Another website opinion!

I like it - a lot

took a while to find this, though

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And I think that most people will miss it and, even if they do see it, they won't know what it does. You maybe need to re-think that bit to make it more obvious there's more than just the model pics on there.

Otherwise, does just as intended.
 
Took a while to load up on a slow connection. Wesites which resize my browser window are a big no no for me. Otherwise very nice.
 
Doesn't work properly on firefox on a laptop with 15.4" screen. I assume you've coded it to remove the scroll bars? If so, when it removes the scroll, you can't get to the menus at the bottom, so all you're left with is a slideshow, which I thought was an intro page :shrug:

The quality of the site is there, but for me it don't work properly.
 
As a web developer I'd say never try to second guess the navigation rules of the web. The last thing you want to be doing is educating your audience as to how YOU feel navigation should work. What you should be doing is getting them concentrating on your content and wanting more.

Other than that the design is clean and very sharp, which obviously help the content to stand out. Just sort that nav!
 
I own a website design company and we have used SlideShow Pro a few times, and always get the same problems as those above - that they had no idea there was a gallery etc.

If you want to use pre built flash xml driven photo galleries, the best place to look is: http://flashden.net/category/image-viewers

These are cheap and there are far more effective ways of displaying your images.

Personally I would say avoid flash altogether as there are so many ways of producing clean and quick loading galleries using different methods.
 
I completely disagree with the person above who says not to use flash to display image galleries. If anything Flash is the technology to use to show large amount of images because of it's ability to load image data efficiently. You're options for managing how images are displayed are much greater than if you were using html and javascript alone. Slideshow Pro is one of the best bits of software out there for creating a gallery simply because it is so easy to customise, you just have to know how.

Slideshow Pro with its default skin isn't the most usable, however you are able to create your own interface for navigating images and galleries...

The following site, which I have worked on, use SSP for their image galleries and image management...

www.mackintoshrainwear.com

Take a look at the collections page to see what you can do with SSP, you'll see the interface is nothing like default :)

With regards to your site, I really like it. The emphasis is on your photography which is what people are coming to your site for. The only things that hold it back are a few usability issues such as forcing the window size on people, hiding the scroll bars and the obvious SSP navigation. The site I reference above has some similar issues but I pointed it out for to show what you can do with SSP.

The colour scheme you have is nice and the typography works well with it. If you sort the usability things out then you are onto a winner; a very clean, sharp professional looking website. I should also mention that if you are going to have a flash website that you should look into fallback content. That is content that users who decide to turn off flash or who don't have flash player installed will see when they visit your site. Take a look at the following tool to help you out with this. It's relatively straight forward and will also help with your search engine rankings as your fall back content will get indexed, where some of your flash content wont.

swfobject.

If you need any help or guidance then please give me a shout. Nothing more satisfying that helping make the web better :)
 
I like the idea but I can only see the images, I can't see any navagations at all.
 
i too can only see the images.


and im on 10mb connection and it took a while for the images to load. at first thought it was gonna be a blank dark grey page.
 
Fair points Kay - all I am saying is that Flash has so many downsides and is always such a "go to" application because of the tricks you can perform with it. Flash is a gimmick and doesn't help make the web a better place!

At the end of the day, you either love it or you hate it, I am in the latter camp. I agree with what you are saying in regards to flashes handling of image data, but I too have a fast download speed - 7.5 MBPS - and it took a while to load - probably because the images added to the site have been optimised for web viewing?? That is going to put off most people.

All I am really saying is people shouldn't always think that Flash is the way to go - using other methods produces just as good results with out the down sides of flash - as you mentioned swfobject having to be used (as you always should) in case people have it turned off etc - and I find more and more that people can't be bothered waiting for a flash website and are turning it off, therefore creating twice as much work for Grant to maintain two separate sites, when he could have produced a clean and functional site, similar to what he has, with out flash!! ;)
 
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