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Thread: what happened to the midwest photo website?

  1. #21
    MIke Sherck's Avatar
    Join Date
    Mar 2002
    Location
    Elkhart, IN
    Posts
    1,312

    what happened to the midwest photo website?

    The new site seems to work correctly only if you are using Microsoft's Internet Explorer 6, which is not a surprise since it's written in MS's Visual Studio.Net 7.0 using their mangled HTML 4.0 generator. It's pretty ugly with Opera 7.54, which is what I usually use. Lots of text and little GIFs overlapping, etc. Functions in lists don't work properly in Opera: "more info" space for pictures is a gray square in every one I tried, links for other pages don't work, etc. It's a real pity that some of the lower tier of web design houses still haven't figured out how to write browser-agnostic code. Probably done by someone's kid: cheap but not terribly effective.

    Other things I disliked (some of which others have already mentioned only a few items per page with no way to tell it I'd like to see more items at a time, no "next" or "previous" links for lists (you have to click on the page number you want to see, which links don't work in Opera,) search doesn't work in Opera, "Contact Us" forms are scrambled badly in Opera, with tiny text boxes and overlapping text. I could live with the flaws, which are really usability concerns and I'm pretty flexible on that, but so much doesn't work outside of Internet Explorer that I'll probably avoid the site and just call Jim instead.

    Mike
    Politically, aerodynamically, and fashionably incorrect.

  2. #22

    Join Date
    Aug 2000
    Location
    Brookings OR
    Posts
    132

    what happened to the midwest photo website?

    30 percent of the sites I visit are designed on and for pcs. They look horrible on my Mac--if they work at all. Unfortunately, most web designers don't give a sh** about Mac users. It seems they are more interested in making special effects than making the site work for everyone.

  3. #23

    what happened to the midwest photo website?

    Though navigational links require more diligent bookkeeping, I think the site is a huge improvement over the old one. The old site was frame-happy and had several consistently broken/misdirected links.

    Here's my feedback for Jim/MPEX.... I see two glaring oversights in the new site:

    - The lack of a keyword search.

    - No provision for sorting results by mfr, price, focal length, etc.

    I personally applaud them for the effort and expense. I hope they have the resources to get the images loaded. Especially for used equipment. I browsed the old site frequently for used equipment, but didn't pull the trigger simply because I couldn't "see" what I was buying.

    FWIW, I use MSIE6, so I'm not seeing the errors.

  4. #24

    Join Date
    Sep 2003
    Location
    God's Country
    Posts
    2,080

    what happened to the midwest photo website?

    Paddy,

    I have to concur that it's terrible... I can't access much on their site for whatever reason! I use a Mac with OSX...

    My main reason for going onto the site was to see the new Dorff! Alas, such will not be the case!

    I hope Jim rectifies the situation soon.

    Cheers
    Life in the fast lane!

  5. #25

    Join Date
    Dec 1999
    Location
    Forest Grove, Ore.
    Posts
    4,675

    what happened to the midwest photo website?

    The thing I liked about the former mpex site was how the items were all lined up in a list. It was easy to see both the item and the price pretty much at the same time. They used a blue color for text that wasn't as stark. It was also easy to scan down the list to see the items in which you were interested.

    With their current site, the lettering is too small. Plus, I don't care for the way it scrolls. Because each item respires so much space, there's up to 17 windows for a single category. Also, the older website was subdivided into brands, which made it easier to search. Again, this makes it more difficult to scan.

    One good thing is that mpex appears to head in the direction of providing photos of each item. We didn't have that available on the older system. For my browser, I couldn't see the photos. But, it appears that's the intent. (Can others see the photos?)

    I agree. I much prefer to review the website for that in which I might be interested, and then call to make the order. It offers that personal touch. Plus, I don't like entering credit card info over the internet.

    Have to give them credit for trying to improve their site. That takes a lot of work. One way to do that is put a new system up and be on the alert for constructive feedback.

  6. #26

    Join Date
    Apr 2000
    Location
    Calgary
    Posts
    338

    what happened to the midwest photo website?

    How about a comparison with the KEH site?

  7. #27

    what happened to the midwest photo website?

    FWIW, I've exchanged email with Jim a couple of times about the new site. He's thrilled to have specific, constructive feedback from folks and they seem to be acting on it. The site rendered much better in Firefox on Tuesday than it did over the weekend and it's pretty close to rendering perfectly now, so they are making progress.

    If you have specific, useful things to say about the site (ie. Feature 'A' which currently works like this should work like this, and not: The site sucks, B&H's is better) I'm quite certain they'd love to hear it.

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