Please Critique Me :-)

Hi All,

I have been designing a web site for my dads photography business and could
do with a critique of it please. There is still a fair bit of content to be
added but I would like to know that the design seems ok before I go too far.
I am currently not too happy with the background but that's what he has
decided on. I'm still trying to steer him away from it.

Also I seems to display fine in IE but in firefox the navigation pictures at
the top have a red line sort of behind them, any idea why?

Another thing I am still working on is the META tags for the pages, is this
necessary these days or will search engines just pick up on the pages
content?

He is wanting a little flash slideshow on some of the pages to show examples
of work.

http://new.the-picture-gallery.co.uk

Thanks in advance

Jamie

Thanks for your response.

http://new.the-picture-gallery.co.uk
I have been designing a web site for my dads photography business and
could do with a critique of it please. There is still a fair bit of
content to be added but I would like to know that the design seems ok
before I go too far. I am currently not too happy with the background
but that's what he has decided on. I'm still trying to steer him
away from it.

I like it, but as you say, the background gets too dark in the gradation
at the bottom. The red links are very hard to read. Find a light color
for the link foreground and use a background hover color instead.

Thanks, i'll take a look into it.

Also I seems to display fine in IE but in firefox the navigation
pictures at the top have a red line sort of behind them, any idea
why?

img { vertical-align: top; ...

The pictures are links, so they are underlined, except that CSS moves
the underline to above the images.

Thanks, i've managed to supress the underline on the images now.

Another thing I am still working on is the META tags for the pages,
is this necessary these days or will search engines just pick up on
the pages content?

You can use a "description" but don't worry about "keywords" as the
search engines stopped reading those years ago due to abuse. Focus on
the content.

As i expected. thanks for clirification.

He is wanting a little flash slideshow on some of the pages to show
examples of work.

Your choice. Just be sure it isn't a huge download.

Yeah i'm going to try and keep these below 100k.

--
-bts
-Motorcycles defy gravity; cars just suck

"Jamie Allison" <jamie (AT) BIGjamieSPAMallisonBUCKET (DOT) co.uk> wrote

Hi All,

Er, G'Day.

<looks at web site>

I have been designing a web site for my dads photography business

Ah, then that answers my first question: Who is this Robert person anyway
:-)

You start up front by saying "Robert has been..." and "Robert is...". It's
like you are talking about somebody else, like those tribute sites: "Abba
was a pop group that...".

You confuse me more in the second paragraph when you say "our ... studio"
and "give us a ring".

Is this Roberts personal web site flogging his snapshots or is it a web site
*about* Robert the photographer or is it a site about Roberts photgraphic
company or is it a third party site selling Roberts pictures? I can't quite
tell from the first page. You should identify exactly *who* you are on that
first page.

It's either _I_ or _we_ or _they_. Never mix them up.

<potters through site>

Ah yes, your dad has a photgraphic company (I presume) that also fiddles
with other things like framing etc. The site should probably say "we". You
could then say "Robert, our cheif photographer..." and "our framing
department". Make it look big and smart.

do with a critique of it please. There is still a fair bit of content to
be added but I would like to know that the design seems ok before I go too
far.

It's looking mighty fine so far.

You may wish to rethink XHTML. IE simply does not understand it. Treats it
as tag soup and error corrects it back to HTML. HTML 4.01 strict is the way
to go.

I am currently not too happy with the background but that's what he has
decided on. I'm still trying to steer him away from it.

Don't ever ever use dark red text. Ever. Especially on a dark grey
background. Especially for links. It is hard to read and for the 5% or so of
us blokes who are colour blind it's totally invisible.

Also I seems to display fine in IE but in firefox the navigation pictures
at the top have a red line sort of behind them, any idea why?

Another thing I am still working on is the META tags for the pages, is
this necessary these days or will search engines just pick up on the pages
content?

Forget meta tags. Put your keywords right there on you page for everybody to
read.

He is wanting a little flash slideshow on some of the pages to show
examples of work.

Aaarg. No. Use thumbnails like at all of your competitors sites. Don't force
your viewers to watch a movie.

BTW there are some might fine photos in there. Tell you dad he's done good.
More pictures of the prom though :-)

<aside>
I also "repaired" some of my mums old photos, getting the creases etc out of
them. I got them looking almost as good as yours but it took me bloody
hours! Is there at trick there or is it just painstaking
smudge/airbrush/whipe/pen/whipe/draw/smudge?
</aside.

--
Richard.

Jamie Allison wrote:

http://new.the-picture-gallery.co.uk

What everybody else said, plus the shadowing on the banner graphic is
excessive and hard to read. Make it more subtle with a lighter shadow
and less spacing from the text.

You must also reduce the file size of your images. 24K is pretty heavy
for the banner, and 13K is way too heavy for the gradient background.
Several of the photos used in the navigation menu are also resized in
the HTML, which is bad. Get them the proper size in your graphics
editor, and use some compression to keep them light weight. All of them
should be less than 5K, probably 2-3K.

--
Berg

Jamie Allison wrote:

I have been designing a web site for my dads photography business and could
do with a critique of it please. There is still a fair bit of content to be
added but I would like to know that the design seems ok before I go too far.

http://new.the-picture-gallery.co.uk

Where is Hartlepool? I suppose that since I do not know, it doesn't matter.

You need a copy editor. The information is there but is poorly
presented, choppy, and has a numerous of typos and puctuaion errors ("A
Professional Photographers" - mixed plural/singular, "Parents Albums" -
missing apostrophe, etc.).
Consider avoiding the full justification. Browsers prefer speed to
presentation for rendering text. The spacing between words can become
quite excessive and just does not look good.

--
jmm (hyphen) list (at) sohnen-moe (dot) com
(Remove .AXSPAMGN for email)

"Jamie Allison" <jamie (AT) BIGjamieSPAMallisonBUCKET (DOT) co.uk> wrote

Hi All,

I have been designing a web site for my dads photography business and
could do with a critique of it please. There is still a fair bit of
content to be added but I would like to know that the design seems ok
before I go too far. I am currently not too happy with the background but
that's what he has decided on. I'm still trying to steer him away from
it.

Tha background has now been changed but i'm not sure if i like it still.

Also I seems to display fine in IE but in firefox the navigation pictures
at the top have a red line sort of behind them, any idea why?

Sorted now

Another thing I am still working on is the META tags for the pages, is
this necessary these days or will search engines just pick up on the pages
content?

He is wanting a little flash slideshow on some of the pages to show
examples of work.

Decided against flash and using a few small thumbnails at the bottom of each
page.

http://new.the-picture-gallery.co.uk

Thanks in advance

Jamie

Jamie Allison wrote:

Decided against flash and using a few small thumbnails at the bottom of each
page.

http://new.the-picture-gallery.co.uk

You still need to better optimize your graphics.

I don't especially like the new background color - it doesn't really
show off the photos well.

--
Berg

"Bergamot" <bergamot (AT) visi (DOT) com> wrote

Jamie Allison wrote:

Decided against flash and using a few small thumbnails at the bottom of
each
page.

http://new.the-picture-gallery.co.uk

You still need to better optimize your graphics.

Yeah i'm going to pull them all back and run them through photoshop to
increase compresion etc.

I don't especially like the new background color - it doesn't really
show off the photos well.

Any ideas for a background colour?

--
Berg

Jamie Allison wrote:

"Bergamot" <bergamot (AT) visi (DOT) com> wrote in message
news:5ietp8F3p8rd5U1 (AT) mid (DOT) individual.net...
Jamie Allison wrote:

http://new.the-picture-gallery.co.uk

I don't especially like the new background color - it doesn't really
show off the photos well.

Any ideas for a background colour?

Not periwinkle?

That probably doesn't help. If this were a regular gallery, what color
would the walls be? Or does your father use any special mattes to show
off his work? If so, what color are they?

--
Berg

"Bergamot" <bergamot (AT) visi (DOT) com> wrote

Jamie Allison wrote:
"Bergamot" <bergamot (AT) visi (DOT) com> wrote in message
news:5ietp8F3p8rd5U1 (AT) mid (DOT) individual.net...
Jamie Allison wrote:

http://new.the-picture-gallery.co.uk

I don't especially like the new background color - it doesn't really
show off the photos well.

Any ideas for a background colour?

Not periwinkle?

:-P

That probably doesn't help. If this were a regular gallery, what color
would the walls be? Or does your father use any special mattes to show
off his work? If so, what color are they?

He doesn't generally use any colours, his letter heads are on a cream colour
paper but apart form that he generally displays stuff on which walls.

How about this? FFFFCC

--
Berg