages to load at high res.

BTW
The 6th page of the '85 diagrams is upside-down , AND a repeat of p.5.  But the page order in your PDF doesn't coincide with the printed page numbers (moreso than just because of the index page). The 2nd page of the '86 diagrams (p.1) is also upside-down.  The last 2 pages are, too, and their order is reversed.

But I also found it easier to view them from the popout directly from Drive, so they fill the whole screen width.

[Gary Lewis]

I wonder if the problem Chris is having is that it hasn't loaded fully?  When they finally load they are really crisp, like you said.  Perhaps I need to provide it in a low-res version as well?

As for the upside down and out of order, I'll have to go fix that.  Thanks!

[Steve83]

This is probably going to be really low on your list of priorities, but I noticed that there's no way to go from one group of '86 EVTM pages to the next or previous group, without going back to the text index page.  I've never built a website or even web page, so IDK how hard it would be to add "PREVIOUS" to the top & bottom Left of each group, and "NEXT" to the top & bottom Right.

I also think, from the top of the '85 wiring diagrams tab, it says "...85 EVTM...", but that link took me to the '86 EVTM.  But I was hopping between tabs & pages, so I might be misremembering.

[Gary Lewis]

That's a good suggestion.  I don't know if there is a way to do Next or Previous.  If I put it in the header and/or footer then every page would have that, and it wouldn't make sense to go from some sections to others.

But, I do know that I can manually add a link within sections, like the EVTM's, to go to the previous section or the next section.  Let me think about that.

As for the wiring diagrams, the order and orientation have been fixed - I think.  Thanks again for catching that.  But, I do not have Page 4 of the 1985 diagrams.  So, I'll take my 1981 and '85 diagrams out to the ladies that do my scanning and ask them to do Page 4 of the '85 and all of the '81.

Also, I fixed the link to the '86 EVTM.  I don't actually have the '85 EVTM on the site - yet.  So that link was both in the wrong place and said it was going to the wrong place.  

And, I think I have two more EVTM's coming in a day or two, which will give me every year of the Bullnose era as well as several more.  Maybe I can get the wiring diagrams done and then turn to the EVTM's.  

[1986F150Six]

And see what else you can work into your "spare time"!