Site Ratings & Reviews - Critique request: a second site I'm putting together

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Critique request: a second site I'm putting together

Steve Gibons

2006-03-17, 6:18 pm

I designed my site with your help, (www.stevegibons.com) and now I'm
working on a second site for an artist friend of mine. All criticism
appreciated.

http://www.jovansart.com

thanks,

steve

mbstevens

2006-03-17, 6:18 pm

Steve Gibons wrote:
> I designed my site with your help, (www.stevegibons.com) and now I'm
> working on a second site for an artist friend of mine. All criticism
> appreciated.
>
> http://www.jovansart.com

Who will sit through the whole slide show? Why don't you give
the visitor thumbnail/enlargement pairs to click through. That way
viewers can choose what they want to see instead of being presented
things in the order _you_ want them to see the images. Less waiting
will be required, and people without javascript won't be stuck with
only one image.

Upkeep will be easier if you get rid of all the spans
(spanitis) and put classes or ids in a separate style sheet.
If you decide you just have to keep all that javascript, that
should be shoved out to a separate file as well. The reason for
all this is that once you get past this need to do everything
on a single page, all of the pages will be able to access the
common style and js files, making upkeep much easier.
--
mbstevens
http://www.mbstevens.com/howtothumb/

Steve Gibons

2006-03-17, 6:18 pm

mbstevens wrote:
> Steve Gibons wrote:
>
> Who will sit through the whole slide show? Why don't you give
> the visitor thumbnail/enlargement pairs to click through.

There're a couple of text links at the top of the page to do that.
Evidentally that's not clear.

> Upkeep will be easier if you get rid of all the spans
> (spanitis) and put classes or ids in a separate style sheet.

Of course I'll do that.

I guess a server-side script would be the thing, eh?

steve

mbstevens

2006-03-17, 10:16 pm

Steve Gibons wrote:
> mbstevens wrote:
>
>
>
> There're a couple of text links at the top of the page to do that.
> Evidentally that's not clear.

Good, you do have a thumbnail gallery. I didn't see those at all.
Maybe you should get the links out of a centered paragraph and make
them contrast with the background more. Saying "click" is usually
a bad idea. The text in the links should be enough.

>
>
>
> Of course I'll do that.
>
> I guess a server-side script would be the thing, eh?

To do what? I'm not sure what you're asking here.

Steve Gibons

2006-03-18, 3:16 am

mbstevens wrote:
> Steve Gibons wrote:
[...]>>> Upkeep will be easier if you get rid of all the spans[color=darkred]
>
> To do what? I'm not sure what you're asking here.

To do the slide show without javascript.

Albert Wiersch

2006-03-18, 6:20 pm

There are some potential HTML issues in the page that you might want to
fix/address:
http://online.htmlvalidator.com/php...stevegibons.com

For example, there's no "body" tag. It's a good idea to use one even though
it may not technically be required.

--
Albert Wiersch

"Steve Gibons" <ChicagoZouave@XXXXXXXXXX> wrote in message
news:0BBSf.5502$Bj7.4796@newsread2.news.pas.earthlink.net...
>I designed my site with your help, (www.stevegibons.com) and now I'm
>working on a second site for an artist friend of mine. All criticism
>appreciated.
>
> http://www.jovansart.com
>
> thanks,
>
> steve

mbstevens

2006-03-18, 6:20 pm

Steve Gibons wrote:

> To do the slide show without javascript.

http://cgi.resourceindex.com/Progra...ay/Slide_Shows/
....and there is a similar site for PHP.

....however, I don't really object to using javascript to do it so
long as you have a clear way to get to the thumbnail pages you
already have written. I would make the links more visible.
Are you sure the slide show _actually_ adds anything to the site?

Carolyn Marenger

2006-03-18, 6:20 pm

Steve Gibons wrote:

> I designed my site with your help, (www.stevegibons.com) and now I'm
> working on a second site for an artist friend of mine. All criticism
> appreciated.
>
> http://www.jovansart.com
>
> thanks,
>
> steve

Steve,

Here goes...

Again I like it. You do have artistic talent. There are some small
technical issues that you may want to address.

1. The initial font size is somewhat small, so I enlarged it and text
started to flow all over the place. Your title block at the top appears to
be a set size. As the font grows, the text flows onto the picture and the
about the artist sections.

2. The 2005 works and 2004 and earlier works links could use a little more
contrast to make them easier to see. The light grey makes them stand out -
initially as a couple of holes in the black text. Upon looking at the
holes, then I saw the links.

3. I like the slide show. Do the paintings have names? If so, can they be
inserted as a caption along with a title for the art. That could make it
more accessible for visually impaired viewers.

4. Server timed out when I tried to view 2005 gallery. You might need to
get a host with a little more oomph.

5. 2004 gallery - Nice layout, although I don't normally like frames. What
about a background behind the artwork on the right? Pick a colour that
shows off the are like any good frame does. It should be fairly easy to
have a fancier frame as well, not just a grey, green, or white background.

6. 2005 Gallery worked this time. 2004 was a nicer layout, even with the
frames. When clicking on a thumbnail it leads to a plain white page with
the artwork onthe left side of the screen. This could use a bunch more
artistic thought.

7. Back to the front. Very few people need to be told to click on a link.
Bringing the two galleries out into a 'menu' might make these options a
little easier to find and use.

8. Consider replacing some of the spans with headers <h1> and other
appropriate tags. The tags not only specify an alternate visual appearance
for portions of the content, but they are also used be aural browsers to
change the emphasis when reading. They can also be used for indexing and
related purposes - if they are used.

That is about it for now.

Carolyn
--
Carolyn Marenger

Galen

2006-03-18, 6:20 pm

In news:0BBSf.5502$Bj7.4796@newsread2.news.pas.earthlink.net,
Steve Gibons had this to say:

My reply is at the bottom of your sent message:

> I designed my site with your help, (www.stevegibons.com) and now I'm
> working on a second site for an artist friend of mine. All criticism
> appreciated.
>
> http://www.jovansart.com
>
> thanks,
>
> steve

Again, I like it. Depending on your hosting company you may well have an
option to install one of several image galleries with just a couple of
clicks and then customize them as much as you'd like to build the entire
site based on that. Coupled with one of the (also potentially click>install
scripts) cart processing tools they could even sell prints online fairly
simply. If your control panel has Fantastico (or something similar) then you
can probably find all sorts of fun things to do in there.

For an artistic site, assuming work is still being created, then a
newsletter might also be interesting. Maybe keeping them in touch with their
potential fans and/or clients.

The use of JavaScript to code the slideshow is okay and the images loaded
quick enough for my taste. Maybe an option to stop the slideshow? Maybe even
an option to click on the images in the slideshow if wanted to see them
larger.

The jump in colors/style at the guestbook is astonishing and hurts my eyes.
I went ahead and tested the script though... Erf... It really hurt my
eyeballs. There is no link to the home page at the guestbook either. Back
and URL trimming works just fine but people seem (for the most part) more
inclined to use the mouse.

There's no evidence of price for prints, lithographs, etc...

Going to the earlier works page we again have an eyeball ruining experience.
The layout there isn't consistent with the layout for the 2005 works.
Consistency is, to me at any rate, a good thing meaning that when I go to
another section that's containing the same type of content I expect to be
able to navigate it in the same manner as all the other sections that
contain that same style of content. I'm pretty sure there's no standard
defining that but it's just what I personally like to see.

All-in-all it's fairly nice from my views though I can't really be
considered an expert at such things.

Galen
--
http://www.whathostingshould.be - We are what hosting SHOULD be.

Jim Moe

2006-03-18, 6:20 pm

Steve Gibons wrote:
> I designed my site with your help, (www.stevegibons.com) and now I'm
> working on a second site for an artist friend of mine. All criticism
> appreciated.
>
> http://www.jovansart.com
>
Does not validate because of character set conflicts. It helps to add
something like this to the <head> section:
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
Change "charset" to suit.

I personally do not like blinky things. So I would have preferred a link
to a slide show rather than needing to click on something to stop it.
"Click here". <sigh>

The text contrast is rather low. The background is too dark.
The text almost completely disappears on mouseover.
The body text size is set to 80% of my preference. If you want to view
smaller text, set it smaller on *your* display, not mine.
The .banner1 is set to a fixed size. When I enlarge the font size so it
is comfortable to me, the text in the banner flows into the images and
text below it. Use ems to set the height.
Fixed width design.
Unnecessary use of absolute positioning.
There are a few places where you recreate HTML markup: the <hx>
elements. In the header "" should be <h1>, not
'<div class="banner2"><p class=center><span style="font-size: 201%;">'.
The same applies to "About the Artist": <h2> is appropriate.

2005 gallery:
The visual style of the gallery is not the same as the Home page.
There are ways to layout a gallery without tables. They have the
advantage that the rows wrap to fit the size of the viewport.

2004 gallery:
The "Return to Jovans..." link opens a new window. Why?

--
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Steve Gibons

2006-03-18, 6:20 pm

mbstevens wrote:
> Steve Gibons wrote:
>
>
> http://cgi.resourceindex.com/Progra...ay/Slide_Shows/
>
> ...and there is a similar site for PHP.
>
> ...however, I don't really object to using javascript to do it so
> long as you have a clear way to get to the thumbnail pages you
> already have written. I would make the links more visible.
> Are you sure the slide show _actually_ adds anything to the site?

We have gotten one gallery show through the website. The gallery owners
didn't see the text link and loved the slide show and the fact that it
starts on its own. I was surprised. The audience for this website is
often not at all computer savvy, they might not even recognize a text link.

I think the best solution for this is to make the slide show image
clickable to the same image in the thumbnail/frame view. With the js I'm
using that means entering a link for every image separately. A headache
to modify later. I'm pretty new at this but fairly adept at adapting
things to my needs. I like this js script through because the images are
preloaded during the previous image's display.

s

Steve Gibons

2006-03-18, 6:20 pm

Thanks to you all for the comments. I can't get my head around a couple
things (among others). First what does relative positioning accomplish?
I've read the Wc3 bit on it and a couple others, but still. (der...)

Second, how do I deal with the image on my page when the size is brought
up or down by the user? Of course its size doesn't change, and the
overflow: hidden tag doesn't hide. What do I do?

Or do I have the wrong paradigm?

Thanks,

Steve

Steve Gibons

2006-03-18, 6:20 pm

Jim Moe wrote:
> Steve Gibons wrote:
> Does not validate because of character set conflicts. It helps to add
> something like this to the <head> section:
> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
> Change "charset" to suit.
>
> I personally do not like blinky things. So I would have preferred a link
> to a slide show rather than needing to click on something to stop it.
> "Click here". <sigh>
>
> The text contrast is rather low. The background is too dark.
> The text almost completely disappears on mouseover.
> The body text size is set to 80% of my preference. If you want to view
> smaller text, set it smaller on *your* display, not mine.
> The .banner1 is set to a fixed size. When I enlarge the font size so it
> is comfortable to me, the text in the banner flows into the images and
> text below it. Use ems to set the height.
> Fixed width design.
> Unnecessary use of absolute positioning.
> There are a few places where you recreate HTML markup: the <hx>
> elements. In the header "" should be <h1>, not
> '<div class="banner2"><p class=center><span style="font-size: 201%;">'.
> The same applies to "About the Artist": <h2> is appropriate.
>
> 2005 gallery:
> The visual style of the gallery is not the same as the Home page.
> There are ways to layout a gallery without tables. They have the
> advantage that the rows wrap to fit the size of the viewport.
>
> 2004 gallery:
> The "Return to Jovans..." link opens a new window. Why?

You have exposed me. The gallery pages are incredibly ugly and I will
revamp the whole sight so it has the same look everywhere. I will have
to redo the the home page, then apply the style sheet to the rest.

Sorry about the multiple posts.

steve

kchayka

2006-03-18, 6:20 pm

Steve Gibons wrote:
>
> http://www.jovansart.com

I don't really like the gray background. The paintings use a lot of
browns, and I'm not wild about how they look on gray. You do want a
muted color so it won't distract from the art, but I'm not sure gray is
the best choice.

What's with this in your stylesheet?
div.container {
height: 200em;
}

I can't think of any reason why you would want to do this. It has no
positive effect on the display, AFAICT. I kept scrolling down the home
page, but nothing was there.

There is also excessive horizontal scrolling on the home page. You must
use a much smaller default text size than I do, and perhaps a larger
window size along with it. Using ems to set the width of the image
container is inappropriate. The content is pixel-based, so a width in px
units would be much more suitable.

You must be undecided on how to present the thumbnail galleries, since
the 2 you have are styled completely differently from each other. You
should avoid the use of frames, but using them in an image gallery is
less bad than most other uses. The layout of the 2005 gallery is pretty
boring.

--
Reply email address is a bottomless spam bucket.
Please reply to the group so everyone can share.

Jim Moe

2006-03-20, 6:34 pm

Steve Gibons wrote:
> Thanks to you all for the comments. I can't get my head around a couple
> things (among others). First what does relative positioning accomplish?
> I've read the Wc3 bit on it and a couple others, but still. (der...)
>
Your layout does not need any of the positioning you've employed. Take a
look at <http://www.sohnen-moe.com/test/test.html>. It has a single
float:left and no positioning.

--
jmm (hyphen) list (at) sohnen-moe (dot) com
(Remove .AXSPAMGN for email)

Steve Gibons

2006-03-21, 6:17 pm

Jim Moe wrote:
> Steve Gibons wrote:
> Your layout does not need any of the positioning you've employed. Take a
> look at <http://www.sohnen-moe.com/test/test.html>. It has a single
> float:left and no positioning.
>

Jim, Thank you tons! This was just what I needed to understand.
Do I understand this correctly?

..textbox h2 refers to <h2> within .textbox, and
..textbox p refers to elements in <p>

..textbox {
border: 1px solid black; /* etc */
}

..textbox h2 {
text-align: left; font-size: 150%; font-weight: bold;
}

..textbox p { text-indent: .6em; margin: 0; }

So if I had, say,

..blahbox
something: value; /* etc */
}
..blahbox p { text-indent: 1em; margin: .2em;}

the <p>'s in .blahbox would be different than those in .textbox?

Hopefully,

Steve

Jim Moe

2006-03-21, 6:17 pm

Steve Gibons wrote:
>
> Jim, Thank you tons! This was just what I needed to understand.
> Do I understand this correctly?
> .textbox h2 refers to <h2> within .textbox, and
> .textbox p refers to elements in <p>
>
Yes. It is the Cascading part of CSS (Cascading Style Sheets).
>
> So if I had, say,
> .blahbox p { text-indent: 1em; margin: .2em;}
> the <p>'s in .blahbox would be different than those in .textbox?
>
Yes, for those properties you specify. Otherwise it inherits whatever
styles are defined in the parent which could be the default styles.

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Steve Gibons

2006-03-21, 6:17 pm

Jim Moe wrote:
> Steve Gibons wrote:
>

[..]

> Yes. It is the Cascading part of CSS (Cascading Style Sheets).
[...]
[color=darkred]
> Yes, for those properties you specify. Otherwise it inherits whatever
> styles are defined in the parent which could be the default styles.
>

Jim, Thanks again, my learning just took a nice leap ahead.

steve

Jim Moe

2006-03-21, 10:16 pm

Steve Gibons wrote:
>
> Jim, Thanks again, my learning just took a nice leap ahead.
>
:-)

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