Website critique, thanks!

[Marco B]

Hi all,

I've recently decided on a pretty major overhaul of my website. Although visually not much may have changed at first glance because the main pages have (visually) stayed the same, I did do a major overhaul of the gallery pages.

So, what's changed?:

- The website is now fully W3C compliant meaning it should display properly in all web browsers adhering to standards. Thanks to jd Callow here on APUG for pointing out the W3C validator on http://validator.w3.org that helped me fix a lot of errors...

- The code that created the layout of the webpages contained a lot of clutter and errors, due to the use of a semi automatic WYSIWYG tool. I have now rewritten the layout code from scratch for the main pages, thereby removing all clutter and code errors leading to a nice clean design. A number or very small miss-alignments of figures and layout elements on the webpages has thereby been fixed.

- The website now has three distinct types of pages, hopefully further enhancing clarity of navigation:

* Main pages with left sitebar with the three small images and a menu topbar
* Gallery index pages showing all the individual thumbnail images of the pictures within a gallery. These pages lack the left sitebar but do have the menu bar.
* Slide(-show) pages. These pages show the actual photos and include a fully automatic slide show as well. No menu bar here, maximum space and attention on the pictures.

- I have used a new JAlbum skin (http://jalbum.net) for creating the layout and slideshow functionality of the galleries. This skin has more advanced features than the previous one, allowing me to create for example slideshow photos including backdrop shadow and copyright watermark.

- Rescanned a few images for which I hadn't been satisfied with previous scan results, particularly the "Fort Vechten" series.

- Added a whole new gallery on the "Other arts" main page, with pencil sketches of Dutch landscape and historic buildings in Amsterdam and Haarlem and surroundings.. I work multi-disciplinary, if you like classic drawings, have a look, you might enjoy it ... Four'th gallery from the top, simply called "Sketches"

So, what's the purpose of my website?:

Mainly as a means to show my work to anyone interested, whether family, friends, or anyone I meet on the street, and more formal contacts like galleries or potential clients. I realize it may be a bit to informal for the latter, but hey, this is me and I like it this way.

Some of you will complain about to much text on the main pages, but I personally like to read a bit about the background of a picture series. I hope you will appreciate the fact that the actual gallery index pages showing the thumbnails and the slide show pages are virtually void of any text, giving maximum attention to the images themselves.

Any comments and bug reports (like dead links etc.) are welcome. As this was a pretty major overhaul, costing a few days of work, I may have overlooked something...

So here it is:

My revised website...

Enjoy!

 

[geoferrell]

The website looked great and especially liked the "technique" and "inspiration" pages.

 

[dylder]

Nice site. I'm always happy to see the opening page with content. One minor suggestion, have a link in the galleries back to the home page or the gallery page. After running through 4 slides it was not clear how to return back to the start.

dw

 

[Marco B]

Yes, thanks dw for the remark about the link to the gallery or homepage. I have been aware of the fact that this might not be entirely clear, however, there are two options:

OPTION1:
- Press the "Start / stop slideshow" button when the slideshow is running to pause / stop running it (it's the little "pause" type button in the upper right corner)
- Then press the "Index page" button next to it (left). This will take you back to the galleries main index page, where the full menu is available to navigate the rest of the website

OPTION2:
- Press the "Start / stop slideshow" button when the slideshow is running
- Then click on the name of the gallery in the entire upper left of the slideshow page. Actually, this is a clickable link... but this is probably not clear enough.

This will also take you back to the galleries main index page, where the full menu is available to navigate the rest of the website.

However, I will probably modify the pages some time in the future and than provide something as you suggested.

Geoferrel: Glad to hear you appreciated the Technique and Inspiration pages. Especially some parts of the Technique pages have cost some time, so it's good to hear they are useful.