ickbar — Fri, 24 Aug 2001 02:00:00 +0000

Thanks Annette, Iv'e been busy and am pleased you appreciate the changes and effort that I have done, I'm still not there yet and am busy re-scanning photo's to get the thumbs, but as you realise it takes time.

The mouse...well he has gone on a holiday temporarily, he will be back after he gets compressed a tiny bit, Iv'e tried to explain it wont hurt much but he has gone all sulky on me..

Sitemap? ok I guess by that your suggesting I have a link to a seperate page with links of all my pages and a description of each all in plain text etc.

Thanks again for your comments

mick

Annette35 — Fri, 24 Aug 2001 00:45:51 +0000

Wow! Great stuff. I was one of the lookers but not critiquers early on in the story, so am blown away by the changes you have made. Looks great - clean, fresh, easy to read.

Love the photos - Just love travelling. I'm in Queensland and occasionally check out places like Moreton Island and Fraser Island. Makes you glad to be alive. However will have to check out WA one of these days.

The only two comments I can make -

1) Thumbnails of the photos would be good - they take a long time to load and probably can't be optimised anymore without losing quality. Though I daresay the people who are well into 4WD's will stay around for the photos to load.
2) Where's the mouse I keep hearing about?
Actually I have a third -
3) Do you have a sitemap? I tend to use these to find where I want to go on sites. Plain text links all on one page with no extra stuff - a real quick loading page to help you find your way around a site.

Again, great stuff. Fantastic changes in such a short time. It's a really steep learning curve isn't it?

Annette

ickbar — Wed, 15 Aug 2001 10:00:36 +0000

Thanks Busy.....In fact iv'e been just that another day spent looking learning and making changes, I know I'm still not there, but I feel it coming together, Iv'e yet to make all my pages in a consistant design but I will get there, I did manage to make a 3D gif header and am still playing with tables trying to get a good look,

Thanks again all, hopefully within the next week I will get it done, in the mean time I will have to cast my eye over some sites that have been submitted to do my part.

mick

Busy — Wed, 15 Aug 2001 02:16:38 +0000

ickbar,
there are freeware and shareware programs out there for making thumbnails, go to tucows.com or download.com etc and search for thumbnails or graphics or something lol, another one if you cant afford a paint program like paint shop pro, or photo shop (paint shop pro can do anything photo shop can do for half the price) is iranview (http://stud1.tuwien.ac.at/~e9227474/english.htm) freeware, this can also be used to make thumbnails but they add a grey top and bottom or sides to the image.

another option (and this can be used at any time) is http://www.spinwave.com for compressing images, it compresses .gifs better than .jpgs but thats life, and best of all its free

ickbar — Tue, 14 Aug 2001 23:52:43 +0000

Thanks Megan, DM & others

Ok, the plan goes like this....I will try white BG and carry the nav bar through to the rest of the site, I will also look at the site DM sent and try and make a graffics heading...Not so sure about kicking my mouse in the butt, he's been around a while the little fella and I have grown accustomed to him.. Thumbnails is going to be a big job [time] but again, I'm listening to you all and appreciate the help.

Mick

disaster-master — Tue, 14 Aug 2001 15:50:24 +0000

I agree with everything that Megan said. I am not crazy about the orange color you have chosen for the nav bar. Try a more neutral color that will compliment your photographs and use white for the background. The tan and silver doesn't do much for me.

If you don't have a graphics program that you can make a logo with, go to http://www.3dtextmaker.com/. You can make a logo any color, size, and font. You even have the option to make your logo spin but don't do this. Make it stationary.

The table at the bottom of the home page isn't aligned or something. I don't really see the need for the statement that you have there either ("I cannot accept any responsibility whatsoever....") Put some text navigation there instead in a smaller font and carry the left nav bar and nav at the bottom of the page throughout the site. Consistency is good.

Boy that is some nasty trauma to that foot on the "Boys and their toys" page. OUCH! That kinda stuff is right up my alley considering I am a medic but I'll bet it will probably gross most folks out. Good idea putting it at the bottom.

The white bar at the top of the pages that are silver looks bad. But if you make your background WHITE that little problem will go away.

It is obvious that you have put a great deal of thought and time into this site and I think it is coming along nicely. I love the photos that you have of the scenery.

oh, have you considered using thumbnails for the photo pages? This would decrease the load time and also let your visitors choose which images they want to wait to load. Just a thought.

Megan — Tue, 14 Aug 2001 13:26:50 +0000

Alright, I wasn't able to see the original version since it seemed to be down yesterday when I tried so I'll just give you some thoughts on this one.

It's not really too bad. There are still some rather amateur-ish elements to this that should be cleaned up.

1. YOu MUST get rid of that animated gif. Nothing says newbie better than a screaming mouse
2. Get a logo - just search the net for a suitable font - there are tons out there - and write your site name in that. Simple.
3. Do not center paragraphs of text! For paragraphs it's usually best to
4. In fact, get rid of any and all cheesy clip-art like stuff. That includes the arrow at the top of the page (which gives no indiation as to where it's going...), the guestbook buttons (those look particularly bad because the white background doesn't match your page background)
5. Make sure you define your page background colour on every page - or are some of these supposed to be grey?
6. Oh, that's what that arrow was for - lose the back/forward navigation and put your left side menu on every page.

disaster-master — Tue, 14 Aug 2001 09:41:08 +0000

Hi Mick,

I just peeked at your site and noticed that you just had to keep that cute little mouse. HAHA!! Oh well, we all have our weaknesses.

It is late (or very early... which ever way you want to look at it) so I will critique your site tomorrow. I just had to give you a hard time about the wittle mouse.

You are getting the idea with your site but it still needs work. I think you will get plenty of advise from this bunch.

Take care,
disastermaster

Site changes

ickbar — Tue, 14 Aug 2001 08:57:19 +0000

Ok, thanks to everybody for their help, Iv'e made some changes to my pages http://www.southwest.com.au/~ickbar/
and I must admit I like them better !, just hope they work

I will now look and read about other sites that get posted here and hopefully learn some more.

Thanks again
Mick

TheGizmoid — Tue, 14 Aug 2001 02:11:37 +0000

Quote: Originally posted by ickbar
Hello & thanks, could you please explain more about the use of graffics for headers rather than text, what background do you suggest, is there an "unwritten rule" about background colours & fonts used. I am not experienced in HTML, I'm just a cut and paste kind of guy, I'm trying to get a consistant layout going but my site is basically 3 in 1 with the Home pages / 4WD pages / and Car pages so I was trying to differentiate between them. I appreciate any comments.

Hi, Mick!

I echo many of the other comments made about your site already, so am just going to address this one issue.

The title on your main page specified the font "Brush Script". I don't have that installed, so I'm seeing it in my default font, which I'm sure is not what you intended.

In order for a font to display in a visitor's screen it has to be installed in their system. Well, I did start to read a tutorial about "embedding" fonts once, but it was waaaay out of my league. For mere mortals like me, it means sticking with system fonts. And the fact is that those vary according to one's platorm (Windows vs. Mac, for example).

So if you want someone to see a specific font for a header, it really needs to be made into a graphic. In a graphics program (like Photoshop or PaintShopPro) you have the option to "antialias" text so that the edges don't look jagged, add drop shadows, borders, other graphic elements, etc.

There are no rules, written/unwritten or otherwise. For simpler headers you might want to just go with a one-color transparent gif. The sky is the limit as far as creating a unique and complex logo for a site. Because it's a graphic, it will add to load time, so optimizing and trying to keep a balance between image quality, style and load time is important.

Once a graphic is downloaded, it's in the browser's cache and will not cause additional load time when used again on a subsequent page.

That animated mouse gif if 73K and, to me, doesn't contribute much to the meaning of your site. (But as mentioned, it's your personal site, so you can do whatever you like.) But ditching it would give you a faster load time and then you could better "afford" some graphics that are more relevant in "branding" your site.

For a commercial site, I'd definitely recommend being consistent throughout the site, but since it's a personal site, I don't see any reason not to "brand" the three areas of interest differently if you want.

Hope this made sense. Good luck with your site!