okay boys and girls, i guess it's officially payback time for all of y'all whose sites i wrote "harsh" critiques about (postscript: your design still sucks). for everyone else, here's what i've been working on lately. honestly i've been pretty uninterested in the web for some time now and have been doing more 'traditional' stuff. this new site is meant to serve as a 'blog' (i hate that term) of sorts where i can upload a few photos a week instead of pretending that what i write is worth reading.
there are a few technical errors which i haven't been able to fix, maybe someone out there will have a fix or two in mind...
1) on the front page the "news" div, where i write updates, drops down when the screen is shrunk to less than 800px horizontally. is there any way i can force the div to stay above and have a side-scrolling bar open in the browser instead?
2) the line spacing on the news section is ridiculously large in netscape, though it's just peachy keen in internet explorer. less space in netscape, how?
3) i'm sure there are all other sorts of issues so please post them and laugh at my level of suckness.
Line Height in Netscape: Actually setting a lineheight value might help .
Other issues:
Bandwidth! I doubt you actually give a shit but my modem wasn't too happy about your photography pages. You might be better off with a javascript solution for that bit. Rather than having each image specified in the page you could just have one then change it's course to load the other images when the user selects one of them.
Oh, and the link back to the main page wasn't overly intuitive either, but now I?m just nit picking....
are there any problems with using absolute positioning? i remember using such a scheme a few years back and it wasn't pretty. oh yeah, define line height might help... now that i think of it i think there's a reason i took that out earlier, like it was messing something else up. i'll experiment more tomorrow though, thanks.
and i didn't even bother to think some people might still use a dial-up, d'oh! i'm sure the 200-250k background stuff doesn't load exceedingly fast either. i'll toy with compressing some stuff later tonight but i doubt it'll change much.
the solution i'm using for images on the photography page is going to start loading real slow once i've got 30 pictures on the page i bet... crapola.
fantastic photos. Dag man, you're really very good. I'm glad for the pictures, your yada yada was tiresome, like I ever read any, blogs suck. Good for dropping in on friends now and again but if I recall you could never respond to any of yours, it was a bit of a diary yeah?
I like the layout(s), I've always liked your layouts though, 'cept that first one =o
Drac got all the issues I think. Opera doesn't do the gallery javascript at all but the temperamental bugger likes the rest just fine. At .0005% of the browser market you'd better rush right out and fix that up.
Nice work. I think what I was going to say has already been said except:
I don't if you care or not, since there aren't many pages to the site, but if you go to the photography pages, the only way to get back to the home page is to hit the back button. No links on those pages. Unless of course, I'm missing something, which is extremely possible, and likely.
I really like the black and white. What kind of film are you using?
Well shit, Mikey. I give you this js solution for your gallery. Simple, 5 lines of code, after some initial trouble it all seems to be working well, and now nobody likes it.
Bloody hell.
I dig the photographs. I especially like the color payphone picture and the first b/w picture in each row (the hillside and the flourescent alley). The final b/w photo instantly made me think of the nuclear symbol.
Those landscapes make me think of Reno. I've a friend that lives in Sparks. One of the things that really strikes me about Reno, the landscape is distinct...like none other I've ever seen. Maybe all of Nevada is like that? I don't know, but those landscapes, especially that first hillside make me think of my friend in Reno. Very cool.
jk: actually i've still got an online journal thing... no comments allowed though. i mean, if i'm talking about things as base and pointless as what sort of cereal i had for breakfast the last thing i want to hear is what they think about that. and what's this so-called opera you speak of? netscape barely has a large enough market share to keep my interest... good thing it's my primary browser.
jeni: thanks for the heads up on the link to the main page. i mean, there actually is one -- click "zerominuszero.net" -- but a few people have had problems finding it so i'll work out a new solution in the near future. for b/w i use ilford delta 400, whether it be 35mm (the horizontal pictures) or 120 (the square photos). i used to mess around with kodak's t-max and tri-x a lot but ended up using ilford film because i like the results better.
mobs: yeah... my pictures of reno make me think of reno too, ha! i'll stick with your js solution because i like it. plus out of all my access points to the net the slowest i have is dsl so i'm not sketched on d/l times.
adam: the space will be used more wisely as images are added. my older negatives are back home in oregon right now, i'm on holiday in nevada until next month. i doubt i'd put up old pictures anyway even though there are a few worth rescanning.
thanks again for the input y'all folks offered. i'll work on implementing most of the ideas when i get a chance... fsckin slave drivers.
edit: who cares.
[This message has been edited by mikey milker (edited 08-16-2002).]
* As has been mentioned....holy fuck it took forever to download (just over 3 minutes....). For what is there to look at, 3 minutes so absurdly long that I had to reload the page to make sure something hadn't messed up and left itself out.... but it sure says "done" down there on the status bar....(talking about the front page here, of course).
* The background image(s) is interesting, but again - content vs. size? Yikes. There are countless ways to minimize the file size on such simplistic imagery.
* The typography leaves a lot to be desired. The main page title isn't so bad, but would probably look better all one size, or with more emphasized variation (one or the other...). The 'fotografiks' bit just comes across as cheesy. It is also visually confusing to have such prominently colored text in the back, and such dull dreary text in front. Leaves us with the text on the links to the sections. Well, not much to say. Nothing special, nothing too bad. But combined with the other 2 negatives.....
* The WHITE. Why so much? Why so much atttention to the imagery in the foreground and then leave it just hanging against the white? leaves a very incomplete look, as if you somply didn't finish working on the page.
* No flexibility.....and yet so little actually there. It would be so easy to design a site of this type to be flexible in regard to screen size, especially with so little content. It just doesn't make sense.
* The photographs themselves are quite nice. I've always been fond of your photographs. I would recommend letting each large version of the photo load when asked for rather than all at once though.
"Kleenex-toting proponent of fluid layouts." Hmm... for some reason that struck me as vaguely obscene. I know this must mean I am a horrible, perverted soul.
But seriously, the one thing that really reached out and slapped me across the face was the rigidity. I've got to go with DL: go with the flow!
Other than that, I liked it. I really like your photography, too. You have almost inspired me to get a good camera and go out and start taking pictures. There's just that little thing called money (or lack thereof) getting in the way... (Yeah, I know, that's a really lame excuse.)
[Edit: I just reread that post, and I have come to the conclusion that, for some reason, everything seems obscene to me today.]
i'm more than happy to tackle some of the "issues" (see: you whiney bastards!) when i get a chance; but right now i'm working on a redesign for a client and since they pay me in cash that job takes precedence for the time being.
the one thing i will touch on right now is the whole "fluid" thing. i think it sucks. one of the reasons i'm really not that jazzed on designing for the internet anymore is the fact that what i make is not necessarily what you're going to see. even without lame-o fluid designs... fonts vary from box to box, gamma is different on macs and peecees, and no matter how code-compliant your page is it'll still render somewhat "uniquely" on each browser.
so yeah, print is mah bitch and i'm sticking with rigid designs on the web because that's an asthetic choice on my part.
may that teach you never to question me again, heh.
mikey milker: It looks good but I would have to agree with DL on most of his points - I'm sure you could get a smaller graphic to tile and give a similar effect on the front page (that is a lot of weight). Other than that my only concern would be the month link top right. I suspect it is so you cn have different months worth of photos but until they are up and running it might be best to disable the links (I was waiting for something interesting to happen and it never did - the story of my life perhaps but....).
Anyway it looks good but it is only 3 pages so I want to see MORE
While I don't see a huge problem with non-fluid designs (the redesign work I've done for the GN is not fluid...), it just seems far more fitting for this desgin to be.
Fluidity is also the lesser of my concerns on this design
well all i did this morning was screw with the opening title... which was pointless because i'm already getting ready to delete this site and start over, haha.
question: for any of you dialup kids that checked out the site before, does it load somewhat faster now? i tried optimizing some of the graphics but i don't know how successful i was. i've had some form of broadband for the past three years and can't remember what copper is like...
Well, you've got it down to around 170k for the front page and all the images but that's still 30+ seconds for a healthy 56k connection... around 40+ seconds for an average connection....
Most people will wait that long but they won't be "too" happy about it.
Since it's just a place to hang your photos I wouldn't worry about it too much. However, if you were trying to plug your design skills from that site then I'd have resaon to be more concerned about it.
Still, you seriously need to fix how your serving the mages from the gallery pages.
Currently your color gallery page weighs in at around 550k! And that's with only 4 photo's at 400px by 271px with really tiny thumbs. I'm betting you didn't compress these at all cause each image is around 150k each, close to the size of your entire front page.
Now, lets say you'll one day have a page there with 20+ photos on it. 150k per photo + 8k per thumbnail + 35k for the interface graphics:
158x20+35 = 3195k... about 3 meg. Even a broadband user you hit a wall on that one, but you'd be looking at around a 25 min wait for a 56k user...
So yah, fix dat.
[This message has been edited by Dracusis (edited 08-23-2002).]
okay i just fixed all that... not quite sure how i forgot to compress those as well, sheesh.
i'm going to have to come up with another form of presentation for my photos regardless... thumbnails directly to pop-ups would make more sense. i sense a general question for the main forum coming soon, oh oh oh.
posted 08-14-2002 22:46
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