Luminous Landscape Forum
The Art of Photography => User Critiques => Topic started by: Jeremy Payne on January 28, 2010, 01:55:40 am
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please check out the content for my new website
EDIT - site now has a URL ... http://photography.jeremypayne.net (http://photography.jeremypayne.net) ...
galleries: people (http://thepaynes.dlinkddns.com/web/people/index.html)| places (http://thepaynes.dlinkddns.com/web/places/index.html)| things (http://thepaynes.dlinkddns.com/web/things/index.html)
Thanks!
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please check out the content for my new website
galleries: people (http://thepaynes.dlinkddns.com/web/people/index.html)| places (http://thepaynes.dlinkddns.com/web/places/index.html)| things (http://thepaynes.dlinkddns.com/web/things/index.html)
Thanks!
It's a very impressive site, Jeremy, with lots of excellent work in all three galleries.
I very much like the elegant simplicity and lack of clutter of the site.
I hope our resident Website Maven Chris_T will take a look at it.
Eric
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Jeremy, I tried all three galleries and got a blank screen with each one. Anyone else having the same problem?
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Jeremy, I tried all three galleries and got a blank screen with each one. Anyone else having the same problem?
It was loading forever and I gave up after about 1 minute.
Firefox 3.6 under Vista.
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Sorry - I was making some DNS and URL forwarding changes - not sure if that affected access to the site or not.
Here's the new main site address - try through the front door now that it is open and see what happens ...
http://photography.jeremypayne.net/ (http://photography.jeremypayne.net/)
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Still very (very) slow to load.
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Runs fine and quickly here… Some very nice work, Jeremy. I haven't had the time to see all the galleries in detail but so far, I love what I see.
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The site worked fine for me as well.
FWIW: Firefox 3.5.7
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I could get to the main page. Clicked on places and I'm not quite 3/4's up the loading bar on the image at the 10 minute point. But the front page is cool. The navigation page has a nice image. The site looks clean. Nice layout.
Does it load all the images? I'll let it load if it does.
Looking at the tracert I do not think the net is happy between here and there. This is showing there are more than 30 hops between here and there. I can't imagine that is correct. The first 11 are quick.
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I could get to the main page. Clicked on places and I'm not quite 3/4's up the loading bar on the image at the 10 minute point. But the front page is cool. The navigation page has a nice image. The site looks clean. Nice layout.
Does it load all the images? I'll let it load if it does.
Looking at the tracert I do not think the net is happy between here and there. This is showing there are more than 30 hops between here and there. I can't imagine that is correct. The first 11 are quick.
Loading the main page (fully) and then clicking on the people link and having the first photos on my screen takes less than 20 seconds.
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Should be smooth sailing - all's well on the backend.
It's getting hammered, but it should be ok ... there's plenty of bandwidth, but perhaps there are too many simutaneous requests for the webserver to keep up.
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Should be smooth sailing - all's well on the backend.
It's getting hammered, but it should be ok ... there's plenty of bandwidth, but perhaps there are too many simutaneous requests for the webserver to keep up.
Works fine and fast on Opera for me. Maybe the problem is too many LuLa-ers all fighting to view it at the same time.
I guess you're too popular, Jeremy!
Eric
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Eric may have the answer. I just tried again and finally had to give up. I can't imagine why it's that slow, Jeremy. Looks as if you're using Adobe Flash and that should load pretty quickly. I'm going to come back to it after a while and see if things have changed. It's also possible that something's going on that slows down one of the nodes on the east coast. I'm in Florida.
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Eric may have the answer. I just tried again and finally had to give up. I can't imagine why it's that slow, Jeremy. Looks as if you're using Adobe Flash and that should load pretty quickly. I'm going to come back to it after a while and see if things have changed. It's also possible that something's going on that slows down one of the nodes on the east coast. I'm in Florida.
Rats ... maybe you cached a partial/incomplete version of the flash galleries and now that's all you get?
Can you try to clear your temp directory/internet cache?
At this point, I doubt the traffic is that big ... although I don't know how many simultaneous sessions before it craps out ...
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Rats ... maybe you cached a partial/incomplete version of the flash galleries and now that's all you get?
Can you try to clear your temp directory/internet cache?
At this point, I doubt the traffic is that big ... although I don't know how many simultaneous sessions before it craps out ...
Jeremy, Cleared the cache and tried again, but the problem's the same as before. I'm in Florida. Switzerland, North Dakota, and Massachusetts seem to be okay. I doubt it's a problem with your server since those three are getting a proper download. It could be a bottleneck in the internet node that's serving my part of Florida. On the other hand I can go to my own FineArtSnaps.com and everything loads quickly. I'm using Flash on that site too, so it can't be a problem with Flash on my own computer. My hosting agency's in California, so if there's a problem with a node it's a different one than the one I'm using to reach Cal, and Dark Penguin in Minnesota's surely not in the same internet path I'm in. At this point it's a real head-scratcher. I'm going to try again later tonight.
Edit: Forgot to add: Like Dark Penguin I can get to the index page pretty fast. It's beyond that that things slow down to a near halt. Also, I ran a tracert and it timed out in Denver, which means it's jumping all over the place to get to New York. That's not normal. Same thing happens with a ping. It just times out.
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the three original links - poeple|places|things - works fine and fast for me. Explorer 8 on an i7 Windows XP box.
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Jeremy, Cleared the cache and tried again, but the problem's the same as before. I'm in Florida. Switzerland, North Dakota, and Massachusetts seem to be okay. I doubt it's a problem with your server since those three are getting a proper download. It could be a bottleneck in the internet node that's serving my part of Florida. On the other hand I can go to my own FineArtSnaps.com and everything loads quickly. I'm using Flash on that site too, so it can't be a problem with Flash on my own computer. My hosting agency's in California, so if there's a problem with a node it's a different one than the one I'm using to reach Cal, and Dark Penguin in Minnesota's surely not in the same internet path I'm in. At this point it's a real head-scratcher. I'm going to try again later tonight.
Edit: Forgot to add: Like Dark Penguin I can get to the index page pretty fast. It's beyond that that things slow down to a near halt. Also, I ran a tracert and it timed out in Denver, which means it's jumping all over the place to get to New York. That's not normal. Same thing happens with a ping. It just times out.
Double rats ... I want you to see it ... there are lots of images you haven't ever seen in the galleries ...
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please check out the content for my new website
EDIT - site now has a URL ... http://photography.jeremypayne.net (http://photography.jeremypayne.net) ...
galleries: people (http://thepaynes.dlinkddns.com/web/people/index.html)| places (http://thepaynes.dlinkddns.com/web/places/index.html)| things (http://thepaynes.dlinkddns.com/web/things/index.html)
Thanks!
Jeremy
I'm not too sure that the introduction, clever though the tumbling letters are, is other than an irritation.
The site loads quickly (but then, I'm not in Florida!). The arrow keys work (although you could take a leaf out of Eric's book and set the up arrow to mean "go back to gallery list" rather than just duplicate left arrow). Navigation is straightforward and the design is simple and uncluttered.
I really dislike the non-standard scroll bar on the left within a gallery, though. I dislike the absence of scroll arrows. I don't like the fact that clicking in the scroll area doesn't work, so the only way to scroll is to grab the rather narrow thumb and drag it. I don't like its failure to respond to the scroll wheel on my mouse. Is there really not an alternative that works as we're accustomed to scroll bars working?
Nice photos!
Jeremy
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Jeremy
I'm not too sure that the introduction, clever though the tumbling letters are, is other than an irritation.
The site loads quickly (but then, I'm not in Florida!). The arrow keys work (although you could take a leaf out of Eric's book and set the up arrow to mean "go back to gallery list" rather than just duplicate left arrow). Navigation is straightforward and the design is simple and uncluttered.
I really dislike the non-standard scroll bar on the left within a gallery, though. I dislike the absence of scroll arrows. I don't like the fact that clicking in the scroll area doesn't work, so the only way to scroll is to grab the rather narrow thumb and drag it. I don't like its failure to respond to the scroll wheel on my mouse. Is there really not an alternative that works as we're accustomed to scroll bars working?
Nice photos!
Jeremy
Great feedback - thank you!
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Jeremy, Same problem this morning. Like Chuck I'm using Firefox 3.5.7, but I tried it with IE 7 too. No difference. The stuff eventually gets there, but it's incredibly slow. Now, when I go to the people page I quickly get the thumbs, but that's because I left the thing up for an hour or so yesterday and the thumbs are now in the cache. I just timed loading one of the fullscale pictures after clicking a thumb: 29 seconds. I've never seen anything like this before, and I don't know what to try next. Like the pictures though, especially the two little girls hugging. But I do agree with Kikashi's comments.
Edit: A bit more info. I tried going directly to your web, www.jeremypayne.net. No problem. I'm there instantly. I also can run a successful tracert on that site. But when I click on JSP's Place everything hangs -- just like with the new site. ?????
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Jeremy, Same problem this morning. Like Chuck I'm using Firefox 3.5.7, but I tried it with IE 7 too. No difference. The stuff eventually gets there, but it's incredibly slow. Now, when I go to the people page I quickly get the thumbs, but that's because I left the thing up for an hour or so yesterday and the thumbs are now in the cache. I just timed loading one of the fullscale pictures after clicking a thumb: 29 seconds. I've never seen anything like this before, and I don't know what to try next. Like the pictures though, especially the two little girls hugging. But I do agree with Kikashi's comments.
Edit: A bit more info. I tried going directly to your web, www.jeremypayne.net. No problem. I'm there instantly. I also can run a successful tracert on that site. But when I click on JSP's Place everything hangs -- just like with the new site. ?????
Interesting ... there is some crazy DNS behind the scenes, but if that wasn't working you just wouldn't find the host ... I dunno ... it is weird ... people in London and even farther away get it blazingly fast, but I went to a friend's office here in town yesterday to try it out from there and it behaved exactly as you are describing ... incredibly slow downloading - often not completing. Then I went to another office down the block and it loaded almost fast as it does when I run it locally.
www.jeremypayne.net points to a blog on blogger, but photography.jeremypayne.net url hops to a dynamic ip that has a dynamic name service. I wonder if that is the issue - it could be somehow, I just don't see what it would be ... I'm gonna talk to a couple engineers and get some technical opinions.
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Jeremy, That's probably the best solution. I was a software guy for 30 years, but I was no wizard on hardware. Let me know if anyone comes up with an answer, or even a guess.
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Hi Jeremy,
I wanted to add this post from my experienced as I've been web designer for many years.
Your site is not slow in my computer, but not fast either at the beginning.
The use of Flash for galleries is sometimes problematic (and I'm a Flash Fan!):
The latest versions that actually use action-script 3 are made for a proper integration with Frame work engines.
I've noticed that when used with XML files, these are much slower under certain conditions. I came to the conclusion that using Flash for
a personal or small company website is better and cleaner in AS2. That might be a point.
There is also a redirection.
But your site is not slow, I actually found it faster in Google chrome and Moz that in I.E and at the end it was a pleasure
to use.
Also, the use of Flash is a very good option for displaying images, because of the algorithms and no browser compatbility hassles.
I liked it a lot.
Fred.
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Still unusably slow.
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Still unusably slow.
Yes ... unfortunately, it seems that there are some folks - a minority, fortunately - who can't get a good route to my host no matter what. Both you and Russ seem to fall into that category.
I spent a lot of time looking into this yesterday, and the bottom line is that I'm gonna have to change hosting solutions to fix the issue.
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Hi Jeremy,
I wanted to add this post from my experienced as I've been web designer for many years.
Your site is not slow in my computer, but not fast either at the beginning.
The use of Flash for galleries is sometimes problematic (and I'm a Flash Fan!):
The latest versions that actually use action-script 3 are made for a proper integration with Frame work engines.
I've noticed that when used with XML files, these are much slower under certain conditions. I came to the conclusion that using Flash for
a personal or small company website is better and cleaner in AS2. That might be a point.
Yes - I think you are right. The XML "style-sheets" do seem to load slower than a fully compiled .swf in IE ... Firefox and Chrome seem to do better with that. It also seems to load fastest on Windows machines ... almost 50% of my visitors were on Mac OS so far and that seems significantly slower to load the galleries.
There is also a redirection.
Yes there is ... and as I speculated in a previous post, I think the messy DNS routing is the real problem. There's two domains involved and some dynamic mapping ... that ultimately has to be the root of the problem.
But your site is not slow, I actually found it faster in Google chrome and Moz that in I.E and at the end it was a pleasure
to use.
Also, the use of Flash is a very good option for displaying images, because of the algorithms and no browser compatbility hassles.
I liked it a lot.
Fred.
Thank you! I appreciate your feedback!
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Yes ... unfortunately, it seems that there are some folks - a minority, fortunately - who can't get a good route to my host no matter what. Both you and Russ seem to fall into that category.
I spent a lot of time looking into this yesterday, and the bottom line is that I'm gonna have to change hosting solutions to fix the issue.
I'm waiting for a router somewhere to get rebooted.
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I'm waiting for a router somewhere to get rebooted.
... that or two random ISP's to conclude a peering agreement at some colo in New Jersey ...
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Still unusably slow.
Hey Dark,
Your problem may be that all internet traffic to Minnesota gets routed through Norwegian Bachelor Farmers, who, as we all know, are notoriously taciturn and slow to pass along information.
Here in Massachusetts I have no problem, even though I'm descended from Norwegian farmers ('though not, AFAIK, bachelor).
Eric
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I hope our resident Website Maven Chris_T will take a look at it.
Definitely not a maven. In fact, I'm not even Jewish
From my WinXP, IE7 and 21" CRT full screen. After taking a quick look at the site, I found myself dropping down the same old comments I had made repeatedly, such as:
- I consider a splash page is a waste. (And this one has TWO!) The b/w image led me to expect a site about b/w.
- The gallery page's header looks drastically different from the other pages', creating an inconsistent look. The global navigation menu at the bottom disappears. The lone back button brings you back to the splash page, oh no! (I suspect all these are caused by using a gallery template.)
- The vertical thumbnail scroll is a reasonable solution for a large number of thumbnails. But when not all the thumbnails are loaded, sliding the scroll bar all the way down would create blanks without any indication that loading is still going on.
- The thumbnail scroll would work much better if the thumbnail of the current enlargement is in the middle of the group, allowing a viewer to see a few previous ones and a few to follow.
- The enlargement scales as the window size changes, while the thumbnail column size remains unchanged. This work quite well, until the window size gets somewhat small.
- What's the difference between View Slide Show and Play Slides?
- The images can use some captions and titles.
- There are too much white borders around the enlargement.
- The About page has minimal info.
Many such comments are covered in great detail in a wonderful book I recently read. The authors generously publish it in its entirety online here:
http://webstyleguide.com/wsg3/index.html (http://webstyleguide.com/wsg3/index.html)
Also, I will start a new topic making a few suggestions to both the site review requesters and critics.
BTW, following my own suggestions have created many new but better_now_than_later challenges for my own site design.
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Chris - thank you for the excellent feedback. Much of it I could give myself as someone who has designed and managed the development of web applications for front office financial services professionals ... and I'm usually a pretty good designer ... but I've never 'built' anything like this before ... it was fun and I look forward to figuring out how to address nearly everything you brought up ASAP. I spent so much time working on the images, and then rushed through the website build. I had a simple design that would have worked better ... but a lot of the issues, as you suspected, cropped up due to the decision to use default Lightroom flash galleries. They are so convenient, but they make navigation challenging as they only provide one hyperlink. I think I figured out how to change the fonts around, but I haven't figured out how to decompile the flash so I can add some navigation links ... I thought Flash CS4 would be able to do that, but I guess it doesn't ... but I think I may build my own flash galleries instead. I am enjoying playing with Flash.
I don't agree 100% about the splash page - but I'll make it work in the next version in a fashion that doesn't compromise navigation. I completely agree that the two splash pages are a kluge and a half.
The comment about expecting a site about B&W was the most unexpected, but insightful ... my original design called for a looped slideshow in that slot and I may go back to that ...
The about page will be written by my wife who has a background in PR and marketing. She's working on it ... and she's so much better at that stuff than me. That was the best I could do without sounding like Bob Dole talking in the 3rd person about himself. Lame, but true ... I'm just the artist ... she's the agent ...
Thanks again - I've gotten some great feedback ... I miss my old design and engineering teams, but you guys will do in a pinch.