I used to be all strident like this but then I realized that it was to my advantage that you suckers keep making dumb websites.
I used to be all strident like this but then I realized that it was to my advantage that you suckers keep making dumb websites.
So can someone give examples of photo sites that are not stuck in the 90s ?
My photo site is certainly built with techniques from the 90s, but it supports a family in the SF Bay area, and it is my only sales channel.
Web sites as the only sales channel seldom do well without a great amount of investment in marketing and promotion. As an addition to existing sales channels (be the sales commercial or art/decorative) or as a supporting piece in a company's marketing, or customer service, web sites can be profitable or money saving.
In the 90's commerce was cumbersome and costly. Over the last 3 or 4 years 'web 2.0' has defined a popular trend and it can be found represented in flicker, or most any photo blog. Web 2.0 is a current trend, but not a clear solution for someone who is marketing their skills as photographer of ________ or trying to sell their work. Other than technology and process (what I outlined is an approach called Information Architecture and there are many others) not a lot has changed for the commercial and art photogs. To say a site is from the 1990's probably means that it is just ugly.
There is nothing visualy or functionally 21st century about Photomax's site. If anything the fact that the page refreshes on every click would make it more of a 90's implementation. The site is very nice. It might be a good thing that it dosen't use iFrames/ajax, client side stored data or have a comment feature under every image/artical or whatever is relatively new or fashionable.
I will let Max speak for himself, but from my perspective, it is the separation of content, style and behaviour in the form of table-less, semantically correct structure in combination with CSS styling and positioning that makes a site (any site) 21st century.
AJAX is one of the Web 2.0 technologies that certainly has many uses, but it is not necessary for the site to be modern and efficient. Insisting on it at all costs will only turn it into another Flash.
You've lost me -- semantically correct structure? His site could be made using w3c standards/technology available in the 90's (such as CSS). The layout and organization is pretty traditional and the pages and navigation are static. It is really just an attractive 'old school' site. I would think to be 21st century there would be user informed navigational forks (changes in navigation based upon user preferences or history), if not AJAX then stored dynamic content or some other device to 'smoothen' page generation and enhance the user experience, and or some nod to web 2.0 in the way of a comment section or linking. I am not putting his site down and I suspect it is well written, both front and back end, but I'm not getting the 21st century thing. I think I need it explained to me. I'll look up "semantically correct structure" maybe that will help.
<edit>semantically correct structure: properly used tags and elements. Wouldn't that be a given? </edit>
Last edited by jdc; 1-Sep-2007 at 18:19.
A well designed website is a worthy goal unto itself, little grasshopper.
But seriously, its not such a big deal. If you can get rid of tables and make a site using pure css and webstandards, do so. If not , the CSS ninjas won't be breaking down your doors or anything. Just realize that your site is falling behind the curve a bit and may eventually 'break' as browsers start implementing standards better, or you may be not taking advantage of some opportunites to make your site faster/lighter/more search engine friendly. That;s all. Forget the latest fads like Ajax and use things like Flash with good judgment.
Don't tell Msx but most of the country links on his Travel page are broken. I can't stand that myself....it's just poor housekeeping.
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