Website update - Feedback needed!

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SWP2010

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Edit My Images
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Hi All,

I have been gradually updating my website over the past year (since it went live in January 2010). I was new to websites at that point, and have learned a lot over the year.

http://www.stephenwalford.co.uk

I would ideally like to improve the home page (maybe a different banner, and picture at the bottom), but would also like to merge all the photo categories into a drop down list at the top.

Please have a look at my website, and provide any comments or critiques! It would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks,
Steve
 
Your banner is far too deep and fills almost half my screen everywhere I look. I don't need/want to see it dominating my screen pushing the best part (your images) off the bottom, which means I have to scroll to see all but the top row of thumbnails.

I would move the information about yourself to a different page. I'm more interested in images (nothing personal :)).

You have some eye-catching images, get some on the front page.

Just MY opinion ;)
 
chip said:
Your banner is far too deep and fills almost half my screen everywhere I look. I don't need/want to see it dominating my screen pushing the best part (your images) off the bottom, which means I have to scroll to see all but the top row of thumbnails.

I would move the information about yourself to a different page. I'm more interested in images (nothing personal :)).

You have some eye-catching images, get some on the front page.

Just MY opinion ;)
Click to expand...
Agree entirely. Great photos. Hit me with them from the start.

Andy.
 
Stick the banner above the menu in the dead black space. Cut it down so it isn't as tall. That will make better use of the screen space. The about you bits could be put on a separate page. Then make a slide show to occupy the main section of the screen. It's all about the images :)
 
Thanks for all the feedback! :thumbs: I'm going to work the website tonight, so I will see what I can do with the front page.

I agree with all the points raised. It's definitely all about the images :)

I may try and keep the banner (albeit reduce the size) on the home page, and then not have it on the rest of the site.
 
Hi

I think your websites not too bad. It's clean and easy to navigate through. The banner is a bit too big. Also I don't really get the home page. The images are stunning, but I think it would work best if you just had one image on the home page.
 
I think an improvement would be to show thumbnails in the correct aspect ratio rather than cropped to square "Flickr style".

Also perhaps limit photo size to 800 pixels on the long edge (rather than 920 pixels) to avoid the browser having to resize the images on the fly. Firefox shows some aliasing artefacts on resized images.

My screen is only 1080 pixels (16:9) in height rather than 1200 (16:10) so to avoid resizing I need to view in "F11 mode".

The images do look high quality compared to a lot of websites, and avoid the dreaded over sharpening which seems to plague so many sites.
 
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Hi Stephen,

It's an improvement for sure but I'd still be inclined to crunch it right up. Hope you don't mind but I tried a CSS tweak to illustrate a bit of space-saving. See what you think.

Andy.

StephenWalfordPhotography1.jpg
 
boliston said:
I think an improvement would be to show thumbnails in the correct aspect ration rather than cropped to square "Flickr style".

Also perhaps limit photo size to 800 pixels on the long edge (rather than 920 pixels) to avoid the browser having to resize the images on the fly. Firefox shows some aliasing artefacts on resized images.

My screen is only 1080 pixels (16:9) in height rather than 1200 (16:10) so to avoid resizing I need to view in "F11 mode".

The images do look high quality compared to a lot of websites, and avoid the dreaded over sharpening which seems to plague so many sites.
Click to expand...

Thanks for taking the time to provide feedback! Much appreciated :-)

Good point about the resizing on images, I only tend to look at the website on my own computer so good to know what happens on other peoples computers/ browsers.

I will see what I can do and keep you updated!
 
Andyman said:
Hi Stephen,

It's an improvement for sure but I'd still be inclined to crunch it right up. Hope you don't mind but I tried a CSS tweak to illustrate a bit of space-saving. See what you think.

Andy.
Click to expand...

Hi Andy,

Thanks for having a go at tweaking it! I like what you did! I'm not too familiar with CSS to be honest, as I use RapidWeaver with a template.

I know you can tweak bits with CSS, and I know where the code should go in the application, but have no idea how to actually make the banner smaller as you demonstrated! Could you shed some light on how you tweaked the size :-) ?

Many thanks
Steve
 
Hi Steve,

First up I saved your header logo PNG locally and cropped it in PSP. (http://www.andyreedphotography.co.uk/Temp/GUGGEN6.png).

Then I changed the CSS style via a Firefox Add-in called FireBug. It allows you to identify individual elements in a page and change them in live.

In your site I think you have your CSS in a file called style.css. The element styles are in there. The main elements I changed were 'logo' and 'mast-head'.

Hope that helps.
Andy.
 
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