RE: Photography Site Critique

Re: http://members.xoom.com/gjrphotos

Hey George!

Since you said you already tested with MSIE 4, I visited your site with
Netscape Navigator (4.0). I did this with a P300II machine running Win95 in
800x600 24 bit mode and 33k6 modem.

* Well, I entered your URL and it's downloading right now. My mailer is
downloading some new mail in meanwhile slowing the whole process down, but
still your site is loading pretty quickly. Although, I do notice that your
page title takes a little longer than the rest of your page... That image
seems to be a whopping 24K image. Now, I'm not the one to speak about
"whopping" or "large" because of a "Been there, Done that" situation, but I
do think that you can slim it down with a atleast a 8-10K since it primarily
has (shades of) red/yellow/black and white. It is a JPEG, but try to play
around a little with the DPI/compression factor.

* Now everything's loaded. Hmm, this is a promising site! With a hard time
trying to keep my eyes off the pictures (to keep them as a surprise to me) I
am reading your information. This is neat as it is in an interview style
(Being curious: Was it actually you writing that or did someone do it for
you?).

* Done reading, I was eager to see those pictures I kept secret to myself.
They are so wonderful! So sharp! I can't imagine how much better they'll
look on the real thing: the photo itself. Wondering what would happen when
I'd put my mouse over one of those images, I discovered that they were
clickable links... Maybe that's something you could make clear for the
"sometimes-dummies-like-me".

* After a hard decision on which one to click first, I decided to take the
"Dawn of a new day" and see what happened. Awesome, an enlargement...! But
it took some time to load something: Java. Well, Java is still new and like
the 8086 of the time, Java is still slow. So it took some "Oomph" here and
there from Netscape to get the results on screen: a Back button.
Essentially, you solved a little problem for browsers which don't support
the JavaScript image array (MSIE 2 and 3). But then again: Should this go at
the cost of slow Java and of those who do not support Java? Personally, I
think that a simple, linked "back" would do. Either an image or just plain
text.

* Back again... Okay, I now got the point that the images were linked to a
larger version. (Do understand it's 12:45 am.. ;-) More at the bottom, you
have placed the new photo's. But these images aren't linked... Well, they
are, but by plain text -- not as the other images I previously visited. It's
not a problem there's a plain text link here, but make the image do the same
too. I noticed that allot of people these days tend to try out every single
image on a page to see if it does something and go "oooh" if it really does.

* On the same page, I encounter some "funky" images. That's the "Links" and
"E-mail" buttons. They're cool indeed. But take a look at your title-image
first... then those buttons... then your title-image... then.. no.. sorry.
What I mean hear is that the green is in a kind of contrast with the
title-image. In general, I'm not too worried about it... But if you repeat
the steps I just told too many times, someone may have some weird effects.
Try using a shade of red/yellow instead of mint-green?

* The links page is nice and clean! Nothing to suggest here, so I'm
returning to the main page again. The small-print... Thank goodness you're
keeping the copyright notice easy for the average people. No 300 paragraph
disclaimers etc. However, internationally "copyright" is not always
recognized. The (C) symbol however is... In the HTML page, just place
"©" after the word "Copyright" (note: without the quotes of course, but
include the ampersand and colon). This gives you more protection for your
work. Also it doesn't hurt to include "All Rights Reserved" because there
are some people out there who love to say "Well, it didn't say so!?".

All in all the page is wonderful! Good info and good text. No broken links
found. There's nothing wrong with it, although I did give some
suggestions... Netscape 4 handled it well!
Oh, now something did come in mind: Have a look at your site in 256
colors... Also think about where to place future images, seems you're
running a little out of space on the left...

Regards,
  Mike Green

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