I've redesigned my site going for a minimalist approach, its nothing too serious but any thoughts would be appreciated. (i know the contact section needs some work)
http://www.duncanphilpott.com/
and on a side note... merry christmas all!
Flash based = no worky on iPhone = fail from me. 🙁
Merry Xmas though 🙂
I hate flash. Can't be bothered waiting for it to load
Looks nice, but difficult to get to the content - don't think my Mac likes it either as it seems as though you only have 3 pics loaded??)
After it loaded I had trouble seeing what it is you do or the objective of the page. There is a tiny clue bottom right where I think it says 'all photographs'. But I really don't know what your objective is.
Minimalist is good, too minimalist not good.
Nice photos BTW.
Merry Christmas. 😀
Doesn't load here, neither in FF not Chromium. Linux user with flash issues having old laptop here.
works for me on firefox. Looks good too, some great photographs in there.
right.. looks like i have some compatibility issues to iron out.. thanks for the feedback. 🙂
i think it also needs to be made more obvious that you can click through the slideshow since the buttons to do so are rather small.
it would be the javascript that is causing issues if you are running noscript then duncanphilpott.com has to be allowed. Its probably worth me putting in a <noscript> to say that.
deigned it on a mac so shouldn't be too much of an issue there 😛
Flash - I've got it disabled on my computer and I'm not likely to change that. Sorry
It's minimal. Really minimal. What does it do?
I've got a moderate-to-slow brodband here. Bored with nothing to look at while your page loads, so clicked elsewere. If you've not got my attention then I'll not wait to see what you do - even if I know what you do. Give me a reason to wait while your website pulls content from flickr. I clicked on what I thought was your website, not just a Flash portal to another. Make it your website.
Well in theory if everything behaves itself. You have 4 tabs each with their own content. The first 3 of which contain sliding image sliders.. (err) with these you can scroll through and click on the photos which should take you to their original flickr page. The final tab is the contact tab and it just contains some very basic contact information.
I'm seeing now it would be ideal if i can move away from flash for the image sliders so i'll look into that another day when there are less festivities
🙂
I see, i don't think i appreciated how long this actually took to load. Upon first opening it it loaded quickly for me on a slow connection. However i now assume this was due to having all the images in my cache from looking at them previously on flickr.
Like many people, I use ClickToFlash so don't see anything until I manually open each flash movie. Then, I noticed a few UX issues that annoyed me - particularly the fact that the mouse pointer is set as a hand even though clicking does not do anything.
The irony is that the different "subjects", no wheels, two wheels etc, are animated using a version of the javascript "coda slider". So, you have everything you need on the page the actually make this work properly, without any need for Flash at all.
I do understand that you might want to protect your images from copying but, given their resolution, I don't think you need to worry too much.
Pity - I quite like the picture themselves!!!
Rachel
Thanks for that rachel.
the cursor change is a gitch I'm currently trying to work out since you should be able to click the photo and then see a larger res file on the flickr site.
I avoided using codaslider for the images as my past experience with pulling photos off flickr using flickr's API using php to generate <img> elements on the page ended up driving me insane but i achieved it in the end with a previous site design. I rather wanted to avoid all that hassle however if you know of a more efficient way i'd really like to know. I only ever come round to these things when i want to re-do my own site and it sounds like you're more clued up than me 🙂
I think its fair enough to say though that this thread pretty much concludes to avoid flash?
You have a 'style over content' issue here. Your photos are good, but how I get to see them isn't. Get some of them hosted on your site so I can see them without a flickr or Flash delay. If you have me hooked, then I'll go further - but you've got to hook me. Sell me your pictures - selling form over function fluff is for advertising agencies!
Yes, avoid Flash. 🙂
Not because it's necessarily bad, just because it's not a ubiquitous as it used to be - for example, it wasn't even installed by default on my new MacBook Pro...
Rachel
re style vs content, a lot of photgrapher's websites default to flash as the most popular method. It strikes me as a bit of IT snobbery to 'hate all flash sites' - if done well it is brilliant. Trouble is it takes a bit more effort to make it good. (I applaud your efforts to be one of the good ones!)
I use noscript because I'm an ex-IT type and I'm a touch paranoid, but let's face it Flashdanceers are in the minority. It's really odd that apple users, who you'd expect to love the style that flash can add are trying to make a virtue out of having it missing from their computers.
its the thought that counts.......
.......but its not Mac-friendly
It's really odd that apple users, who you'd expect to love the style that flash can add are trying to make a virtue out of having it missing from their computers.
There is nothing wrong with the style, it is the resource killing nature that a badly written, asset heavy flash movie can have. Obviously if the designer is a good coder then it can be very good medium. Unfortunately most the time it is badly implemented.
Oh...and I use a Flashdanceer as that is the form most adverts take these days, as opposed to be strictly to stop flash across the board on my Mac.
I think i might go back to using php and flickr api to grab the photos. I'm reluctant to host them on my own site since i don't get much bandwidth (not that i'm anticipating a lot of traffic)
duncan....
Who is the site aimed at?
What is it's purpose briefly?
What do you want it to do?
SB
Well.. i probably should have said to begin with but.
The site is mainly aimed at people who have seen the url in photo credits, i've noticed that some companies where they've used my photos simply credit duncanphilpott.com.
Therefore the purpose is to just briefly show some of my other stuff and have contact details for anyone that wishes to contact me.
I want it to auto update itself and take care of itself while i'm at uni hence i'm using flickr to reduce the amount of uploads i have to do.
does that clear things up?
just looked at the site on IE on my sister's PC seems the whole thing doesn't center and the floats don't work :/ I wish Microsoft would just code it to be compliant with CSS like the other browsers..
TBH I think you'd be better off dropping the whole fancy Flash thing, and doing some simple thumbnails and a main window with swap image restore. Mouseover each thumbnail, big version appears in main window. I am impatient and have ADHD so get instantly bored when things don't load.
I prefer sites which invite the viewer to click on stuff; makes them more active in the process. I can't stand slideshow style sites. Speshly ones with naff music.
indeed. I'm now looking at using Lightbox + phpFlickr to generate smaller images to click and englarge. I like the letterbox shape of the site though so i'm not sure whether to put a slider in the content so that you only see a certain amount of thumbnails to maintain the shape of the site.