RE: Website Critique

Dear Rajnish,
Thanks for all your useful comments.  I will definitely add the alt tags
- a naughty over site that slipped my mind before releasing.  As far as
the text images, this was mostly to preserve the font design, but I will
rejig it - I am only using verdana anyway, so it does seem silly.  Would
this also cause a lack of indexing by the search engines despite using
meta tags?

Will discuss with Mary re the galleries intro page, however, the pop
down menu is meant to relieve extra clicking and page throughs by the
user.  I will disable the link behaviour on the galleries link, it
should be evident enough with the rollover menu once this is disabled.

I can also takeout the javascript image restore in the thumbnail images,
I do agree with you, though I don't see it very much elsewhere
unfortunately!

I didn't think your comments were negative - very helpful, in fact and I
will take them in good stead.

Regards,
Lori  

-----Original Message-----
From: Rajnish Bhaskar [mailto:r.bhaskar(at)compserv.gla.ac.uk] 
Sent: Tuesday, 30 July 2002 02:58 AM
To: Kane Satterthwaite
Cc: hwg-critique(at)hwg.org
Subject: Re: Website Critique

Hi Lori,

Mozilla 1.1b, 
1600x1200 (browser canvas is roughly 1000x1000), 
Win2K
LAN connection

> http://www.maryoconnorart.com

I love the look and feel of this site.  It really does extrude an 
artistic sense that really fits in with the artist.

However (you knew that was coming, didn't you :o)  ), I have major 
reservations about using images to convey text -- especially since 
you don't have *any* alt tags in the site at all.  This seriously 
impairs accessibility to the site in text only browsers.  I looked at 
it in Lynx and all that I can see is the "site designed by..." and 
the copyright notice.

Ignoring that (and that's a big thing [IMO] to ignore) and looking at 
the galleries page, when you hover the mouse over the "Galleries" 
link, the pointer turns into the 'hand', normally signifying a link, 
but clicking doesn't do anything.  Maybe you could put in a link here 
that takes you to an intermediate page (maybe explaining more about 
the three sections).

The sections themselves are nice.  The galleries loaded quite fast 
for me, but I am on a university LAN connection, so am not really a 
good representative.  One problem that I have is that if you're 
scanning between images using the thumbnails, in the space between 
one thumbnail and the next, the big image reverts to the original 
image.  It would be nice if it retained the current image until you 
hovered over another one -- another one of these little usability 
things.

Sorry that it's been a bit negative, but the little things can be 
important, and remember that the site really does *look* nice.

Hope this helps,
Raj.
-- 
Rajnish Bhaskar
r.bhaskar(at)compserv.gla.ac.uk, http://lordofthemoon.com
IT Education Unit, University of Glasgow
http://www.iteu.gla.ac.uk/
--
There is nothing in the Universe more alone than Man.
He has entered into the strange world of history...
	--(Loren Eiseley)

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