www.BlairBunting.com is up!!

[clkgtr37]

Well after a few months of on and off work www.blairbunting.com is up. I am quite proud of how it turned out and look foward to hearing your comments and suggestions. Minor updates are still being made and I am currently trying to pick what pictures to feature in the galleries. Please visit, enjoy and tell others-Blair

[bubarker]

Hi Blair,

I was just there with a 56K dialup, your home page is very nice, well designed and loads fast. However, after choosing a gallery, I gave up after 6 minutes of loading wirthout completion.

Also just wandering if Canon gives permission to use their images so prominently

thanks

[Leighow]

BLAIR

You have done a wonderful job -- says "I" the simple HTML 3 mark-up guy!

You have one of the nicest, artistic, sites that I have ever seen. I love the mouse-over approach. ANd you framig and fill of the image space.

You partial thumbnails are all well chosen and cropped. The images delightful. The new and net effect is 1000 times better than your old P base gallery.

My favourite is still the young baseball player. But the shoots of the stream, and day dreaming at the grand canyon, and the ballons (that we all loved in the past) are breathtaking.

Wonderful concept, design, and execution.

Take a bow.

HOWIE

I guess you cannot win on usability. If you want these crystal clear images, I assume that the files are large, and you pay the price re slow loading of a pages image set.

[Mike D]

Why the giant camera? Do web designers show pictures of their computers on their website? I have never understood putting pictures of your equipment on your promotional items.
Show your work, not your tools.

Just my 2 cents.

Mike

[clkgtr37]

For all those who were asking about the full size pictures, I have now added a feature that allows to click on the thumbnail and have the full picture open in another screen. I would be glad to take any more requests, I truely all the comments everyone has made.

[UK_Terry]

Mike D wrote:
Why the giant camera? Do web designers show pictures of their computers on their website? I have never understood putting pictures of your equipment on your promotional items.
Show your work, not your tools.

Just my 2 cents.

Mike

Fantastic site, congratulations to the work and especially to the web designer.

my small home made site also includes the 2 cameras i use. i think it just gives a little bit more info, to those who do not know what a xv35 or jk2o is.

as for canon... i would think they would be proud that we think their (excellent) cameras are worth inclusion on our websites.

free publicity for one.

[clkgtr37]

Terry, Howie, Mike, Bubarker,
Thank you for your words on the page. I apologize for some of the slow down on the site, however we ended up with a little over 73,000 (we can't believe either) hits on the site which could have caused the slowing. Also I have taken some of your suggestions and will have a no frames version of the site for those with dial up. In the meantime please enjoy the site.
Thank you,
Blair

[Mike D]

Blair,

Other than what I said in my previous post, I like the site and the pictures.
But there are two other things that caught my eye. Both you and your designer have free email accounts, yahoo and hotmail.
It looks "unprofessional" to have such a nice site, but with a yahoo account.

2 more cents.

73,001 wow!

Mike

[redbutt]

clkgtr37 wrote:
however we ended up with a little over 73,000 (we can't believe either) hits on the site which could have caused the slowing.

Not unless you are hosting the site yourself over your DSL connection or are using a really bad hosting provider.

I'm using a DSL connection and the site is taking forever to load. Now a couple of comments as a web designer myself.

1. Because you're using IFRAMEs, you've eliminated the people that use Mozilla from seeing your site. I suggest that you use a Javascript browser detection and split your vistiors up right from the start so Netscape/Mozilla doesn't see a broken page. Better yet, you could use SHTML to "include" the frames pages. What would result in the same look, but no frames at all.

2. Doing a "view source" on the home page reveals things like this "main%20frame.htm" and "Images/photo%20collage.jpg"...do not use spaces in your file names...that is bad form and will just get you in trouble if you forget that %20 = space.

3. FrontPage is notorious for putting out bulky code. You are better off using Macromedia HomeSite or some other "pure" HTML editor.

4. Your images are gigantic! The header graphic is 24k...get that down to 12. Also, on the gallery page, the thumbs are 10k and the images over 100k AND they are gifs. You should be using jpg AND with a little effort your can cut the files sizes in half. Because your Javscript rollover effect is preloading ALL the large images, that is where your page load time is taking a hit. Think about reworking this section...

That's my 2 cents....

[GenEOS]

I am behind a firewall here at work and cannot access it, which is strange...because generally it only dis-allows sexual type websites..

I am not implying it is, it is just odd I can't get to it...

I'll check it out at home..

[clkgtr37]

Funny thing, I can't get to it either, and it's my page! I am thinking that this might have something to do with the server and the recent "slammer" virus, but who knows?

[jmublueduck]

it loads fine for me... just a few notes though:

- it looks great & i love the color scheme & layout. Your montage on the front page is very well done.
- it's WAY, way too graphics-intensive/dependant... i.e. using graphics for text, etc.
- it does take longer to fully load than it should, particularily the gallery pages, & i'm on a 1.5mbps broadband line.
- the 1D images are too much, IMO. Don't promote your gear; promote your talent & work. I don't think you've found the fine line here.
- if you shoot digital, why the film watermark on the header & footer? hehe... well, an appropriate question for this forum at least :)

regardless, these are just my thoughts. I have a degree in technical communication & online publication, so I look at sites from a usability perspective a lot. I doubt an overhaul of your site is necessary. If it were me, I'd be too lazy to change it anyway, because honestly it does look great, asthetically. nice work.

[Leighow]

BLAIR

You are getting some great advice here.

It really does take a long time to load. You will lose a lot of people, so all this advice on reducing loading time should be considered.

DUAL MENU:
*********
I noticed for the 1st time the double menu tonight (the graphics intensive top bar). I guess that while it was loading, I must have just plunked the "galleries" button on the second menue (text center of page). If you look at some of the best rules on useit.com (Jakob Neilsen) more text as recommended by jumblueduck is advised .

INTODUCE YOURSELF TO YOUR VISITORS
********************************
One other thing. It seems to me you might (I did not see it) set out some text on the home page where you introduce yourself, your site mission, etc. I was looking for that but all the loading times moved me on to the center menu. Along that line, I think that some of the pros listed on http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=4148 introduce themselves. Of Rome was not built in a day, so your site can evolve over time.

All that said -- it is a wow site. Beats mine by a country mile!
HOWIE

[dblunt]

Very elegant site. I agree with other posters about trying ways to:

1. work with more browser types through detecting them and then teeing off to the appropriate code or page.
2. change from doing a full preload of all images when in the gallery section, or reduce the image size - if people want the high(er) quality image they can indeed click on the thumbnail.
3. hide the email addresses. Sure if people click on the mailto: link they'll see that it's a yahoo.com or hotmail.com account but at least it might look a little more 'clean'.

I don't see why a firewall would inherently block this or flag it - unless a firewall administrator has blocked certain netblocks or domains. If those people are going through proxy servers then maybe there's something more complex going on. Anyway, works for me!

Not sure about using the camera photo (specifically showing the Canon logo) but look at a bunch of sports shots where advertizing appears in the background. Does one have to contact every company concerned and ask for permission? :( My wife, a lawyer, would probably tell me yes!

Upgrade your hosting plan!

The pictures are really good.

[clkgtr37]

Thank you for the help on the page so far. For all the people that emailed me about a version of the site to support browsers without frames, your request has been answered. You can access this by going to the main site and clicking on the link that says "no frames version". Or you can just click the link below and be taken right to it. As always I appreciate your emails, critiques and your time spent at my site.
Thank you,
Blair

No Frames:
http://www.blairbunting.com/index_noframes.htm

[kevinrstruck]

I enjoyed your site. The equipment image in my opinion is actually not that big of a deal to me. It works as a place holder (background image) until you rollover the gallery images, so I personally do not see the problem since you are showing off your talent. Of course any image would work here, so if people really have problems with the Canon Camera, change it to your favorite image.

The only issue I would have would also be with the email address. I am sure that since you have your own domain, you can easily create at least one email address that would automatically forward any email sent to that address to your hotmail account. For instance, you could have:

To sponsor this site contact: marketing@blairbunting.com which would just forward those emails to your hotmail account.

I do this extensively on my site, it does make it much more professional. In fact, I have over 10 seperate email addresses scattered throughout my site and set my host to just forward any email to my domain name to my ISP provided email address. It works like a charm and I have never had any problems.

That would be my suggestion to you. Other than that, great job on the site.