Spare me 5 minutes guvn'r?

[kneeshooter]

As part of an incremental development process and with the help of expert professionals (well, kingandy and berrega) I've been redesigning my website to make it less pretentious and in general a bit "leaner

Comments

Hope this helps, it's all meant to be constructive :)

[xerode]

I realise that a lot of these "criticisms" can be made to my own site, but that's been redesigned, albeit offline while I work on more important projects.

1. Yes, it keeps the main page from looking too busy, while separating content into clearly defined sections. Definitely cut the number of photos down to a max of the strongest 20 photos for each portfolio section.

2. As long as the images only cycle between the portfolio images (and not archive), then yes.

3/4. Personally I'd drop the white on black and definitely get rid of the monospaced serif text for the body text. Verdana is the nicest cross-browser screen font and failing that, Helvetica or Arial

Re: Hope this helps, it's all meant to be constructive :)

[anatosuchus]

Just as a counterpoint, although it's a tad small I like the monospaced font. The trouble with "Verdana being the best font" is that every bugger uses it and before you know it all web sites look the bloody same!

I think it complements they layout.

Re: Hope this helps, it's all meant to be constructive :)

[xerode]

I know what you mean about the "overuse" of Verdana, but I still use it because it's the only standard-compliant font designed for screen use. All the other fonts were designed many years before computers and this is one of the reasons serif fonts look so ugly at such a small size.

Re: Hope this helps, it's all meant to be constructive :)

[kingandy]

"do not use JavaScript to display content"

ITYM "do not use JavaScript as the only way of displaying content". Each of those thumbnail links has a HREF that works fine as a url for accessing the image (eg. http://205.214.80.200/~disturbi/stage/disturbing.php?imager=images/music/nma_london_dec04/CRW_3146.jpg ), which the JS cancels after it's run its image switch thing (return false). if js doesn't work for some reason (eg. you've got it turned off or are a crawler) that link'll fire.

This was instituted because kneeshooter wanted the thumbnail bar to scroll and stay scrolled when you changed the image, so reloading the page with a different image was undesirable, but had to be available in case JS was disabled.

[anatosuchus]

Some answers:
1. It's probably a good idea. I'm afraid the separation means little to me but I can see why someone might want a general set of examples of your work.
2/3. Looks good to me, although I find the font size is at the lower limit for my comfort.
4. I like the design, though I'm not convinced by the horizontal line of thumbs. I have loads of dead space on the screen under the thumbs, but am still forced to use a scroll bar to navigate horizontally across them. Multiple rows would be better IMHO. Also, see above regarding font size.
5. Main image size is fine, thumbs should be at least 50% bigger, if not 75-100%.
6. Probably. On what grounds are you choosing the images? Personally I like to have loads to leaf through...
7. Yes.
8. No. The single column seems rather wasteful of space and requires a lot of scrolling. Can you do it in 2-3 columns (if the browser window is, say, 1024 or wider)?
9. Yes.
10. No time now, hope the above was helpful.

FYI, I am using Firefox 1.0.4 under Linux, at 1280x1024 on a somewhat budget TFT

[agentinfinity]

I agree with number 8

[oldnick]

1: Yes. Keeping all the pictures online for the really interested is good, but having them all directly fromt he Portfolio was a bit of an overkill

[anatosuchus]

Good point on 8 - drop some alphabetical links in there!

[kingandy]

"If it's limited to the number of thumbs visible (14) - yes."

The entire page was coded around the notion of that bar of thumbnails scrolling. He seems to have changed his mind since. ;p

[kneeshooter]

Yeah - I know. I'm an awful customer :-) When this thread has settled down a bit I'd like to have another conversation with you about design tweaks if that's ok.

[agentinfinity]

I'm not much good at the technical stuff, but using images as links is much more pleasant visually and easier to sort though I think. The new front page is therefore an improvement, as it immediately involves the user in your pictures - I didn't have to think about how your navigation worked to access photos.

Amongst people, music and places, where do your larp pictures go?

[kneeshooter]

Somewhere else :-)

In practice I've picked the LARP pics I liked and put them under "People" (or will do).

I might put a new section up for LARP pics - hen there are more than "loads I took at Maelstrom and live on Matt's site". See how Odyssey goes I guess.

[kneeshooter]

It's pretty easy to alt - all either db generated, or is run through a find/replace application as part of the workflow. I'll get on the case.