My New (Jan 12, 2012) Website

[Frank Petronio]

Thanks for the comments, it's good to know the pluses and minuses....

[Eric Rose]

I think the site looks great. Like that you have limited the number of images in each category to no more than 20. Also the edit is good. Loads fast as well which is a plus.

You can tell you are targeting art/image professionals (buyers not creators) with the look and feel. Well done!

[r.e.]

Just checked out the site on a MacBook 11" Air using wireless. The images load very slowly (in every case, I was watching the percentages as the image loaded). For whatever reason, the images on this site loaded almost instantaneously: http://www.brigittelacombe.com/index.php

By the way, here are more of Lacombe's images, of Meryl Streep, published yesterday on the web site Nowness: http://www.nowness.com/day/2012/1/10...p-leading-lady These also loaded much more quickly. Nowness is a relatively recent site owned by LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton.

[Tom J McDonald]

Frank's pictures are much better.

[cowanw]

The red arrow has an inconsistant function depending on the width of the picture on display.
I also prefer some tone behind text
It took me a while to figure out the thumnails. dumb me
Otherwise it is you to a tee!

[Frank Petronio]

I just tried to access it on an iPad using the link in the first post.

I got http://ipad.frankpetronio.com with the message that he server could not be found.

Then I tried the second link in the first post (the host, A Photo Folio), did a search for Petronio, and got not found.

I use click-to-pluggin to block Flash. If there's an html-5 version of a site available, the extension should automatically load it, but it's not happening. I get the blank Flash screen.

To their credit, they fixed this (I hope) late last night. I think presenting the HTML option as well.

For whatever reason, the images on this site loaded almost instantaneously

Oh I agree. But my images scale and can be viewed on a 30" monitor - which requires significantly larger jpgs than the ones in the Lacombe examples. The download speed is the trade-off, and viewing on an 11" MacBook Air is unfortunately the worst case, since the server can't figure out your screen rez and send smaller versions, like it does automatically with the mobile/tablet versions it auto-senses. In my case, most of my images are 150-300kb each, x 20 = 3-5mb download - ouch!

Thanks Tom - 25% commission coming ;-p

~Sigh~ it isn't perfect and it is ironic because my old site was one of the first W3C standards compliant, when I was in that biz I was big on accessibility. But in the case of approaching photo editors and art buyers, they are all going to be using fast/modern/large/Flash equipped computers to view these types of portfolio sites. None are going to be using XP and IE4 on XGA monitors, and none will be needing visual aids, readers, etc. Believe me, I hate Flash from a web design perspective or when it's poorly done, but for image presentations it does things I can't do otherwise.

The other factor here is that by using A Photo Folio, I got 97% of what I want/need for $1000 versus doing a custom site that might give me 99% for $5-10K. Some of our famous commercial photographers drop $20K on their sites and don't get the capabilities that a service can offer for far less.

This isn't a good solution for the casual user, or someone who needs a shopping cart, or who wants an integrated blog, etc.

[eddie]

the text is too small in the "about" and "print sales"

loads a bit slow.

the pdf portion contains many different images than the rest of your pages

[Mike Anderson]

...In my case, most of my images are 150-300kb each, x 20 = 3-5mb download - ouch!...

The framework could do a simple trick to speed things up in some cases which is to guess what the next image will be and pre-download it. That is if image #15 is selected, once image #15 is loaded and displayed the system will assume image #16 is likely next and begin downloading it.

It wouldn't hurt to tell A Photo Folio that performance is an issue and request they work on this optimization.

[Frank Petronio]

I think it preloads the entire gallery, so the delay is (usually) upfront.

[Peter De Smidt]

I like it. It might be a good idea, though, to have a way to reference an image, perhaps with a title or number. For instance, I really like the 6th image in the One Woman group, the one with a young lady sitting on a bed holding a laptop, but it would be nice to be able to reference it more easily.