Website Review

Hello everybody.

In the last two weeks I've completly restyled my website. I was looking for more convenience in image uploading and management so I installed a cms.
I'm wondered what you think of the new design.
Check it out at Dead Link Removed

Hope you like it. Feedback is very welcome.

Cheers
ijsbeer

you need to sort out image navigation. if I click on image to enlarge it pops up (lightbox2) image but when I click to view image detail from there, it goes to a different thumbnails view and when in there clicking on next number sometimes gives next thumbnail and sometimes opens pop up but never gives image detail.

Basically there seems to be a major problem in the logic of the thing.

And its very slow.

Hi Rob, Thanx for your feedback, I've turned the "view image details" link off. Image details is something I don't use. Thanx for the tip.
Now You've got only the "normal" navigation.
I've put cache on so hopefully ist a bit more speedy now.

Cheers
ijsbeer

That seems to work better.
I'm not a fan of pop ups of any kind but thats just me. I know they make coding easier and thats the problem because they are just a lazy way of being able to display bigger images in this case. But then thats what you get when you bolt different bits of opensource software together.

Its still a bit slow. I did a tracert and that seems fine so I guess its at your server where the slowness is happening. Joomla is slow and I guess Drupal will also be slow unless on a really fast server.

p.s. slowness could be partly due to my slow system as I see there is a lot of javascript in that code.

Hello Rob,

I have to dissagree about the popups with image viewing. IMHO the pictures are getting a lot more attention when viewed in this lightbox than in a standard layout. also the other content does not have to suffer from the layout that the pictures demand. My previous website had a layout where the pictures directed the layout of the entire site and still I've had alot of problems on displaying them in a way that they get enough space.
Good to hear the spead is gone up a bit. I think the slowness is on the server aswel on your system side. On my computer speed is good when i've flushed the cache so it has to load everything from the server.

Cheers,
ijsbeer

Looks good to me. I had a look earlier but didn't notice the image navigation problem which Rob mentioned. The speed seems o.k. to me as well.

Have you considered an English language version though?


Steve.

Irritated as I usually am by popups, the lightbox thing is a good way of presenting your images to isolate them from the background and I do like it.

I found the site fast, images popping up immediately and page transitions also immediate (2 Mb cable and a new fairly high-end PC with a lot of RAM, so any slowness does not appear to be due to the site itself - not at the time I visited anyway). Nice clean layout with no irritating Flash and unnecessary animated gfx! If anything, possibly too clean? Anyway, better clean than cluttered...

Downsides? Not a lot that I can see. Not sure of the point of the link above the image on the Home page as it just shows the same image in its own page. I'd quite like a line or two of text to explain each image - not that it would do me much good as I can't read it but it might be useful for those that do.

All in all, very nicely done.

Cheers, Bob.

Another suggestion for an English version of the site. It would be nice to read the biography, but I doubt anyone will have the patience to load your pages into Babelfish.

*also I think that the type below each image is not very attractive. Perhaps use a nice font embedded into an image link?

Gary Holliday said:

Another suggestion for an English version of the site. It would be nice to read the biography, but I doubt anyone will have the patience to load your pages into Babelfish.

Click to expand...

I did that with the biography. Actually, I used Inter-Tran as Babelfish missed a few words.

Actually, in the last line of the biography: Tevens ben ik in mijn thuisomgeving veel bezig met m'n eigen projecten en opdrachten.

Should thuisomgeving be thuisom geving as the translator doesn't translate it without the space.


Steve.

No, I shouldn't. It's "thuisomgeving". "Thuisom" is a non-existing word in Dutch, and "geving" as well, so your translator is biting the dust... Automatic translators suck. :rolleyes: The plea for an English site is legitimate.

"thuisomgeving" is something like "home environment" or "at home". In Dutch, it's very common, contrary to English, to combine words to create a new one, even if it's not in the official dictionary! (thuisomgeving is though ):

- "thuis" = "home"
- "omgeving" = environment / surroundings
- "thuisomgeving" = home environment / at home

About your site: just a few remarks:

- Be consequent with the use of capital letters. Sometimes your links start with one, and sometimes not. Also mind letter size and style. Keep differences to a minimum.
- Not entirely sure about the green color of active links, maybe keep it in black and white (grey), just like on APUG, since the rest of the site is BW as well?
- At some pages there is a very faint grey horizontal line used a breaker / separator between different chapters or paragraphs. Since the line is nearly invisible, it does not really function, while the need to visually separate the paragraphs is justified.

By the way, lightbox popups don't open on my computer in Firefox 2. I know this is an issue with my particular installation / computer, because I have this issue with all sites using lightbox, but does anybody of you happen to know what might be wrong?

I have already gone through some of Firefoxes options, but up to now to no avail.

Nice town by the way, Groningen, I studied biology there. I see you have a picture of Bakkeveen, that was one of my research sites!

Marco B said:

No, I shouldn't. It's "thuisomgeving". "Thuisom" is a non-existing word in Dutch, and "geving" as well, so your translator is biting the dust... Automatic translators suck. :rolleyes: The plea for an English site is legitimate.

"thuisomgeving" is something like "home environment" or "at home". In Dutch, it's very common, contrary to English, to combine words to create a new one, even if it's not in the official dictionary! (thuisomgeving is though ):

- "thuis" = "home"
- "omgeving" = environment / surroundings
- "thuisomgeving" = home environment / at home

Click to expand...

Thanks for clarifying that. As I know no Dutch at all (just a bit of French and even less German) I will take your word for it. The translator I used did not translate it as one word but did if it was split (perhaps I put the space in the wrong place in my earlier post). Babelfish couldn't translate it either way.

Steve.

Good morning everybody,
I'm honestly stunned about the amount of nice reactions and good feedback. First thanks everyone
Language, I'm going to make an biography text in English so al who don't read Dutch can read it. Thanx for the tips about that. I've not thought about it when I posted this review question on APUG but it wil be good to have it in English too.
@Marco B
Have fixed some capital letters in the picture gallery and going to take a look at size letter and style. But not exactly sure what to change. The green is on the list to be reviewed soon. In one way I like the green color because it brings a bit of color in the site. On the other hand only gray, white and black wil be much more cleaner. Going to try it out with a tweaked stylesheet.
I wil cut the faint gray line out, Thanx

Groningen is indeed a nice place to live. Bakkeveen is close to my parents place so I go there for a walk once and a while.

@ everybody. I wil post a updat when the english bio is online.

Have a very nice day. I'm going to catch up a new back for my Mamiya RZ

Cheers ijsbeer

Will keep an eye on your site. I visited Groningen several years ago, really loved the place. I stayed in Campersingel (forgive the spelling) near the hospital.

Loads faster than the APUG gallery does for me.

pentaxuser