Topic: my new portfolio site

hi everyone

I have been working on a new website with 12 photographs and 6 drawings - it is a new gallery to show my newer works
http://www.twinturn.demon.co.uk/pctportfolio/index.html

i appreciate any comments, thank you

from peter "morpyre" turner

peter "Morpyre" turner

I think this belongs in the Site Reviews section. Closing and moving.

-S

One thing I would advise against is setting entire bodies of text in GIFs. I can understand it if you want some more typographic control over your headings, but whole paragraphs? Not only does this take longer to load, it's horrible for accessibility. Learn CSS typography, and I'm sure you can get your text to look the way you want it.

You've also got a nice example of Mystery Meat navigation, also known as "I don't know where the hell this link takes me." At least add some descriptive text to your navigation links, so you don't force users to click through every one just to find out what it is, which wastes both time and energy.

The navigation on the site is sorta confusing. If I click into one of your sections, I can only back out by hitting the "Exit" button? Word of advice: don't use nonsensical metaphors that force the user to contemplate to him/herself "Hmm, I wonder what this does?" Just include a standard navigation scheme on every page, so we know how to get around.

Visually, I think the site is okay, although you may wanna rethink those old-school tables, and ick- imagemaps

Ozphactor, what's wrong with image maps?... and I wouldn't really call the navigation "mystery meat".... but the overall site navigation is very limited. Making the user go back to the start page to go anywhere is very bad navigation design. You also don't have any link to move back from viewing a full size image. Most uses will be fine with this and use their browsers back button, but it does makes the site feel very hemmed in and limiting.

Additionally, the sticky tape thing gets old quickly because you over use it. Those kinds of effects are nice once and a while, but on every single image -- it's just too much and it detracts from the beautifully simplistic yet bold visual style of the site.

On a whole, I think it's a good effort, but a little more work here and there and it could be a great one.

Edit: The fat fingers strike again.



[This message has been edited by Dracusis (edited 10-14-2003).]

My approach to site reviews is a little different as I look at the aesthetics of the site.
Like Drac stated, some sort of "general navigation system" would probably be in order.

Over all look is nice, although I would lose the tape effect. (unless you create multiple tapes so it doesn't look generic)

You could probably design a simple 1 line navigation system using CSS layouts. Make it easier to get around.

I'd give it a "C"....

:-)

quote:

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Ozphactor, what's wrong with image maps?

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Well, there's not really anything "wrong" with them, so to speak. It's just that I find them highly unnecessary in the majority of cases, as in this one. Do the three rectangular navigation links really have to be an imagemap? Couldn't you just use three images, and put them in ordinary anchor tags?

quote:

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and I wouldn't really call the navigation "mystery meat"

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Call it what you will, but I still think he could make the links more obvious as to where they lead. It may not be that horrible, but it's just enough to make me pause and think, and I don't think I should have to do that.

I agree with what has been said about the design so far. On the menu thing I agree with oz. At the moment the user has no clue as to what the different links are leading to, you should give the user some hint of what to expect. One way to do this would be to add a hover effect, so when the user hovers over a link a text appears above/on/bellow the image with a short description.

You should also have a little link on each page leading back to the front page, and when viewing a image you should add a link leading to the gallery index.

Code wise you should move away from the table layout and instead go for a CSS based layout. There are a lot of reasons for that, but I won't go into them now. If you're interrested I can post them later on...

About the image map thing, I don't really think in matters. Except that using standard <a> tags would make the code easier to understand and adding hover effect would also be easier if not using image maps. But since you don't have any hover effects it doesn't really matter right now...

_________________________
"There are 10 kinds of people; those who know binary, those who don't and those who start counting at zero"
- the Golden Ratio -

thanks for the comments regarding my new website. i appreciate all the comments that have been said.

the site is still under development such as making a better navigation system - i put the site online before total completion so I could get a general idea of what visitors thought of the site.

I wanted to keep a simple layout but I appreciate at the moment it's a bit too simple and I will definitely lose the scotch tape effect - i liked the idea at first because it gave a feel like looking through an actual portfolio but it is over done the way ive used the effect - maybe i will just have the effect on the large versions of the images.

thanks again for the comments - any help in improving my site.

from peter "morpyre" turner

peter "Morpyre" turner