Topic: website testers please?

[LT]

HI all

I've had yet another re-jig of my website - this version is the first I've done on a mac.  I used the Freeway WYSIWYG editor and have applied a few things to smooth it all out a bit.  How is it looking? Hopefully it's all worked?  this software makes it all so damn easy that it seems too good to be true.

http://www.leontaylor-photo.co.uk

thanks for looking and your feedback

[sapata]

Great site Leon !
It worked perfect as a Swiss Clock 

[vicky slater]

yep, agree with sapata, everything's working perfectly!...i like that it's very simple and clean, it lets you concentrate on the pictures more.
the  contrast seems fairly high? but that's more than likely my screen, i'm on a mac too and have it brighter than most would choose.

Particularly like the Chilham series, and your lurchers of course :)

.....and have you thought of putting printing prices up, i might like one done for a friend sometime.

[vicky slater]

and thanks for adding me!

[Pete_R]

Pictures are a bit too small, especially the thumbnails. Difficult to see what they are. Also the pictures have been compressed too much for me. Too many jpeg artefacts. Otherwise, the site works fine on Chrome and IE6.

[LT]

I wonder if Freeway is doing the compression? I make sure I save the files at 100% on the quality slider in photoshop's 'save for web & other devices' option. I have to say they don't show any obvious artifacts on my screens though. 

[Francois]

Tried it with Firefox and everything looks fine to me... though I must say I'm still using a 17in CRT so for compression artifacts, all I can say is it looks good enough for me.

[vicky slater]

i'm on a 24" screen and have to zoom in a couple of times before it starts breaking up..

[snewbery]

leon, congratulations;  it looks very handsome indeed, works fine (on Firefox), and so many fine images! The different size of thumbnails (some square, some oblong) in 2 (I think) of the portfolios rumples somewhat the otherwise neat appearance, but presumably you wish to signal from the navigation element itself the different formats of your work...?    ---S  

[original_ann]

 I do wish the pics and thumbnails were a bit bigger but I love it Leon - very clean, "pretty" and very easy to navigate.

[astrobeck]

looks great Leon.
Thumbnails are a bit small, but everything works fine and layout is very clean as others have said.

thumbs up!

[salvo]

works a treat from my end and looking crisp and sharp (i'm on a mac and using firefox). Only thing, maybe the thumbnails are a tad too small and maybe i'd do the images a tad bigger. Otherwise looks good and to the point.
salvo

[Pete_R]

I wonder if Freeway is doing the compression? I make sure I save the files at 100% on the quality slider in photoshop's 'save for web & other devices' option. I have to say they don't show any obvious artifacts on my screens though. 

Take this one for example.



Here's the artefacts which, on my monitor, are visible in the original above.



What is the size of the file after you've saved it? The browser is saying it's about 40K. If your saved copy is more than 40K it's being compressed somewhere else. If yours is 40K, then PS is doing it.

Uncompressed, this file will be about 480K. I tried doing a best quality compression in PSP which made it 122K. Because of the distinct edges in the picture, I wouldn't compress this much below 100K. Other pictures you might be able to take further without obvious artefacts.

[Nigel]

Leon - I think it looks great very clean and simple. I do agree with the point about the thumbnails though, they look out of proportion to the layout and on my 13" macbook it's quite difficult to make out what the images are.

I've heard good things about Freeway, but I've not used it. Did you use the Express or the Pro version?

[LT]

Peter - thanks, that must be the Freeway.   the original is 184k, so something is going awry somewhere

Nigel.  I've got the pro version, and ... a few things aside, it is the easiest and most intuitive editor I've used (compared to MS frontpage and Dreamweaver)

[seekingfocus]

Website is great- Love those smooth transitions from one image to the next!

I agree with the aforementioned compression problems and artifacts in the jpeg- both the photos and text of the front page. I'd check the settings in the HTML editor, as that's the likely culprit.

Great work, BTW.

-Jason

[calbisu]

Nothing to say about the web design, minimalistic and sleek. The words used for ?portfolio?, ?services?, etc kind of have a Halo around them, but may be is my screen. As others said thumbnails look too small. Out of that everything works fine and smooth : )

[mikeg]

I agree with everyone else.

A very nice clean interface, some great images.

However, I feel like I want to zoom in all the time. Perhaps it would have been OK when we were all on 800x600 resolution screens a few years ago. However, I would now develop a site for a larger default resolution. The images and especially the thumbnails seem lost in the middle of the browser screen.

Cheers

Mike

[LT]

thanks for all the replies and feedback - very useful.

I think I've got around the compression thing now.

I hear that selecting a screen size to suit all is about as easy as getting a load of filmwasters to agree on the perfect film format/dev combination .  The site is set at 1024x 768  and looks just as big as i wanted it to on my 19" monitor set to 1440 x 900 and my 13" macbookpro at 1280 x 800.  I dont really want to use images any larger than 400x400 and if I use a percentage based centred set up, the elements all look much too far away from each other when the screen is maximised.  Is my ignorance making me miss something here? 

I agree about the thumbs and will enlarge them a bit - but I also wanted them to not give away too much, so viewers are invited to click to see the full thing.  I agree about the multiformat thumbs so will have a look at that too.

thanks once again - I can always rely on the FWs to give good advice.

[Pete_R]

but I also wanted them to not give away too much, so viewers are invited to click to see the full thing.

I use the method of cutting out a small section of the larger image and using that as a thumbnail. Have you tried that? That way you can also keep them all the same size/format.