Sailing away from the safe harbour ....

[chewyuk]

Hello Everyone,

Have kept this a little quiet until I was ready to share, don't like doing this sort of thing too much, but would love to hear your opinions to my first venture onto the interweb !

http://www.neilmansfield.com

Took a few months of going back and forth between a good friend to get this done, but I think the final version is about as close to my original design as I wanted it to be.....but we got there in the end.
It was completed a week before Christmas !

The images need to be rotated regularly, many of the current images on the site are not the best composition, exposure etc, so making time to keep the site fresh with improved shots through the assistance of this wonderful site is all the more important !! I think my new walking boots may help a little too.

So why have I done this?

I'd love to have the skills to be able to do this as more than a hobby, I am not ready yet but I'd only regret it if I didn't give it a proper go. It's a good start to the first of my 2007 New Years resolutions.

So in the words of Mark Twain....

This time next year you may be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do.
So throw off the bowlines.
Sail away from the safe harbour.
Catch the trade winds in your sails.
Explore. Dream. Discover

All the very best for 2007 everyone.

Cheers,
Neil

 

[Steep]

I like the overall design, it's reasonably quick and it's easy to navigate.

There's one image that needs sorting I think, 3.jpg (top centre) in the people section of the portfolio shows some very distinct banding in the sky, gif? compression probs?

 

[GfK]

Design is good - have to say though I don't like how you've done the thumbnail images in your portfolio (i.e. squashing them to fit into a square).

 

[chewyuk]

Design is good - have to say though I don't like how you've done the thumbnail images in your portfolio (i.e. squashing them to fit into a square).

Fair do's ... I'm open for suggestions as to how else they may be displayed? Reduce size of overall image ? It was a first stab amd I'm sure the site will evolve through time, plus I had to compromise on a few bits, as the whole nice cost me next to nothing, other than my mates time.

I like the overall design, it's reasonably quick and it's easy to navigate.

There's one image that needs sorting I think, 3.jpg (top centre) in the people section of the portfolio shows some very distinct banding in the sky, gif? compression probs?

Thanks for spotting that, I'm getting some images changed at the end of Jan, that will definately be one of them...


Thanks,
Neil

 

[Hoodi]

Good to see the site on air Neil - I'm liking it!
As mentioned, squashing the images into squares doesn't really do them any favours, but aside from that it's good stuff sir

It's another reminder that I really need to get something sorted myself

 

[HIMUPNORTH]

I agree with what has been said. Nice clean an economical design. The advice I have heard before is that you should only put your best stuff up as if a buyer clicks onto a weak shot first they may not look any further so do not leave those updates too long.

Great start mate!

 

[chewyuk]

Thanks Hoodi and Gary.

Totally agree about the squashed images, email gone to designer, but not sure when it will get changed.
Good point Gary on the quality not quantity point, especially as I still have a stack of stuff to learn.
Am determined to make the most of 2007, so whilst it may not be quite spot on, like you said - It's a start

 

[Venomator]

You have a really good web site in the making there Neil ... it looks professionally composed and is relatively easy to find one's way around ...

If I may mention a couple of things that didn't feel quite right to me ...

1. Thumbnails - as mentioned already although they alternate square and rectangular depending on what gallery is selected

2. Even the thumbnails appear slow to show ... although this may just be me 'n my set up

3. The pics themselves do load and look OK but it would be good to have the 'prev' & 'next' buttons showing permanently at the bottom as the 'Close' button is

4. You have four different galleries and for me it would also be good to have their selector buttons showing permanently instead of only in the Portfolio homepage - makes it a bit more user friendly to navigate between individual galleries imo

Just my initial comments from an otherwise excellent site Neil ... well done ...

 

[clawz]

4. You have four different galleries and for me it would also be good to have their selector buttons showing permanently instead of only in the Portfolio homepage - makes it a bit more user friendly to navigate between individual galleries imo

Just the point I was going to raise. To veiw the next gallery you have to go back to the 'gallery home page' rather than switching inside the one your in. i.e im in Landscapes, and want to get to Macro I have to navigate about a bit rather than clicking a button in the active gallery.

Other than that Top job! love some of those pics!

 

[chenko]

http://www.neilmansfield.com/portfolio.html
On firefox the links are to the right of the image not below, in IE6 its fine.

http://www.neilmansfield.com/contact.html
No real need for the frames to be full width, also could do with some padding around the boxes in IE, in firefox its ok. Maybe have the name/email to the left and the main comments box to the right, loads of space for it.

As for standards, since you are using XHTML 1.0 Strict, there are quite a lot of bits

Disabling Right Click - If someone wants your images, they will get it, only "works" in IE anyway, firefox ignores it.

Could do with links out to other sites somewhere, will help with the search engine indexing.

The big no-no - your thumbnails are actually the fullsized image resized on the page, means the inital page has to download them all, if this is what you intend then its not so bad, but its pretty lazy to do so. Also the transition for opening the image (and Next, Prev) is a bit too slow.

Fair do's ... I'm open for suggestions as to how else they may be displayed? Reduce size of overall image ? It was a first stab amd I'm sure the site will evolve through time, plus I had to compromise on a few bits, as the whole nice cost me next to nothing, other than my mates time.



Thanks for spotting that, I'm getting some images changed at the end of Jan, that will definately be one of them...


Thanks,
Neil

Crop a square image out of it, can make them much more interresting, and doesnt always need to be an overall view of the image either.

 

[chewyuk]

Wow - Great comments/suggestions by everyone, I duly take note at the images on display and being squeezed into a display box, giving the squashed look - I'll get onto that and get it changed asap. I agree it does detract from the image.
The loading of every image on each page doen't make any sense either, but was under the control of the web designer, so will get that changed soon too.

As for the links and contact information, I agree again, can be changed, but perhaps less of an urgency?

I know it takes effort to review a site, so I REALLY do appreciate the comments evryone has made about my site. It is a new start and definately work in progress, but it's a good start to 2007.

Thanks again - Neil

 

[chenko]

The loading of every image on each page doen't make any sense either, but was under the control of the web designer, so will get that changed soon too.

Not meaning to sound bitchy, but someone that uses the img width attributes to resize an image in that fashion can hardly be called a web designer.