exploring news ways on web presentation

[David_Senesac]

This last month I've done two long road trips down to Southern Calfornia desert areas working the spring wildflower blooms. Since returning from the last trip about 10 days ago, I worked on a web based chronicle for my road trips that I wanted to break some new ground in presentation. Because I hand code in html/css/javascript instead of using canned html programming applications, I have somewhat more flexibility for doing things different. Of course different doesn't necessarily equate to better and that is a reason I'm posting herein as I'd be interested in any comments or opinions about the page and functional structure of what I've created since there are a fair number of members herein with savvy web talents.

I personally don't have a problem with the usual canned formats people use and for the most part, standard blog and gallery pages are proven and familiar to those who use and visit such web pages. Most don't tend to bore visitors with anything too lengthy nor include all that many images that are usually sprinkled down a page, sometimes with options to select larger sizes. People surfing the web often have limited time to dally and there are many others that in today's cultural mindset are simply impatient with anything beyond a few amusing images with brief one-liners for descriptions. Those are likely to spend 30 seconds on my site, see it is 9 pages long with considerable text, gasp, and immediately move on to places more fertile for their amusement. Some others may be interested but not have the time so will come back later when they do. However there is something to be said for novelty that breaks new ground that has the potential to attract some visitors simply because it provides something novel and different.

On my below web homepage, one can select the sub-page link to this feature at page top right:

Spring 2008 Wildflower Trip Chronicles April 2008

That brings up a Contents Page. At lower right is a link to a READme sub-page that explains the more novel items. One thing that will interest photographers is the way I've used thumbnails at the page sides on the chronicle pages to mouseover actuate larger sized images that then load into one's browser. That allows pages to load from a server with many small thumbnail images instead of the huge amount of bytes necessary to load full images. I could have set it up to actuate bringing up the full images by simply Mouse clicking thumbnails, however because the thumbnails take up so little page space on the edges of pages, it is somewhat functional to use mouseover actuation to open and mouseout to automatically close those windows that at least I'm expecting will tend to make readers open up images more often as they read down pages simply because it takes far less effort. One thing the currently evolved World Wide Web Internet has over newspaper and magazine media is the ability to provide more numbers of and better quality images to complement features. Thus I'm trying to more effectively make use of that advantage.

My Contents Page is admittedly rather cluttered since I include a gallery at page bottom. The gallery uses 250 pixel wide thumbnails or twice usual size in order to simply be different from what people usually see in gallery pages that I'm hoping plants a notion of more detail with large format. 250 pixels is about at the practical limit given common XVGA sized windows displays on most people's computers. That allows 4 image columns in the gallery that is what I would consider minimal while necessarily making them rather packed together. Accordingly used a contrasty black background to make that view more reasonably.

[Gordon Moat]

You have very nice images, and my opinion is those should be more upfront. I have seen enough studies, and spoken with enough experts, that indicate many people just don't scroll. Your links are all over the place, as you mentioned, but the problem I find is that I simply don't know where to start. Perhaps figuring out a way to simplify what you now have . . . the idea of less is more. Honestly, when your page first opened, and all I see is lots of text and your picture, I thought I had landed on a real estate or MLM website.

If a picture tells a thousand words, this is what you should have up front. Again, just my opinion on this, but if what you want people to see and consider buying, or to consider hiring you for a shoot, then you need to put those images at the beginning, and do it in a prominent and obvious way.

I am not a web guru, and I hired someone to help me design my current website, though I am able to do my own updates as needed. What I have is minimalist and geared towards commercial imaging and advertising photography. I don't suggest copying what I have done, but I have addressed one of the issues you point out; namely that people often have little time, or have little patience, and want to quickly get to the images. After that they might read a little. I was also grateful to have two creatives at Sony (extremely busy people) review my site and give me the thumbs up on cleanliness, ease of use, and quickness . . . so I got the simple aspect correct to cater towards busy people. If you are doing art print photography, then perhaps your viewers have more time, so you have more room to add content.

I went with what I call the three second rule. This comes from doing music CD covers, in that you have less than three seconds to get the attention of someone browsing through music CDs, and that happens at the cover. It might sound crazy, but it seems to work for the majority of people.

Anyway, wait and see what others right. Do not simply go with my opinion on this. When I was honing my portfolio, if I heard the same things from three different people, then I would act upon it. So hopefully you will get more responses soon. You have great images, and I think they need to be more prominent.

Ciao!

Gordon Moat Photography

[Scott Knowles]

Do you check your Web pages for W3C standard formatting and code? They're usually a feature in Web design/development packages or available on Websites, like W3C's Validator.

Just wondering if that's the cause of problems with the image(s) display actions. I tested the pages with Safari, Netscape, Firefox, Opera and a few others (on Mac G5) and they all treat the image map and script differently, which is often a sign to find a common way to ensure near identical presenation and use across platforms and browsers. Safari, being the least robust and more W3C complaint of the browsers, as I understand, and is usually the best test Web pages.

Just a thought. I like the images, thanks for sharing.

[David_Senesac]

Gee, Scott why didn't I think of that? Well probably because a few months ago I moved several hundred html files across that w3c validator that was I would describe "painful", so that experience probably was pushed into my sub-conscious, haha. Thanks loads for reminding me its part of the software process. It took me an hour to fix various scattered typos. So now all 9 pages in my feature pass the w3c validator.

Worst was leaving out a table row tag on my contents page. I'm sure that would have made the different browsers unhappy. You are most welcome to try again since you seem to have access to different browsers that I don't have access too. In any case I expect some weirdness with some even if the code validates. Setting my code up with IF statements for the different browsers like pro webmasters is however beyond my talents at the moment. And then I didn't have any ALT tags inside any of the anchors where I used javascript. So putting alt tags into a couple hundred image anchors was the main thing I had to write on the blackboard for being a bad boy. As mentioned I ran all my site files through there a few months ago after a major upgrade. That was painful requiring writing a bunch of sed scripts just to fix it all.

Thanks for the input Gordon, your inputs are always well posed and insightful. It sounds like you didn't reach the chronicle feature I tried to steer you to and instead floundered a bit on my home page instead. Yup those remarks about the long scrolling are the conventional wisdom of webmeisters though I have good reason to disagree with that because it seems to be applied to vaguely across the board. A long gallery thumbnail index is a whole different animal than a long page of monotonous text that such assessments seem to be based on. But that's fodder for another discussion. It does remind me I ought to bring that discussion up on a web meisters board I lurk on.

Well I'm apt to be escaping into the field again pretty imminently for a day or three. . ...David

[darr]

David,

I like your photography very much, but your site looks cluttered. Maybe you should consider a template so as to work within the boundaries of what others may find more organized. Just my 2 cents.

Best,
Darr

[roteague]

I'll have to agree with Darr. I would simplify the site, concentrate on the pictures. The narratives are great, but they take up too much of the website. I would suspect most people coming to your site are interested in photos, not blog entries - personally, I've enjoyed reading the ones I have read. The one thing I dislike however, is opening the pictures via a mouseover. I have popups blocked on all my computers, and so do a lot of other people - most people hate popups.

[paulr]

Honestly, if I called up that page and wasn't contractually obligated to dig for information there, I'd let out a loud shriek and hit the back button as fast as possible.

Seriously. Graphically, it's a horror show! I can't comment on the images because the home page scared me away.

As a counterexample, the best photo website I've seen in a long time, in terms of basic design and fresh approach, belongs to one of our own:
www.struangray.com

[Jack Brauer]

Hi David,

I agree with Gordon about the homepage - it's hard to figure out where to go right off the bat. I'd almost suggest flipping it so that the 4x5 gallery thumbs are on top, and all those links and stuff are on the bottom.

Also, one suggestion: It would pay off bigtime to learn just a little PHP... specifically how to use the "include" tag. Dealing with hundreds of HTML pages is a nightmare, and unnecessary. You can save so much time by putting any redundant code into a php include script.

You've got some awesome shots, btw.

[Jerzy Pawlowski]

Great photos as usual on your site.
Regarding web design I agree with most of above. I would add that I would center the page, it is left aligned (two smaller margins are better than one large on the right).
Other points: I prefer thin black or white frame around the image. Your 3-D type frame in popup window is too distracting for me. Images should replace each other in popup window, popups on your site are mushrooming (at least in Firefox).

[David_Senesac]

darr >>>"...David, I like your photography very much, but your site looks cluttered...."

roteague >>>"I'll have to agree with Darr...."

Jack Brauer >>>"Hi David, I agree with Gordon about the homepage - it's hard to figure out where to go right off the bat."

Thanks for that input. Of course I didn't start this post for comments on my main web homepage layout. I've heard those comments from several people in the past and expect to in the future. And some visitors do react just like paulr. On the other hand I've had comments totally opposite including some from web programmers who tend to get tired seeing the same structures all the time like the one paulr linked. Or some technical outdoor folk who like all the natural science information. It comes with the territory of trying to be different. The top of my home page is cluttered with dense information as you've, all noted. So it doesn't look like any of your pages. It is specifically designed to be like that because I don't buy into the convention wisdom that information ought be spread out in a hieracrchial manner but instead prefer to put all the more important items densely right at the top of my home page where a person can branch out immediately to wherever. That is also why all my index is only on the homepage and not set up in the usual hierarchial manner. Such does require one to slow down and read the links instead of looking for those usual cutesy radio buttons like "Contact" or "Biography" etc.

Being different always seems to grate against some people. Even something as simply as using text links instead of radio buttons that look like your pushing a button on your stereo is enough to likely make some flee. Just like when several years ago I was one of the first people to start using 800 pixel or such size images on my website once DSL began its rise when the status quo was 300 or 400 pixels mainly as a legacy of slow dialup. All sorts of rather warm remarks as to why I ought not do so as though thieves would run rampant over my site or people would abandon it because of loading speed. Of course such is much more common today. I've been in hardware electronic engineering for more than three decades so experimentation is familiar to me and having a thick skin as well as an open mind is part of begin receptive to creative processes. Please continue to tell me what you do or don't like even if it is more of the above.

roteague >>>"..The one thing I dislike however, is opening the pictures via a mouseover. I have popups blocked on all my computers, and so do a lot of other people - most people hate popups."

That is a very valid and important comment. I'm not sure if popup blocking simply works by inhibiting mouseovers. If so I might have to add a note for people to temporarily turn that off while viewing those pages. I like most people personally quite dislike ads that use mouseovers to suddenly start running some java function getting in the way of why I am looking at a page. Unfortunately that may be the key element that would make my experiment unusable. Not because people would necessarily dislike the way I've implemented that functionally but rather because some obnoious marketing types have used it to annoy a great many people much like spammers have with email. ...David