On Mon, 12 Jan 2009 06:47:32 -0800 (PST), ebd
wrote:

I put together a simple (primitive) site to show some of my bowls. I
would appreciate any and all comments. Please, be brutally honest.

I like the bowls.

Feedback on the site:

Ditch frames. They're so '90s and problematic on a number of levels,
one of the main ones is it's hard to bookmark a subsidiary frame.
Better (in my opinion) to use popup windows for the images. See my
site to copy solid working code to make popups (almost all of my
images are thumbnails to popups). If you're unsure how to read the
code, let me know and I'll send you a sample.

Edit images for size. I didn't check all of them, but the zebrawood
bowl second from the bottom, for example, is 1200x1600 pixels. Almost
no one is going to be able to display that full size, so why make the
servers (yours and the user's) transfer all those bits and make the UA
(browser) work to resize them?. I generally size images to 500 or 550
pixels high (and then whatever width the aspect ratio makes). If you
don't have an image editor, check out Irfanview
(http://www.irfanview.com)--free download.

Make use of the "title" attribute in the coding for the images,
particularly the thumbnails. Merely repeating the image filename isn't
useful, but having the same material as the description under the
large image would be. I also use that same description for the "alt"
attribute, which is important to include so your page validates.
"title" and "alt" may have the same content, but they serve different
functions. Use both.

Don't bother to tell the user how the site looks best. There are so
many variables in the user's setup (UA, monitor size, desktop
resolution, full vs partial window, etc.) that the best practice is to
write code to a reasonable size (1024 x 768 is a good compromise) and
make it as scalable as you can. Then the user can select how he wants
to see the site. I don't try too hard for the 800 x 600 people
anymore, but user resolutions above 1024 x 768 should be happy with
your code if you use scalable units such as ems and %s for your
dimensions, rather than pixels. Excepting image size, of course, which
should be done in the actual pixel dimension of the images.

Good on you for using an external style sheet (and also for having a
DOCTYPE declaration). As stated above, setting dimensions for h1 and
h2 should be done in scalable values such as ems or %s. If the user
specifies a larger text type, his UA may not treat the heads the same
as the other text if you use hard pixel dimensions.

Do a search on "Jakob Nielsen" and see his essays on "Top Ten Design
Mistakes..." and the like for some good ideas on website usability and
how to design for it. Much of it is commerce oriented, but there's
valuable guidance there, nonetheless.



--
LRod

Master Woodbutcher and seasoned termite

Shamelessly whoring my website since 1999

http://www.woodbutcher.net
http://www.normstools.com

Proud participant of rec.woodworking since February, 1997

email addy de-spam-ified due to 1,000 spams per month.
If you can't figure out how to use it, I probably wouldn't
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