Panorama picture project

[habakuk]

G'day folks.

Those who have a click or two to spend might want to do that
on http://www.driftingaway.org.

This is a picture project web site I am working on. Feel free
to stop by and tell me what you think about the layout and
especially the concept of the picture presentation.

Enjoy

[Peter_AUS]

First off, on the initial link it is hard to find where the hot link is to main.html page. Whilst looking around for it, it then went to the main page. To me this is annoying, not finding the hot link easily. At the minimum put an arrow with the word NEXT there for visual effect.

On the page main.htm, there is a lot of white space, which makes the page scrollable. Try and change that to make it not as scrollable, especially as it is the main visual page. Once people get into looking at images, then scolling is OK, but not if it is the main initial visual page (In my honest Opinion).

On the places page, the images are scolled of the visual area and people need to scroll that just to see the images.

Keep working on it, it is a good start.

All the white annoys my eyes, just in passing.

[habakuk]

First off, on the initial link it is hard to find where the hot link is to main.html page. Whilst looking around for it, it then went to the main page. To me this is annoying, not finding the hot link easily. At the minimum put an arrow with the word NEXT there for visual effect.

Thanks for taking the time to comment on the site. I really appreciate it.

Well, the site was designed to be contemplative, low-drive, unintrusive with information etc. Somehow the pure contrary of a slashdot type site. That's why I feel it is not that important to provide clear means to "get to the stuff". I thought the partially flipped page would be enough incentive to make you click there. But I agree this is something that does not help the site and obviously is a turn off for some visitors. Going to change that in a way I think fits the rest of the design.

On the page main.htm, there is a lot of white space, which makes the page scrollable. Try and change that to make it not as scrollable, especially as it is the main visual page.
Once people get into looking at images, then scolling is OK, but not if it is the main initial visual page (In my honest Opinion).

The minimum size of the main page to see all without having to scroll is 934*737 pixel. The site was designed to fit anything above 17" (1024*786 pixel), yet allow smaller screens to work and bigger screens to use the additional space. The main page is resizing automatically to fit 100% of your browser screen, so I am not very clear what you meant by "scrolling because of the white space".

On the places page, the images are scolled of the visual area and people need to scroll that just to see the images.

Whohoo. What Browser and System have you been using? I have tested it with many browsers, and never have seen this "feature". The pictures all should start in the upper left corner, not offscreen. Thanks for pointing to this compatibility problem.

All the white annoys my eyes, just in passing.

Well, this white space is there by design decision. Sad to hear it's annoying to your eyes - it was intended to be uncrowded, "virgin", providing space for the eyes to rest...

Again: thanks much for commenting.

cheers

[Peter_AUS]

I'm using IE and a 17" monitor as well, setup at 1280 x 768.

A good thing to remember when desing websites, is that not everyone is going to have a size screen similar to yours for one reason or the other. Design to a 15" screen and around 800 x 600 and you are sure to keep the majority of browsers happy little campers.

Designing specific for screens higher than that, then causes people to not follow through with browsing, often.

White is nice, White is Virginal (depending on your point of view). My meaning is, you have a lot of white space around your elements on the page, which could be reduced to probably bring the page back into more of a non scrollable window.

Having pages resize according to a persons screen size is one way of doing it, but it can then throw out other elements on your webpages depending on the size of the persons monitor.

Remember there are people now moving their screens to wide screens and that will impact on websites as well.

To me it is always a good idea to work in colours that are pleasing to the eyes and not going to cause any eye strain or discomfort. Reason. People will stay on your site longer and look more.

Try taking note of it when you view other websites and you might start to get a feel for what I mean. It often isn't apparent until you look for it.