Bill Amsterlaw on tue 6 mar 01
Hi Will Edwards:
You wrote:
<<=20
I have been asked about a web site on several occasions. I am
including a site which I abandoned nearly a year ago but it is on
my server....would be happy to pass anything on to the person
who made the site should those of you choose to add anything.
http://www.mindspring.com/~turtleclan/index.htm
>>
You show some very nice work. The overall layout of the home page
is very appealing. I have some ideas for improving the navigation and
imaging on your site. Also, there are some errors in the html code
which could cause unexpected results for visitors with older
browsers.
1. Navigating to images could be made more intuitive. I think it is
a good idea is to give the viewer an idea of what each link will show.
Instead of a list such as "image5", "image9", etc. you could have a
collection of thumbnail images of each item, each of which is a
graphic link to a larger image. As an alternative to thumbnails, you
could use descriptive text - e.g. "rice bowl" is more lucid than
"image6". If you use thumbnails, they need to be about 50x50
pixels for good visibility. They should be resized using imaging
software rather than trying to have one set of image files do double
duty. This will allow you to create high quality little images of
less than 3 K each; they will load quickly.
2. The thumbnails or list of image links comprise a navigational
"tool". Navigation will be greatly aided if the viewer can get back
to this tool easily after viewing each enlarged image. There are
different ways to facilitate this. You could reproduce the tool on each
image page (awkward, busy layout, slow). A better way is to
have each image and associated text open in smaller window
superimposed on top of the home page (simpler layout, slow);
the original list remains on screen in a window behind the image.
I think the best way is to have the image open in a frame on the
same page (lucid layout, quick); I like this because the navigational
tool remains in full view.
3. I would like to see more text information to accompany each
enlarged image. For example, you could include a verbal description,
title, reference code, dimensions, retail price, interesting details
about how it was made, etc. The most manageable way to accomplish
this sort of thing - rather than creating a separate html file for each
image as you have done, is for each link to refer to a piece of
JavaScript on the home page which will create each image page.
The data for all the images could be managed from a single JavaScript
data structure - easy to maintain because all code and data are
in one place.
4. The quality of the photography could be improved. To my eye, the
cloth backgrounds are too busy with too many confusing shadows.
The lighting is uneven (bottoms lost in shadow). A simpler, seamless
background would show up the work much better (to my eye). You
can get a couple of inexpensive halogen lighting units on tripods at
many hardware stores (2 fixtures on each stand). (Use a blue color
correction filter with daylight film.) If necessary use reflector =
boards
or diffusers to give even light and control hot spots.
5. The images could be significantly improved with imaging software.
At the very least, the image files could be compressed to at least half
their present size with no detectable change in the way they appear on
a computer monitor. This would result in each image file loading twice
as fast as it now does.
6. Line 60 of the index page html source code contains an open
tag. There is a closing tag further down the page on line 76 of
the source code. The effects of this are displayed in the left column
between "More Pottery Links" and the end of your mailing address.
The browser displays all these lines as if they were a single link.
However, because there is no valid URL reference after the opening
tag you will get an error message if you click on it. If you check
the html with validator software, numerous errors will be reported
because none of the stuff that follows the incomplete tag is
a legal attribute or content of an tag.
7. There are numerous other technical problems with the html.
Fortunately, both Internet Explorer 4.0 and Netscape 4.6 are
forgiving enough that these errors are not evident visually
(I checked). However, an older browser might have a lot more
trouble handling this code.
I hope this was of some help.
Bill Amsterlaw
Keene, NY, USA
http://amsterlaw.com
wamster@amsterlaw.com
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