Just finished my Mum's website...

Nathaniel Catchpole · November-23rd-2003, 09:44 AM

Most of you won't know that my Mum's an artist (still life/landscape). Just finished designing her website. Would appreciate any comments on the design, since it's the first one I've done other than very very quick botch jobs.

www.sylviapaul.com

tippy · November-23rd-2003, 10:10 AM

Hey, Nat. I went straight for the landscape slideshow. I really really like October Woods I. Springtime Woods too. There's a sense of motion in her paintings that I like. Nice job on the site!

Cem · November-23rd-2003, 11:39 AM

Nat, I'm very impressed by your and your mom's work. She's got a keen eye for richness in life and I'm sure has worked very hard to perfect her art. I loved the demo section. Actually, the whole site is very logically set up with hardly any frills, which is great. Can't stand flash sites and such.

I'm not a designer, but in terms of catching the eye of the surfer, I'd suggest you section-off or spiff-up the text and how they "live" together on the home page. Also, I have a 19" monitor and it fits perfectly on mine, so I'd be curious how it fits on other monitors and other settings. Another suggestion, personal preference, is if you could possibly set the height of the frame around the pix of the artwork in the slideshow, so that one can click on the forward arrow located at the same spot for every pic. Again, that's my thing.

You've done a fantastic job with the site, especially amazing work for a first effort. I hope you don't mind the suggestions. Maybe you can straighten-up mine once you're finished with hers

. Mine's a mess...

November-23rd-2003, 12:33 PM

Very impressive work--thank you for the link.

Nathaniel Catchpole · November-23rd-2003, 01:00 PM

Thanks Tip and Chris. Cem, very much appreciate the feedback. I don't know what you mean about the slide show thing - the forward and back arrows are consistently in the same position on my browser. Agree that the home page text needs fixing up. I want to integrate some kind of blog software into it so that me Mum can update sections herself via a web browser, but not yet. Realised I ought to have at least a basic understanding of html and php before I do any more of this.

Cem · November-23rd-2003, 01:14 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Nathaniel Catchpole
I don't know what you mean about the slide show thing - the forward and back arrows are consistently in the same position on my browser.

On my browser, they shift ever so slightly. I'm using IE 6.0. Frankly, I don't think most sane people would even notice it, so please, ignore my knit-picking.
Agree that the home page text needs fixing up. I want to integrate some kind of blog software into it so that me Mum can update sections herself via a web browser, but not yet. Realised I ought to have at least a basic understanding of html and php before I do any more of this.
Again, I was knit-picking. Blog software is probably a good idea for your mom to do updates.

Nathaniel Catchpole · November-23rd-2003, 01:19 PM

I'm on 5.5 so maybe that's it. I did get problems with the front page of my girlfriend's laptop, which currently has serious graphics issues.

Ron Thorne · November-23rd-2003, 04:10 PM

Very nice job, Nat. Your Mum should be proud and pleased with the result. What a talented lady! I thoroughly enjoyed the slideshow of her portfolio. Terrific!

I would suggest having buttons or some graphic device for accessing the six main areas (home, biography, portfolio, events, education, contact) from any other page. For instance, when I was looking at the portfolio page, it was awkward for me to return to the home page and click on your Mum's bio page. All of those pages should only be one click away for maximum efficiency. I also noticed a couple of misspellings and minor grammatical oversights which I'll send you via PM.

Jimmy Cantiello · November-23rd-2003, 06:37 PM

Nathaniel, your Mum's paintings are wonderful. Good job on the website, my friend. I take it that your Mum is influenced by the impressionist school, no?..............

Nathaniel Catchpole · November-24th-2003, 01:06 PM

Ron, the buttons up top allow navigation to everything at all times, except the portfolio opens in a new window - since it would suffer in a frame, I thought it best to take it completely out of the site - closing the window would take you back. You've reminded me I need to put a link back to the home page from it, in case people go directly there or don't want to close the window.

Jimmy, yes I think that's a fair bet, she likes a lot of expressionists also. Difficult for me who's grown up seeing her stuff all the time to assess it critically.

moneyp · November-24th-2003, 01:45 PM

Nat, nice work, but put a title in the header!

What did you use to design it?

Nathaniel Catchpole · November-24th-2003, 02:26 PM

Mone, there are titles in the headers of both frames in the index frameset, and each of the other frames, for some reason they don't show up and I don't know enough to know why, any help much appreciated. Used Dreamweaver 4. The Gallery is GNU PHP freeware. Realised how lazy it is to rely on Dreamweaver so heavily, so I've now bought an html book and one on PHP, so I'll keep fixing this one up, and tidy up the problems with the code.

Nathaniel Catchpole · November-24th-2003, 02:31 PM

Baka, the header has to be in the frameset, not the individual files. Took 30 seconds in notepad, then 15 to ftp it up to the site. Dreamweaver allows you to view the code for each frame individually, but not the frameset itself. Going to get that html book out now and start reading so I don't spend ages doing simple stuff like that in knocked off expensive software.