Website - feedback sought from fellow RFF-ers

[Gabriel M.A.]

Ok my fellow RFF-ers, so this may hardly be done here, but I thought I'd try. I'm looking for some feedback, any feedback (well, keep it constructive, please), from the layout/navigation of my website, even to the pictures themselves if you want.

You could use the guestbook (you don't have to provide your e-mail and/or website in the form); I will archive the entries of that guestbook later and take that feedback. I think that may be better than using the bandwidth of this forum (I don't know, what do you think Joe, about the experiment?); unless you find it difficult to use the guestbook then I'll check here. Again, the guestbook entries for feedback will be archived later.

I've been in beta mode for so long (almost two months now) I've been itching to "launch" it officially, even if I don't have as many pictures and galleries as I would like to. I put this website together by myself, literally from the hardware, operating system, to the DNS tables, code, and of course, pictures, so that's why it's been painfully slow.

I'm planning on having an exclusive "rangefinder" gallery, but all in due time; you'll see that most of it right now is nonrangefinder (hey I just got my RFs this year!). So...darn the torpedoes. And thanks in advance...

http://www.gmaphoto.com/

 

[Fred]

Just looked, very impressive. Very fast and interesting touches like the 'right button does not ...' is a very good idea to stop theft, I normally use the right button to navigate back and discovered I could not.

Cheers!

 

[bmattock]

From the main page, if I click on 'Galleries' I get an error message (shown below). The page seems to work correctly anyway. I'm at work, running Windows Explorer 6.0

Line: 25
Char: 42
Error: Expected ';'
Code: 0
URL: http://www.gmaphoto.com/galleries/galleries.php

 

[Gabriel M.A.]

Thanks, Fred. The speed seems to vary, and I know it's not my server, it seems to be my service provider.

bmattock: that's bizarre. I'll look into it. Thanks for letting me know.

 

[back alley]

looks pretty good to me!

loads fast and simple to navigate.

jjoe

 

[sooner]

Congratulations on the site. The only link that didn't work for me was "favorites," but otherwise it worked fine, and looked great. The only problem is that after looking at your pictures of Paris and London I'm dying for a trip. Thanks for infecting me with the travel bug! Best of luck with the website. --John

 

[Todd.Hanz]

I like it, very simple and clean. I would like to make one very similar to yours but I will have too hire some 8 year old to build it due to my "HTML Paralysis" 😀.


The only issue I see is the size of the vertical images, if you run your monitor at 800x600 then you have to scroll up and down to see the complete image. Otherwise a cool looking site, I'm jealous!

Todd

 

[XAos]

The right click thing is annoying. There are lot of other uses for right click - bookmarking, opening in a new tab, etc.. Besides that 1) I always wonder when I see it if they ripped the code off from some other site in order to protect THEIR precious intellectual property (I'm a programmer, the pictures are just for fun), and 2) it has a rather accusatory tone. I've noticed lately that the stores have been changing their anti-shoplifting tag detectors to say "someone forgot to desensitize a tag" (or equivalent) instead of "stop right there you scumbag thief!" (I'm exaggerating, when they first came out they were often quite accusatory in the recorded message).

 

[ducttape]

I've noticed lately that the stores have been changing their anti-shoplifting tag detectors to say "someone forgot to desensitize a tag" (or equivalent) instead of "stop right there you scumbag thief!" (I'm exaggerating, when they first came out they were often quite accusatory in the recorded message).

lol

Now, on to the website

I like it. The opening splash page is a nice graphic as it draws my attention inside the window, ie, site. Good choice

The images are nice. Is the 'artistic nudes' log in a ploy to catch people and turn them in to the thought police? 🙂

Good work. I wish I could get my act together with my presentation...

 

[zpuskas]

I like the look. No fancy gimmicks. Easy to navigate. I think you shuld make your name more pronounced, it seems to be hidden on the bottoms of the pages.

 

[Gabriel M.A.]

Sooner/John: thanks! And yes, the Favorites link is disabled for right now. I haven't decided how I'm going to populate it; I'm not a fan of duplicates, and it's not a good security practice to use symbolic links.

Todd: I know! I struggled with a decision about that for a very long time; in the end I thought that trying to make the vertical images fit would not provide the same visual information. I am thinking about providing a "shrunk" image, and an option to view "large". Extra work, though.

About the right-click: there are many reasons why I decided to do that; I know that from my previous galleries on PBase, people downloaded my pictures (once one came up elsewhere), so ever since I also started putting watermarks; also, the gallery pictures are not static -- bookmarking one picture may in the future turn out to be another picture. But I will note these observations and see how I can provide the option of bookmarking or e-mailing a certain page to someone.

The "Nudes" folder: that's a placeholder right now. I am currently working on something (still on the drawing board) on how to provide short-term logins to limited-access folders (when I uploaded my fine art nude pics on PBase I got an insane amount of hits within hours, it was obvious they were not interested in the "photography" itself).

Many things that I'm still building from the ground up, and slightly reinventing the wheel, because I don't want to be a slave to a database; I'm using XML to store gallery info, and it seems to be working well so far; but this means I have to create my own admin interface.

Thank you all for your feedback! This is all very helpful.

 

[hoot]

Nice and classy.

When I move my mouse over the thumbnails, the background turns from dark to light gray and the text from black to red. As a matter of personal taste, I wish the text remained black (the background transition is fine). I wouldn't want to dictate my taste to others, though.

Keep up the good work!

 

[MacDaddy]

Change the color of the home page text to dark gray or black. I agree on the text changing from black to red not working on the galleries, but for a different reason. There are a fair number of viewers who have color blindness to red AND the shade of blue you chose for your home page, so that is why you might need to change those colors.
Except for those minor details, it's an excellent site-clean, straightforward and GORGEOUS photos!
Rob "MacDaddy" White

 

[RML]

Just looked, very impressive. Very fast and interesting touches like the 'right button does not ...' is a very good idea to stop theft, I normally use the right button to navigate back and discovered I could not.

Cheers!

The right button does work in Firefox.

 

[XAos]

The right button doesn't do diddly squat to stop theft, a point I forgot to make earlier. If they can see it they can steal it at whatever resolution it's being served at. There's really no other way around it, but it's a minor nit.

 

[darkkavenger]

It runs just fine for me, excellent work!

 

[Gabriel M.A.]

Yep, there's a loophole in Firefox, if you know which setting to use. Alas, even Mozilla ain't perfect.

Thanks on the other suggestions/observations. I've also pondered dark grey or black, it makes you focus more on the picture, but black or white is so overdone, I wanted just a little bit of nonconvention. Still debating, though...

 

[Goodyear]

Yep, there's a loophole in Firefox, if you know which setting to use. Alas, even Mozilla ain't perfect.

T'ain't a loophole. Is a very handy, and very deliberate, feature. Likewise Opera.

TBH, capturing right-click like that will always inspire me to leave a site immediately and not return because:

1) It does literally nothing to stop image theft. When I view your page, the image is already on my hard-drive. Nothing you can do about it, it's the way the interweb works. And, if the visitor is using anything other than IE, then it won't be captured anyway!

2) It's just plain rude. It mucks with the functionality of my browser, functionality that I tend to like. The context menu is handy to have. And it assumes that I'm trying to steal images.

3) And did I mention that it serves no useful purpose anyway?

Aside from prominent watermarking, which we don't like for aesthetic reasons, the single best way to control use of your images is to display them at as low a resolution as you can stand, which then restricts the uses to which they can be put. It's the nature of the medium that 'theft' is brutally easy whatever measures the site builder puts in place, so that's something we have to choose to live with as we put our images online.

Things is, your site has very nice design - clean, easy to use and navigate, and fits the images well. To my eyes the colour of the pinkish boxes on the gallery page doesn't quite fit the look, though?

And I like the images very much.

Shame about the deal-breaker javascript, really...

 

[canonetc]

Hi Gabriel,

1) Layout is very nice and simple.
2) Need to rename the BW section on Doug Little to be the same as the color portfolio. Not everyone around the world who visits your site will know it's the same subject (but just in BW). Spell out the name, basically.
4) On Purchase: Tell the buyer what kind of print they will receive when they buy, such as Chromogenic, IRIS, Inkjet, Resin Coated or Fiber Base (for BW). Serious collectors, galleries, etc will want to know for archival purposes. If an inkjet print, will it have "archival" inks?
5) On "About GMA", retype your email address. Like ".......@yahoo.com."

Nice site!

Chris

 

[Gabriel M.A.]

T'ain't a loophole. Is a very handy, and very deliberate, feature. Likewise Opera.
TBH, capturing right-click like that will always inspire me to leave a site

Interesting observations; thanks for the feedback, I'll take that into serious consideration. Didn't know some people felt that strongly about things like that.

Aside from prominent watermarking, which we don't like for aesthetic reasons, the single best way to control use of your images is to display them at as low a resolution as you can stand

I have given this trade-off a lot of thought, and revisit it once in a while; I think that a decently-rendered picture with a slightly annoying watermark is better than a jagged, pixelated or otherwise low-accutance pic.

Things is, your site has very nice design - clean, easy to use and navigate, and fits the images well. To my eyes the colour of the pinkish boxes on the gallery page doesn't quite fit the look, though?

I agree with you here, yet can't seem to find which "cue" color to use that would not disrupt the scheme. The color difference is to make you aware that it is different from being inside a Gallery itself. It's all about simplified visual mapping. Somebody already complained that using blue and red are not a good idea to use because some people are color-blind (actually, color-blind people would be color-blind to red and green, not blue, and they would be shades of grey).

Thanks Goodyear. Weighing all differing views and reasons, specially in this format like you and all have is just great. Thanks again.