[stuartr]

I was going to post about this and then I saw Donovan Smith also just posted one...ha, must be all the free time on memorial day weekend. In any case, I have started building my website. It is essentially for my photography and some of my academic stuff. My last website was horrendous and made in MS Word. I bought dreamweaver and started creating a website that I hope is a bit more elegant. I am interested if any of you have any comments or advice for a newbie. My monitor is a Apple 20 inch cinema display, so I think some things may be too big, but I am not sure, so if you find you have to scroll around to see anything, let me know. I sized most of the photos at 800 by 600, or 480 by 640 but within a frame, thumbnails below. In any case, is their any way to make the image automatically center (vertically, I can set the text to make it center horizontally) within the frame based on the size of the window that the viewer is using? I could not really figure that out... keep in mind, this is my first time working with dreamweaver, let alone code. Anyway, I appreciate any comments.
Stuart
Here's the link: http://www.uweb.ucsb.edu/~srichardson/

 

[psxguy85]

Photography used to be my main hobby until I came to this site.

I think I will renew my interest in photography after viewing your site. Glad to see that many are as fond of photography as I once was.

 

[Mr.PD]

Very nice Stuart. I love you choice of colors (or lack of) and your layout was easy to navigate.
As for scrolling. I had to scroll on just about every page. Mostly just a little bit down or sideways. Of course I expected to scroll through the filmstrip.
My monitor is some size and set at 1280 by 1024. I use internet explorer and have my favorites down one side. I don't have it set at full screen but it's close to being there. I mention this just so you know where I'm at, and kind of decide if you need to adjust or not.

 

[SptsNaz]

Great photos. Somehow they bring back memories. Keep at it.

I also admire that you have such an augmented interest in Russia. I'm Russian myself (actually Ukranian, but stayed in Russia much longer) and wish I can someday visit (I'm still a bit too young). Right now I'm in the US.

Also, FYI my actual name is Yaroslav, similar to where you studied (Yaroslavl University). Unfortunately, I don't use that name because majority of my friends stumble on it. Anyway, keep taking pictures!

 

[Permonic]

Stuart, as for the source code, get rid of the frames, if you can....

Very nice pictures, looking forward to see more....

 

[DevilDog]

Very nice pics! Great work. I wish mine turned out like that.

You asked for comments so here goes. I agree with Mr. PD, I run at 1024X768 (I have a 19" monitor and still need it this size to read the icons) and had to scroll around a bit to see the whole image. Other than that, the site was clean and easy to navigate.

You've done a wonderful job.

 

[stuartr]

Thanks for the comments guys.
Pauly and DevilDog -- I think you are right, I need to make it a bit smaller. It's annoying, as I just made all those images and thumbs to size manually in photoshop. Along with doing all the pages manually (I am not good enough to take advantage of the templates or other things to speed up your workflow)...it will be a pain to redo them, but I think it needs to be done.

Permonic -- Thanks for the comments, but what do you mean get rid of the frames? Is there another way to list all the thumbs at the bottom and then have the images open above them? I suppose I could have them all open in a new window, but I think the design is more aesthetically appealing if you can view the thumbnails at all times and everything stays in one window...

 

[Permonic]

Quote:

Originally Posted by stuartr Permonic -- Thanks for the comments, but what do you mean get rid of the frames? Is there another way to list all the thumbs at the bottom and then have the images open above them? I suppose I could have them all open in a new window, but I think the design is more aesthetically appealing if you can view the thumbnails at all times and everything stays in one window...

Sorry, I didn't state it clearly. I mean get rid of the frame in the page2.htm. I suppose you would like the right menu being always displayed when you follow the links (which isn't at the moment). Your menu is short, there is no reason to use the frameset there. Just use tables and specify the width.

As for the photography section, you're right it's better to keep the frames. It would be nicer to set the framespacing, border and frameborder to "0".

I think everybody starts their webdesign journey with frames and switch to non-frame later...

 

[averydonovan]

Quote:

Originally Posted by stuartr Thanks for the comments guys. Pauly and DevilDog -- I think you are right, I need to make it a bit smaller. It's annoying, as I just made all those images and thumbs to size manually in photoshop. Along with doing all the pages manually (I am not good enough to take advantage of the templates or other things to speed up your workflow)...it will be a pain to redo them, but I think it needs to be done. Permonic -- Thanks for the comments, but what do you mean get rid of the frames? Is there another way to list all the thumbs at the bottom and then have the images open above them? I suppose I could have them all open in a new window, but I think the design is more aesthetically appealing if you can view the thumbnails at all times and everything stays in one window...

He may be talking about the frames on the front page. I would put the page in a table, with one cell on the left replacing the navigation frame and the cell on the right being the actual content of the page. Then put the content of the navigation frame in its own file, but just the actual content and not any the HTML headers, and use a server-side include to put the navigation links into the pages you need them. That makes it easy to update the links in your navigation bar while getting rid of the frames. Something like this for the page: Code:

[left]<html> <head><title>Home Page</title></head> <body> <table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0"><tr> <td width="150"> <!--#include file="navigation.ssi" --> </td> <td width="100%"> Content </td> </tr></table> </body> </html>[/left]

And this for the navigation frame (navigation.ssi in the blocl above): Code:

[left]<a href="">Link 1</a> <p><a href="">Link 2</a>[/left]

I don't know how much hand-coding you've done, so I apologize if I put up too newbie-ish examples. Also, as I was writing this, Permonic posted a summary of all this.

Looks quite nice so far, the b&w look is pretty neat. I really like the setup of your film strip with the photos showing right above them. Very easy to navigate the various photos there. I run at 1152x864 on a 17" monitor and everything seemed fine for size to me.

 

[stuartr]

Permonic -- Ok, that makes a lot of sense. I will do that. Thanks for the advice.

Donovan -- that looks like some really good advice. Trust me, it is not too newbie at all...I have never done hand-coding, nor have I ever taken a class or learned about html or web-authoring. All I really did was buy dreamweaver and start it up, taking it trial and error from there. It really is fairly user friendly. I will read up on SSI and see if I can figure out a way to incorporate it. Thanks for the examples and suggestions!
By the way, my monitor is at 1680 by 1050, which is probably why everything is so big! it looks small in my monitor...but my laptop is at 1280x854, which is a bit more reasonable...

 

[KR...]

nice photos, I always perfer B&W over color.

Thank you for sharing them with us.

 

[pank2002]

I think you should change the front to a non-footerd font (like verdana, arial, tahoma etc.) The album you've made can be created similar with fx Adobe Photoshop Album automaticly, and probably also with Coppermine Photo Gallery, though I'm not sure about that one as I haven't used it.

I like the colors on the side, it remindes me of Hitman

.

You should consider to use some css for the effects on the links, maby put a hoover effect on the links ie removing the line or changing the color.

Keep it up,
Rasmus

 

[pnrgi]

i dont know if you know this, but you probably do, but photoshop has a crappy little website maker, that will auto resize all your photos and stuff, then put them in a website that look at like your photosection. anyway, its an easy little way to get hundereds of photos on the web in a matter of minutes.

http://s90524137.onlinehome.us/Lastweek/

Thats a small little photoshop picture thing i did for my last week of high school. anyway nice site, great photos keep up the good work.

 

[pnrgi]

 

[chadbang]

Damn. GREAT photos, Stuartr. Really impressive. Very delicate and full of life. Really nice work! What camera do you use?

EDIT: oops, nevermind. A LOT of cameras. Nice ones, too.

And the website is excellent (yeah, I guess the frames are a bummer). Moving towards the "work of art" kind of site I like! I really like your front page.