Hi,
Due to a chronical lack of time to keep up with the list as I used to do
several years ago, I now find myself tapping into it from time to time.
I just had one such moment where I went over some of the threads and
found this one. So, here's for a somewhat late reply. :)
Working as a professional in (a.o.) the field of Internet applications,
I can say that most of the comments to make were already made by the
others. :)
In particular I noticed that Andrew looked at the site the very same way
I did, and I agree on most of his points.
My conclusions:
1-The pictures are beyond excellent; it's an honour to have you in our
midst, and I wish my pictures were near half as good as yours! :)
2-Colour schemes: personally I dislike black backgrounds; it may be
deemed classy, but honestly I find it a bit depressing (check the sites
I've made and you will not find a single 100% black one ;) ). The
suggestion for using "off-colours" is great; by varying with slight
shades of the harsh black (#000000) and white (#FFFFFF) you can get a
much more pleasing result.
3-Gallery navigation: this directly spelled Flash all over it (and it
is). I doubt you'll have access to the original .fla, so I'm afraid most
of the comments that have been made regarding the navigation cannot be
changed by you, or am I mistaken? If you do have access to the .fla, and
you can change it, I'd recommend you to put the navigation next to the
picture, using bigger icons, and allowing for the actual image to be
displayed in a bigger size, using the full screen's height. The blooming
effect is cool, but is indeed somewhat hard for navigational purposes. I
too quickly found myself using the tiny right hand side icons. In short:
lots of unused space on the gallery pages that could be put to better
use by enhancing the navigation icons (incrementing the size should do
it), and by making the images display in a bigger size. :)
4-Domain name. Indeed, on a _professional_ site it's a dead-blow to have
a domain name and then have it redirect (i.e. to
http://home.iprimus.com.au/boldbolty/) rather than having it display the
domain name itself at the top all the time. Dito for the e-mail address.
It's better to set up some addresses like
'sales@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx', 'info@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx', etc.
rather than using Hotmail. Deadly.
5-'Under construction' pages: A website is per definition always under
construction, so in itself it's unneccesarily stating the obvious.
Better take 'm off quick, because all they suggest is that you don't
spend much time on working on the site (even though in reality perhaps
you do).
Either way: don't worry not about the harsh looking comments; I think
your site is very well on its way, and by changing some of these small
thingies you can easily get a more pleasing end result.
A thing your site excels in, is the actual content (a thing which is
often missed in sites that have a great lay-out); that part is spot on!
It's certainly a site I'll be visiting often.
Cheers!
Olafo
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