Just redesigned my website... - DPChallenge Forums

Mattel Barbie Photo Designer Digital Camera

08/18/2005 05:08:51 PM · #1

Thoughts?

brentwardphoto.com

nsbca7

08/18/2005 05:12:56 PM · #2

Originally posted by MeThoS:

Thoughts?

brentwardphoto.com

Looks pretty good. Did you build this from a template or from the ground up?

cpanaioti

Canon EOS-40D

Canon EF 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 DO IS USM

08/18/2005 05:13:24 PM · #3

The overall setup is nice however it's not blatantly obvious how to navigate especially once you've entered one of the portfolios. Putting these instructions somewhere on the page I think is necessary and will not clutter the page.

BTW, very nice work.

alanfreed

Nikon Z9

08/18/2005 05:13:40 PM · #4

Overall I like it a lot! I got confused, though, when I clicked on an item in the portfolio... it's not obvious that you need to mouseover the numbers. I was sitting there waiting for something to happen.

Travis99

Canon EF 24-105mm f/4.0 L IS

08/18/2005 05:14:36 PM · #5

The only thing I would recconmend is changing your contact page. I would keep your address and phone #, but remove the email address and add a simple contact formLike this because spammers will get that off your site and you will be bombarded with spam. Otherwise it looks good.

Just my 2 cents

Travis

Message edited by author 2005-08-18 17:22:06.

08/18/2005 05:15:53 PM · #6

I built it from the ground up and i was going to put instructions in the center of each portfolio page, but listened to the advice of my girlfriend not too! That will teach me...

Canon EF 28-200mm f/3.5-5.6 USM

08/18/2005 05:17:32 PM · #7

Originally posted by Travis99:

too late...i already get a ton of spam and the link doesn't work. I will check in to doing that though...thanks for the help!

Ram21

Canon EOS-10D

08/18/2005 05:18:54 PM · #8

Originally posted by MeThoS:

I built it from the ground up and i was going to put instructions in the center of each portfolio page, but listened to the advice of my girlfriend not too! That will teach me...

Or just make it so that you can also click them and they will show up. The site is very nice, simple and shows what you can do. I also agree with the contact form instead of the email link.

Dr.Confuser

Nikon D800

Mattel Barbie Photo Designer Digital Camera

08/18/2005 05:21:18 PM · #9

Originally posted by MeThoS:

I built it from the ground up and i was going to put instructions in the center of each portfolio page, but listened to the advice of my girlfriend not too! That will teach me...

I like the design but watch the performance. I have a fast broadband connection but the pages load slowly for me. Think about progress bars for long loading content.

Best of luck.

nsbca7

08/18/2005 05:23:42 PM · #10

Originally posted by MeThoS:

I built it from the ground up and i was going to put instructions in the center of each portfolio page, but listened to the advice of my girlfriend not too! That will teach me...

I am updating mine. I bought a template from AllWebCo Design

But ist was so inflexible. I would have had to rename all of my images chit like "gallery 1 - 8". The template was not a template, but a already built website that is very hard to customize. No tech support at all, no phone number, no replies from customer service emails, no refund. There is no way to contact the company once you have made the purchase.

I will build mine in Dreamweaver I guess.

Pixelstate

Apple iPhone

08/18/2005 05:24:02 PM · #11

Great Portfolio, not 100% sure about the 'soft' font and the navigation system. I have cable and it took to long for all the images to load before the rollovers worked... Thumbnails may be a better way to go... they can be small and very low-rez.

Take a look at my site for an example (not that I'm saying mine is excellent or anything, just a different approach...)

Good work

alanfreed

Nikon Z9

08/18/2005 05:25:31 PM · #12

Even if you set it up so the first image came up when you brought up the sections of the gallery, I think people would know enough to click the numbers to see more. It's confusing because the page just comes up blank. :)

Originally posted by MeThoS:

I built it from the ground up and i was going to put instructions in the center of each portfolio page, but listened to the advice of my girlfriend not too! That will teach me...

Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6

08/18/2005 05:29:07 PM · #13

the whole site is only 5.7 mb. it's mainly focused for art directors at advertising agencies with high speed internet. The main thing i was worried about was that the page header loaded quickly. Did it?

Nitin

Canon EOS-300D Rebel

08/18/2005 05:30:24 PM · #14

Originally posted by alansfreed:

^ what he said

Message edited by author 2005-08-18 17:30:59.

08/18/2005 05:36:43 PM · #15

Originally posted by vfwlkr:

Originally posted by alansfreed:
Even if you set it up so the first image came up when you brought up the sections of the gallery, I think people would know enough to click the numbers to see more. It's confusing because the page just comes up blank. :)

^ what he said

I'll have to come up with an idea for that then. :D I thought it would be intuitive for people to click the numbers

Dr.Confuser

Nikon D800

Canon EF 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 DO IS USM

08/18/2005 05:40:41 PM · #16

Originally posted by MeThoS:

Originally posted by vfwlkr:

Originally posted by alansfreed:
Even if you set it up so the first image came up when you brought up the sections of the gallery, I think people would know enough to click the numbers to see more. It's confusing because the page just comes up blank. :)

^ what he said

I'll have to come up with an idea for that then. :D I thought it would be intuitive for people to click the numbers

It's intuitive enough to click the numbers, but when you do, nothing happens until all the photos are loaded ... which takes some time. The Thumbnail point above had to do with load time, rather than intuition ... I think.

cpanaioti

Canon EOS-40D

08/18/2005 05:43:41 PM · #17

Originally posted by MeThoS:

Being in IT, the rule is don't assume anything. Now if your site is not for use by the general public and you have a target audience that should (key word) know better then you might get away with it.

08/18/2005 05:44:50 PM · #18

Originally posted by Digital Quixote:

Originally posted by MeThoS:

Originally posted by vfwlkr:

Originally posted by alansfreed:
Even if you set it up so the first image came up when you brought up the sections of the gallery, I think people would know enough to click the numbers to see more. It's confusing because the page just comes up blank. :)

^ what he said

I'll have to come up with an idea for that then. :D I thought it would be intuitive for people to click the numbers

It's intuitive enough to click the numbers, but when you do, nothing happens until all the photos are loaded ... which takes some time. The Thumbnail point above had to do with load time, rather than intuition ... I think.

the largest single image is a 176k .gif, Image ready doesn't output jpgs, at least I don't know how to make it output jpgs...

08/18/2005 06:00:21 PM · #19

The fuzzy type hurts my eyes and the site feels very slow even with broadband. Reducing the weight of the images or eliminating them and using CSS to style should help quite a bit.

I agree with what some others have said about the portfolio. I kept waiting for an image to come up at first. Even after when I checked some of the other portfolio sections it was confusing because they don't necessarily load in order so I was hovering over the 1 2 and 3 and nothing was coming up yet other numbers had loaded.

Also, you're close to getting the site to fit in an 800x600 environment without scroll bars. 800x590 won't fit because of space taken up by the browser itself. Since it seems like you're trying to make it fit in one screen at that resolution I would make it a little smaller.

You only have a partial DTD..

The full DTD should be...

Won't make much of a difference with this particular site but it is more correct. It will also help you out if you move toward making better use of CSS rather than relying on images.

08/18/2005 06:02:46 PM · #20

Originally posted by TechnoShroom:

The full DTD should be...

Won't make much of a difference with this particular site but it is more correct. It will also help you out if you move toward making better use of CSS rather than relying on images.

what does this do?

08/18/2005 06:08:12 PM · #21

Originally posted by MeThoS:

the largest single image is a 176k .gif, Image ready doesn't output jpgs, at least I don't know how to make it output jpgs...

Make sure the Optimize window is open and set to JPEG.

08/18/2005 06:10:17 PM · #22

Originally posted by MeThoS:

what does this do?

Tells the browser how to layout the page. Basically should it try to follow standards or should it revert back to the quirks mode used by early browsers.

alanfreed

Nikon Z9

08/18/2005 06:14:24 PM · #23

Originally posted by MeThoS:

the largest single image is a 176k .gif, Image ready doesn't output jpgs, at least I don't know how to make it output jpgs...

My point was about intuition... not thumbnail sizes. If I click "Advertising," for example, I expect to see something show up besides a row of numbers on the left. If you simply added some kind of image in the middle, instead of leaving it blank, it will be more intuitive.

Having said that, ImageReady will definitely output .jpgs, too. If memory serves, you just need to go to WINDOW -> OPTIMIZE and choose .jpg or .gif and the quality level.

08/18/2005 06:15:29 PM · #24

Originally posted by TechnoShroom:

Originally posted by MeThoS:
the largest single image is a 176k .gif, Image ready doesn't output jpgs, at least I don't know how to make it output jpgs...

Make sure the Optimize window is open and set to JPEG.

I don't see the option in output settings.