Re: pictures of scotland

In article <NXRVm.34418$iW.15555@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
"Camer01" <cam.mo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

a few people have mentioned the tartan paper but i'm buzy looking for an
unusual replacement.

and as for the edin page its still under development, still mullin a few
ideas around to see how it looks before i add txt.

and the map is just a basic 1 till i get a more detailed county map made up,
with all districts included.

also im working on more stories of walks, and some driving tours will
finally be added.

I don't usually respond to these, mostly because it is unclear as to
whether your aim is to highlight your photos, highlight Scotland,
highlight your writing, or highlight your web design.

However, as this is alt.photography I'll assume you wish to highlight
your photos.

Just a few differences between your site, http://c.j.photos.tripod.com/,
and your friend's site http://tonerland.yolasite.com/:

Home page
Tonerland: navigation by city/region first thing you see
C.J.: navigation "below the fold" (second screen scroll down) and
organized by "gallery 1", "gallery 2" etc., with no info on what may be
there

Tonerland: very simple, visually striking, no scroll
C.J.: unreadable title, scrolls three screens down, lots of little
clashing elements, lots of different fonts and colors, distracting
background, unclear just what is clickable

(Tonerland) Edinburgh / (C.J.) Gallery 1
Tonerland: opens in the same window, all thumbnails are visible in
three screens, possibly superfluous map and weather data, each thumbnail
is a link to flickr and opens in a lightbox window overlaid on the
thumbnails
C.J.: Gallery opens in a new window, is 16 screens deep and
apparently is only one of 9 pages according to the navigation bar. Text
is red on tartan, illegible, too big -- it breaks poorly leaving every
third line or so with one word, centered. The clip art picture frames
and "brass" labels detract mightily from the photos. More colors and
fonts than necessary.


Sorry you were so critical but ive only been working on this for a couple of
years and am still learning web design.. i work long hrs so i get very
little time to do this as well as still figuring my way about photo & paint
shops.

A hint here: if you don't want to hear other peoples' opinions it's best
not to ask for them.

Yes, we all understand that we all work hard, work long hours, and that
there is a learning curve for everything related to photography and web
design. However, consider this:

Your home page http://c.j.photos.tripod.com/ has 729 lines of html code.
Your friend's http://tonerland.yolasite.com/ has 342 lines -- actually
190 lines after I ran it through HTML Tidy to remove the gaps the
template put in as place holders.

Further, you use tables to place elements and he uses css, which can be
more easily edited to update the entire site's look. He is using a
template set that works well. If you are using a template set it isn't
doing what you want -- if what you want is to highlight your photography.

Standards checking at w3.org <http://validator.w3.org/> reveals the
following:
Tonerland: "58 Errors, 9 warning(s), Doctype XHTML 1.0 Strict"

C.J.: "The following notes and warnings highlight missing or
conflicting information which caused the validator to perform some
guesswork prior to validation. If the guess or fallback is incorrect, it
could make validation results entirely incoherent. It is highly
recommended to check these potential issues, and, if necessary, fix them
and re-validate the document."
"No DOCTYPE Declaration could be found or recognized in this
document. This generally means that the document is not declaring its
Document Type at the top. It can also mean that the DOCTYPE declaration
contains a spelling error, or that it is not using the correct syntax."

Even the most basic templates will insert a Doctype at the beginning of
the document. Without it browsers have no way to know what standards to
follow when rendering your site, and will definitely cause errors major
enough to affect the viewers' experience, up to and including rendering
a blank screen.

So the first questions that come to mind are, is it a photo site, a
travel site, a blog, or some combination? Why do you feel the need to
use a "catchy" background, multiple fonts, multiple colors, and
amateurish clip art? Would it be better to research template-based
websites or mega photo sites like flickr or picassa rather than try to
reinvent the wheel?

Only you know the answers to these questions, and the answers might help
steer you in the direction _you_ want to go.

Best of luck,

K
.

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