Final cut at site - comments please!

[Ed Richards]

http://www.epr-art.com

There are still some old pages to convert, but I have a general layout now, and an auto indexed gallery page, so I can easily add the rest of the galleries as I covert/build them. This is the black and white stuff, the color stuff is a lower priority. I will add the dancing priests and bloody pig heads later.

When I get everything added, I will start turning on Paypal, which is already wired into the pages.

[Oren Grad]

Just took a quick peek before I log off for the evening... Navigation seems to be working OK. Just a couple of formatting/style points: On the home page, the gallery titles and subtitles look scrunched together - a smidge more space between the lines would help a lot, I think. Also, the blue-on-black labels on the Katrina special page are close to impossible to read on my screen. But is that page is supposed to go away when you're done?

Congratulations on getting it all up and running. :)

[Jim Michael]

Renders well on Safari. Initial page load is a tad slow. The images look great.

[Ed Richards]

Owen,

Yes, that will go away.

Jim,

That is the trade off - I use better JPGs for the look, but they load slower.

[Frank Petronio]

It looks a lot better. I don't care for dark portfolio sites (black or grey backgrounds) but whatever you want, you Goth.

In general, while you're not a graphic or web designer you need to think like a (good) one... I think you need to experiment with the size of the type to find the right balance between legibility and it not overpowering the site. Think in terms of establishing a consistent hierarchy of type, 2-4 sizes/styles, keeping it sans-serif and simple.

Right now, the menu items are horsey by a factor of 2-3x what they need to be to be legible. Also, I find it disturbing to have the menu change as I go through the site. When I am looking at your photos I should still be able to hit the About and Contact menu items but they are missing. Drop the size of the menu and keep it consistent. Put the sub navigation for the gallery underneath the "higher-up" main nav. Hierarchy ;-)

The text columns are too narrow for the size of the type, either drop the size or widen the column and shrink/center the image.

I have no f-ing clue as to how you're building it, but it would be nice to have the captions at a consistent distance below the photos.

You have to judge the jpgs individually, ones with lots of smooth areas can be saved at a lower quality. Unfortunately it is the busy ones (grass, details) that benefit the most from higher quality saves, but that only makes them larger. That's life.

I know this isn't your regular job and it is a great effort, I can see all the labor you've put in!

How is it going to be for updating? That's why I probably wouldn't build a static gallery in a modern site these days, I would seriously consider using some sort of service like Zen-Folio or even Flickr to serve the image galleries. But now that you've got 100 hours into it I am sure you don't like hearing that! lol

And if you really want to sell prints, put a little more into the bio and get a good picture of yourself. Art collectors, even bottom feeding cheapskates, like to know the artist is a real human.

[DaveAlbano]

Looks good and flows well with Blackberry Storm.

[IanG]

The text is far too large, and there's too much scrolling up/down needed.

That front page should fit on the screen without the image disappearing off the bottom. See attached file. (The width is fine I'm using a wider sreen on a laptop)

Ian

[Bruce Schultz]

Ed,
Looks nice. The photos are spectacular.
Not all captions are showing up in the slide show. Also, misspelling of Presidio and cannon.

[Ed Richards]

Lots of great tips! I am going to be on the road - maybe even take a picture - but will work on them next week.

Ian - the perpetual problem - the image fits fine on my desktop, but not my laptop. My academic site (http://biotech.law.lsu.edu/) is built for the lowest common denominator - you can read it with Lynx - but I gave this up for the art stuff.

[Doug Dolde]

Never say "final cut". Mine has been changing since 2002 and is far better for it.

If you used Slideshow Pro for galleries you could have scalable full screen images to fit any screen.

[Ed Richards]

Good point Doug. I should say current cut.:-) I put up my first pages in 1995, and it has been constant change since then.

Frank,

It is not static, in that I use Lightroom as a content manager. It is looking at my master PSD files, and generates the WWW pages based on custom templates in the Web module. Thus I can edit a file, or change the metadata, then just republish, and the site will be rebuilt based on the new image info. I can drag and drop images into the collections that the templates look at, and I can create more templates pretty simply, thus it is easy to add a new gallery, or change the content of a gallery. I can also add galleries based on my digital files, like the pig slaughter, all from the same content management system. The downside is that it not real flexible, but I have pretty good control, and, as you noted, this is not my day job.:-)

[csant]

My academic site (http://biotech.law.lsu.edu/) is built for the lowest common denominator - you can read it with Lynx - but I gave this up for the art stuff.

Why would you "give up" on that? Why wouldn't you instead "build on top" of that, i.e. "gracefully degrade" to the "lowest common denominator"? Your galleries, e.g., cannot be opened without javascript enabled - but all you really do is load a new URL. Why would you have to force javascript just for that? The funny thing is, once you actually are in the selected gallery, you can perfectly well view it without javascript enabled :)

I am not saying javascipt is bad - in fact, the script greatly enhances viewing the galleries. But you still give the "poor suckers" a chance, and I like that.

That being said, I agree with what was said further up - at least on the front page, the huge text penalizes the image, and that's a pity. Besides that, it really looks great, and your photography is very inspiring! Bravo!

/c :)

[IanG]

Ian - the perpetual problem - the image fits fine on my desktop, but not my laptop. My academic site (http://biotech.law.lsu.edu/) is built for the lowest common denominator - you can read it with Lynx - but I gave this up for the art stuff.

I agree it's a big problem, I think it's worth looking at website statistics to see what are the most common screen resolutions used by visitors.

It's worth looking at the figures here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Display_resolution). One set is for Internet use, below I think is new screen sales.

My own site stats show 41 different screen resolutions used plus 2% unknown, and 57% of viewers are at something x 900 or less.

It's difficult choices getting the balance right.

Ian