[jdp]

[...}6. Someone else commented on having a way back to the home page. Why is that important? Remember that people get confused easily on the internet, which can quickly lead to frustration, which can mean lost customers. To illustrate the point, suppose a potential customer found your website, and clicked on "Services" to read about the services you provide. They are interested in contacting you, but they don't see a link to contact information on your page. They might remember seeing a link on your home page, or they might not. Even if they remembered a link on your home page, they might not be savvy enough to figure out how to get back to that page. Again, you risk losing customers.

As an extension of that, a person viewing your website should be able to get to any page from any page. In other words, you should have the same navigation menu on every page. If you want to look really professional, when a person is viewing your home page, the navigation button for the home page shouldn't be active; this would apply to the appropriate navigation button on each page.

you exactly explained what a breadcrumb is, how it works and why is useful. sorry if my words were misleading somehow...

[codygo]

You would do well to be more polite in your responses. Your arrogance is transparent, and not well-founded.

Sorry if it came off as impolite, It certainly was not my aim. My goal was simply to inform and quickly get to the issues most common issues regarding flash and wysiwyg apps.

Yesterday was the last day of school for this spring semester and I was tired when I was writing the response you quote so it might be void of niceties, but I did not write it with any arrogance.

Ideas can vary from person to person and I simply stated what I feel were important descisions regarding web design and the conclusions I came to, feel free to have your own.

That said, I understand that knocking down flash and wysiwyg's and promoting manual programming can be considered elitist and not always practical. I stand by everything I said in that post, and believe that in the long run, the decisions impact ease of updates, compatibility across browsers and platforms, as much as any quality/cost factor in the sense that you "get what you pay for" in terms of how much you concern yourself with the structure of what you work with, that's the gist of what I'm saying.

[hothpicas]

[...}6. Someone else commented on having a way back to the home page. Why is that important? Remember that people get confused easily on the internet, which can quickly lead to frustration, which can mean lost customers. To illustrate the point, suppose a potential customer found your website, and clicked on "Services" to read about the services you provide. They are interested in contacting you, but they don't see a link to contact information on your page. They might remember seeing a link on your home page, or they might not. Even if they remembered a link on your home page, they might not be savvy enough to figure out how to get back to that page. Again, you risk losing customers.

As an extension of that, a person viewing your website should be able to get to any page from any page. In other words, you should have the same navigation menu on every page. If you want to look really professional, when a person is viewing your home page, the navigation button for the home page shouldn't be active; this would apply to the appropriate navigation button on each page.

you exactly explained what a breadcrumb is, how it works and why is useful. sorry if my words were misleading somehow...

Your words weren't misleading at all, but breadcrumbs are a relatively new tool, and not everyone knows what they are. I was really making the point about a consistent navigation system. Breadcrumbs are great, but they only allow you to trace your steps backward to the home page. They don't allow you to jump to other sections easily, which is the purpose of a consistent navigation system.

[hothpicas]

You would do well to be more polite in your responses. Your arrogance is transparent, and not well-founded.

Sorry if it came off as impolite, It certainly was not my aim. My goal was simply to inform and quickly get to the issues most common issues regarding flash and wysiwyg apps.

Yesterday was the last day of school for this spring semester and I was tired when I was writing the response you quote so it might be void of niceties, but I did not write it with any arrogance.

Ideas can vary from person to person and I simply stated what I feel were important descisions regarding web design and the conclusions I came to, feel free to have your own.

That said, I understand that knocking down flash and wysiwyg's and promoting manual programming can be considered elitist and not always practical. I stand by everything I said in that post, and believe that in the long run, the decisions impact ease of updates, compatibility across browsers and platforms, as much as any quality/cost factor in the sense that you "get what you pay for" in terms of how much you concern yourself with the structure of what you work with, that's the gist of what I'm saying.

Point taken. If you read my long-winded post of suggestions, you would see that I agree about flash being an over-used tool that rarely contributes anything useful to a site. In fact, more often it simply detracts from the user experience. I've been using the internet since the early days, and can hand code when I need to, but even I sometimes get confused by flash elements on a website. The most common misuse is for a cute splash page, with flash elements that lack a clear path to get to the home page, or a way to bypass the flash elements. Used correclty, however, flash can be a great tool.

As for WYSIWYG editors, these are a very useful tool for many people. Hand coding HTML can be difficult, and is time consuming. The use of these tools is common now, and unless you are looking at the source code, you can't tell whether a site was hand-coded or created using a WYSIWYG editor. There are purists out there, and clearly you fall into that category, but don't disparage those who make use of the tools available for streamlining the process. High-end WYSIWYG editors, particularly Dreamweaver, have great tools for checking browser compatibility, as well testing all the links in your site. Platform compatibility doesn't have anything to do with how you code your site; it can only be checked by actual testing on all target platforms.

Of course, as you said, opinions vary from person to person.

[codygo]

I was once into flash, and back in the flash 4 days I knew actionscript 1. There are things that flash can do that would be difficult or impossible without it, but very few websites actually use those few things and instead use it as a lazy html layout with objects that spin or glow into existence. Nothing funnier than a spinning logo or clipart , or "In the beginning there was ____" -_-_-_-=_-WOOSH! "NOW THERE'S FUTURETRON DESIGN!"

The flash 4 days were exciting because interaction was relatively new on the web, flash promised "thin clients" with the fluidity of today's "WEB 2.0" achieved with AJAX. Designers were in a pissing contest with themselves it seemed, and disregarded functionality and the experience of the end user having to wait 5 minutes for their intro to download, or having to go visit macromedia for another 5 minutes (56k was more prevalent then).

At some point there was awareness of this phenomenon and was probably the inspiration for websites like http://skip-intro.org.

Flash has a wow factor if you're good at motion graphics or have something truly interactive for the user to experience. Sites like http://yugop.com, internet cartoons http://albinoblacksheep.com, and various flash games like linerider bring things to the web audience that wouldn't be possible without it.

[rusteberg]

hey, what happened? as soon as the thread was getting juicy, it went back to boring. where's the vengeance??? we can't have everyone agreeing all of a sudden.

interesting thread nonetheless.

[Tim Ellis]

Well, thankyou all for your great feedback and suggestions.

Here's the new site, sat on it's own domain name. The galleries are still not running yet and I have to sort out a few more pages, but the bulk of the layout is there.

I've tried to keep everything mentioned in this thread, at the front of my mind while creating it. There was a lot to remember, so I hope the improvements match the suggestions.

Please comment and crit as you feel neccesary, this is the first time outside eyes have viewed it.

http://www.subjectiverealism.co.uk

Cheers,

Tim.

[Hervé]

nice site Tim... ! ... but really.... loose all the blah blah blah

Code: Select all

Why SubjectiveRealism.co.uk?
This was the meaning behind the second incarnation of Tim's website, Xinos, which has been re-instated for this fourth version. Xinos is the reverse spelling of Tim's online artist alias, 'Sonix'. 

Xinos noun  
   1. The key to subjective realism.

   Key noun
     1. the best or only way to achieve something.

   Subjective adjective  
     1. Existing in a person's mind and not produced by things outside it.

    Realism noun
     1. Seeing or showing things as they really are.

... it's an old trick that look geeky these days.. and people have better things to do.. like watch your portfolio and get in Conatct with you..

[mverta]

And drop the whole "Sonix" thing while you're at it. It's worse than pretentious - it's 1980's geek-pretentious.

You're a good artist; you have no reason to shield your identity like that. And only a handful of people in the universe can get away with calling themselves Prince, if you know what I mean.

I tell people to go check out Tim Ellis' stuff. So have it at the ready, on the site, and dominate.

...my .02

_Mike

[homegrown]

Looks like its shaping up. The only thing that bothers me too much is that the banner doesn't go the whole width of your table. Your personal life sounds interesting....like the band name. After reading hothpicas suggestions another thing I thought about was having two separate pages. One for Tim the Civic driving artist, and one for the business side of things. That way you could have both your background and tutorial type things, but also another page with a more professional appeal..

[Tim Ellis]

Thankyou Mike and Herve for the suggestions. I've removed the Sonix and front end side of things.

homegrown, thanks, I was thinking about this today. Will consider the options. THC was accidental, the band hadn't even made the connection until I started working for them.


Tim.

[Tim Ellis]

Portfolios online - please only view the miscelaneous gallery if you are eighteen years or older. There are several disturbing zombie images and several nude female images.

Many other updates and tweaks, check the news section for the log.

The whole site's about 75% complete, with the launch of the shop side of things and the client forums still to come.

Garage and car show sections are still to be completed.

C&C welcomed as usual.

Thanks,

Tim.

[Bubbaloo]

Your site is shaping up, and I checked out Cityscape. Congrats on that, they do great work!

[glebe digital]

Well done getting the Cityscape gig, hope it works out.

[Tim Ellis]

Thankyou very much.

Tim.