HiveMinds

The Boy Hope · Posted: Sat Dec 17, 2005 3:10 pm Post subject: Photo Site

http://walks.theboyhope.com/

This is a site for some of my photos from various walks. I've been meaning to stick it in here for critique for a while.

I'm particularly interested in the layout and navigation but I'd like to hear any suggestions you have on any aspect.

Thanks.
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Ibatex · Posted: Sat Dec 17, 2005 3:59 pm Post subject:

I don't really have any suggestions like you want but I surfed through alot of the photos. The scenery is gorgeous. Are those all taken close to where you live?

The only thing I can think of to help the nav along would be to incorporate some kind of breadcrumbing feature to supplement the link back to home...or maybe a drop menu to allow 1-click access to other groups of photos.

Anyway, nice work TBH

The Boy Hope · Posted: Mon Dec 19, 2005 5:14 am Post subject:

Hmmm ... a dropdown of other places nearby might be worth looking at. Thanks.

In the U.S., your idea of "close to where you live" is probably a bit different from mine here in Scotland. Some of them are just out the back door, others are four hours or so drive away. You guys probably drive that far just to pick up milk but you can cover a lot of Scotland in that time. Wink

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Let's all lobby for mandatory blood and urine testing of all politicians on a weekly basis. They have nothing to hide.

caddickj · Posted: Mon Dec 19, 2005 11:37 am Post subject:

First off... great pictures. Didn't look at all of them, but I particularly liked this one. Nice.

Okay, so to answer your question:
1. A way to navigate from collection to collection without returning to the home page. That might be what you were just talking about with the drop-down.

2. The border around the thumbnail for the active picture caused the navigation arrows to move, which meant I had to keep repositioning my mouse, which annoyed me. I guess the simplest solution for that is to put the arrows on a separate line.

3. A map with "thumbtacks" might be a good reference for where these places are. It would certainly have enhanced my understanding.

4. The "get high-res" form told me I got an error. So I used the contact form to tell you that. And here I am saying it again.

5. Oh, and to keep pace, I've upgraded my umbrella-hat to withstand blasts of up to 60 gigawatts. (It's amazing what you can do with bubble-gum wrappers and scotch tape after watching an episode of MacGyver.) So... :P

Hm... 4 hours covers a lot of Scotland? I'll have to look up the size relationship between PA and Scotland. That really puts it in a different perspective for me.
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ronw · Posted: Mon Dec 19, 2005 12:50 pm Post subject:

TBH,

Very nice photos!

Are dial-up users a consideration? If so, a big help would be actual thumbnails instead of an 60Kb-100Kb image file squeezed into a 60x45 pixel thumbnail.
Also, I could perhaps see preloading the images that are the thumbs for the page but preloading 20 of these images (waiting for Tommy page) is a quite a bit for dial-up.

The [ page 1 ] [ page 2 ] ... below the thumbnails distracts me from the images. Perhaps they could work at the bottom?

Your 'next image' and 'next page' icons are a bit large and might look better if line height aligned to the middle of the thumbnails.

I like the larger border on the thumbs to show the current pic. Ha, I just read Caddickj's opinion on this.

Backyard stuff eh? My last backpacking trip in Sequoia National Park, California just took a 4 hour flight for me Smile

A 4 hour drive would still keep me in cornfields!
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dbmasters · Senior Royalty Joined: 09 Nov 2002 Posts: 2433

caddickj · Posted: Mon Dec 19, 2005 1:18 pm Post subject:

The Boy Hope · Posted: Mon Dec 19, 2005 2:35 pm Post subject:

Holy shit, caddick! I've totally borked the high-res request without noticing. Thanks, man!

Lots of other things to think about, too.

(1) Dropdown nav ... obviously has to be done since everybody has said they'd like that.
(2) Navigation moving ... again, obviously has to be fixed somehow
(3) Map with thumbtacks ... I'd love to do something like this but I'm not sure my Photoshop skills are up to the job of creating the map
(4) [page1] [page2] links ... I don't like them either. Might try them at the bottom as ronw suggested
(5) Nav arrows a bit big and need height aligned. Sheer laziness on my part that they're not already.
(6) Dial-up/preloads ... I'm not fussed about dial-up users enough to make proper thumbnails, to be honest. I don't see how not preloading the next page of images after the current page is done preloading would make life more fun for dial-up users, ronw. Could you elaborate on that a bit for me?

*runs off to fix borked high-res page*
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Let's all lobby for mandatory blood and urine testing of all politicians on a weekly basis. They have nothing to hide.

The Boy Hope · Posted: Mon Dec 19, 2005 2:48 pm Post subject:

Right, that should be the high-res request working again. Utterly gormless logic error on my part.
_________________
Let's all lobby for mandatory blood and urine testing of all politicians on a weekly basis. They have nothing to hide.

caddickj · Posted: Mon Dec 19, 2005 3:37 pm Post subject:

The Boy Hope · Posted: Mon Dec 19, 2005 3:48 pm Post subject:

I'm not storing the originals on the server, caddick. I just email them out when it suits me.

Good point about the confirmation email though. It doesn't make any sense to send you that as well.
_________________
Let's all lobby for mandatory blood and urine testing of all politicians on a weekly basis. They have nothing to hide.

caddickj · Posted: Mon Dec 19, 2005 3:58 pm Post subject:

ronw · Posted: Tue Dec 20, 2005 1:55 am Post subject:

The Boy Hope · Posted: Tue Dec 20, 2005 6:15 am Post subject:

No, you haven't mis-viewed anything. It'll continue on past the second page to preload the whole album if it gets a chance.

I'll fire up the dial-up test machine at work and try it for myself. Should be fun, eh. Dial-up with lots of big images. Awesome.
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Let's all lobby for mandatory blood and urine testing of all politicians on a weekly basis. They have nothing to hide.

Jason Gross · Posted: Wed Dec 21, 2005 7:33 am Post subject:

Nice to see someone else likes to get out and about and enjoy the back-country. Loved the pics, TBH.