>>Hi David - or do you prefer Jim?
Jim is fine.
>>You might look at some of the other web site threads here - as I don't really want to say the same things again! I'll just summarise the main points and you can do the legwork to see why I said them
Thanks, I will.
>>Before I start - the images are lovely. But you do hide them away (see third), which rather defeats the purpose of a photo site.
That was pretty much the issue the made me want to redesign. Looking at the server report on hits and pages viewed, I noticed people only viewed one or two clicks deep.
>>First - use of frames to organise the content - no, no, no. And no.
Ok, ok, ok. and ok. Worst. Website. Organization. Strategy. Ever.
Got it... Any recommendations other than frames? I didn't want to reload the navigational links with every page...
>>Second: combine the splash screen and the one with the icon explanations. An extra click for nothing. But see fourth.
Ok.
>>Third: streamline the navigation so it's easy to get to the galleries from the home page - not home > icons > images > gallery. An important principle of information architecture is to get the most important content in front of the reader quickly, not impede his/her progress learning your site design!
Completely agree - excellent point. Thanks.
>>Fourth: don't expect people to learn an icon scheme just to use your site. Usability studies show that they won't: that's why the top commercial sites (like Google, Amazon, etc.) use text links except for very commonly recognised things like shopping carts.
I agree here as well. I think my "looks cool" hat and my "looks different" hat ganged up and ate my "sensible website design" hat. Taking a fresh look at the sites I frequent, I noticed they do things very simply - this site, Outback Photo, Alain Briot's site...
>>Fifth: white on black is quite hard on the eyes for some people - and the use of italics makes it worse. Think about not using such a small base font size: about 90% is quite small enough for us over-50s!
Agreed and thanks.
>>Sixth: why's the text on the images page done as a (fuzzy) graphic and an image map? This is the most important page on the site and you make it inaccessible?
Ok. In fact, all the text on the site is a graphic. I was trying to use a font I liked (not on most computers) and trying to maintain its size regardless of browser settings. But I have to agree that allowing people to clearly read the text and adjust the font size is more important than a font preference on my part.
>>Have fun learning HTML! And have a look at
this thread for more pointers
I will! Thanks so much for the advice.