How not to display your art on the web.

[timpaatkins]

I think its been up before, but I'm posting it again. Funny read!

http://www.linesandcolors.com/2007/05/31/how-not-to-display-your-artwork-on-the-web/

[Elwell]

Never gets old. Never ever ever.

[corky13]

I love the sarcasm xD great read and very true.

[InvertedChalupa]

great read : ) thanks

[Maridius]

Bookmarked!

[Mirana]

Much of that was what I've been whining about for yrs. One disagreement, though... I love art that pops into separate windows. I like being able to pick and choose instead of being stuck in one window, forever rotating images. Eh.

[Cerradura]

great read indeed

[Justice Von Brandt]

Much of that was what I've been whining about for yrs. One disagreement, though... I love art that pops into separate windows. I like being able to pick and choose instead of being stuck in one window, forever rotating images. Eh.

I agree

[drd]

Much of that was what I've been whining about for yrs. One disagreement, though... I love art that pops into separate windows. I like being able to pick and choose instead of being stuck in one window, forever rotating images. Eh.

Same. It's annoying when I have an image I want to look at on one side of the page and one on the other, and I don't really feel like rotating through every image in-between.

Great read, though.

[Irene Gallo]

No pop-ups!
It makes it impossible for ADs to easily share work withe the people they need to.

[Elwell]

One disagreement, though... I love art that pops into separate windows. I like being able to pick and choose instead of being stuck in one window, forever rotating images. Eh.
You can open any link in a separate window whenever you want.

[Mirana]

No pop-ups!
It makes it impossible for ADs to easily share work withe the people they need to.

Do you mean no pop-ups that hide the address bar? Or no pop-ups at all for some other reason?

You can open any link in a separate window whenever you want.

And I do, but some code prevents that. For my own site it cuts down on the pages/html I have to do and doesn't restrict my img sizes to my design size. My code is only for new windows (no resize or extra loading).

[~Faust~]

Much of that was what I've been whining about for yrs. One disagreement, though... I love art that pops into separate windows. I like being able to pick and choose instead of being stuck in one window, forever rotating images. Eh.

What about tabbed browsing?

[Jabo]

Mirana, try CTRL/CMD + Click and ALT + Click on a Link. It's pop-up browsing that constrains your freedom of choice, not the same-window technique. The best way to show your art is making one site per artwork, so you will keep the design of the site even when in full-display mode. And by giving the visitor the choice of CTRL/CMD/ALT-clicking the image, he can choose whether he be viewing the artwork in a separate site or in the same window.

[Jason Rainville]

I'm glad this came up again; I remember when it was posted the last time some people took the chance to have a bit of critique fired at their websites. I already know that I break the "don't use flash for fukkin everything" rule (mainly because I only really know flash and actionscript, something I WILL remedy), but if you guys can give my site a look and check it against the list/toss some crits my way I'd really appreciate it.

Jillustration (http://jillustration.nimblecomm.com/)

[Black Spot]

I made my first website in Word with a font that is not widely recognised. Now I use css to make tables.:dead:

[Justice Von Brandt]

I'm glad this came up again; I remember when it was posted the last time some people took the chance to have a bit of critique fired at their websites. I already know that I break the "don't use flash for fukkin everything" rule (mainly because I only really know flash and actionscript, something I WILL remedy), but if you guys can give my site a look and check it against the list/toss some crits my way I'd really appreciate it.

Jillustration (http://jillustration.nimblecomm.com/)

That red ribbon animation right next to your name that is there hypnotizes me and makes me want to look at it more than your art. I'd also like it more if you made the black cover the whole page like the white does.

[Jason Rainville]

That red ribbon animation right next to your name that is there hypnotizes me and makes me want to look at it more than your art. I'd also like it more if you made the black cover the whole page like the white does.

I wish I knew how but I phail at dreamweaver :(

[Mirana]

Faust & Jabo: Please read response to Elwell. :)

Jabo: I disagree. There are plently of coding types that limit new windows, or my personal browsing preference. I have no idea what you mean by: "The best way to show your art is making one site per artwork, so you will keep the design of the site even when in full-display mode." ??

Jason: #1 issue: You have no artwork on your front page. Or your second page. The internets make us lazy and impatient and as a user I wouldn't bother reading those paragraphs. I'm on an ART site and couldn't quickly get a feel of the ART from page one. That says to me what the above link points out: That you're hiding it from me and thus it must not be that good. :/ This is your first impression--it's a chance to make a header or sample piece from your featured art. It also sets the tone when your scheme and color choices are so stark and mod.

Why do you split up your three types of "artwork" when they don't overlap in thumbs? Why make the user go to a whole 'nother identical site for your graphic design stuff? I'd make it one artwork page and one graphic design page, with divisons in the thumbs to cut down on click-through time.

Totally agree on the distracting and useless animation. On a design standpoint, I'd move the "switch to design/artwork" button to next to the "artwork/design" text (so many bars that I skim). I'm okay with the black bounding box instead of the entire background being one color...it gives it some structure (FYI, it would be relatively easy to put in one line of code to change the background color).

If email is your preferred contact, why is it last in the list? Also, what is the point of including your home address? Do people actually send you letters/packets before they'd shoot you an email or call? Seems like unecessary info.

Otherwise, I'm a fan of minimalism in design. The loading animation is fine. I like the straight forward navigation and structure (even if I think there are more steps than necessary--AT LEAST they all make sense and aren't ridiculous ;) ).

About the Flash/Actionscript (which is fine)--do you actually update? How often?

[Jason Rainville]

Thanks Mirana that's great stuff :D

This is coming clean rather than making excuses (just so you don't think I'm completely web-retarded); for the design being on another site, it's a problem with my actionscript; I'll spare the details and just say that the fact it goes black->white and vice versa in the backgrounds complicates the fuck out of the "if/else" statements and I couldn't get it to work. design on another sub domain was only a band aid.

Likewise, I originally had the idea that I'd have a full thumb section of art for each section (IE have over six pieces of finished art, over ten sketches), but quickly found out that when I overlapped buttons, even when disabled, the top buttons always covered the lower ones making clicking on them impossible. All of that is negated though by the spectacularly obvious advice to just put all the thumbs on one page and call it a day.

As for updating, I do it about every 2 weeks, and it's not hard. Resize my art, make a thumbnail, replace the thumbnail in the flash, replace the pic in my images folder and upload. I'm thinking of getting rid of the whole damn switch between black and white and placing all of my thumbs on one menu BUT (and here's where I may need some help) I can't combine the design and art sites into one at least yet since the thumbnails would occupy the same space and thus only the top thumbs would ever be clickable. I COULD try to figure out a way to do it with multiple frames now that the transition is gone, but...

does anyone know of a way to TRULY disable an element in flash using actionscript, so that it will not cover any of the elements below it?

[Dan!]

Jason- I agree that your preloader/ribbon graphic is a little out of place on the white screen but I honestly love the lookk of the finished section- black red with splashes of color in the thumbnails- I think you could simplify your hierarchy a little bit- :edit: what method are you using for your thumb section?-2 sents- love your art

I fall into the same category - i love flash- and would love to hear crits as well- I still have some things I'm changing around as I'm learning

www.decyplmedia.com

thanks

[Mirana]

DECYPL: Trouble reading your name and headers in that font (too much texture).
- For the love of god, if you must have sound, make sure it starts out on PAUSE so that the user has the option of playing it themselves and not interrupting the music they are likely listening to.
- Why can't I click on your featured art image to get the full-size?
- In both IE and Firefox the images loaded overlapping the header, and some overlap the rest of your thumbs. The navi buttons (artwork/about) were far off to the right and I almost missed them. If it's not a coding error, then I would bump those buttons to right beneath the art thumbs where they'll be seen. I'm thinking you hardcoded the thing for your size desktop and didn't consider those who might be using any other size...
- I'm not sure what the "Artwork" one is supposed to do...return me to "home?" If you're going to have that "seemless" sidebar for News/Featured Art, fill it out a bit more so it looks like an intergal part of your design (especially when you used imgs for all other text, and then regular text for news--looks tacked on).
- About button...consider naming it "Contact" or something that screams to the user "This is where you can hire me!!" I realize you are trying to limit spambots, but at least make your email something that could be highlighted and copy/pasted (substitute your symbols, spaces, whatever), if not directly clicked because I doubt too many people would be excited to memorize it instead.
- What's up with the weird layout of the text on the about page (huge gap after "Visually," etc)?
- Why isn't your resume available as text on the site for easy browsing? At least let the user know what type of document they are downloading since the script doesn't allow a rollover to say either.

I like the feel of the site design (though the header graphic makes me think the work's going to be a lot more dark than it is :P). Clear art divisons (so long as you can read the font, anyway) and bonus points for having not only the art, but all the thumbs on page one. Load time is decent and About info is short and sweet. :)

You flash guys are killing me with the lack of "back" button, though. x_x

[Mirana]

Jason: Haha, I have myself been a student of the "I don't know....fuck it" school of web design! I'm also a wee bit OCD and love organization, so when I had waaaay more art on my site than I do now, I had it across different pages. I might not have mentioned it here except that the small number of thumbs per pg made it kinda silly. Good to know that you update regularly. :)

No idea on the flash stuff...it was a long time ago when I learned it for fun (and promptly figured out all my most hated websites used it). Hit up a flash forum?

[ARTbyLENA]

Excellent article, thanks for posting the link!
I thought my website was good, but still there were some useful tips....

[Jabo]

Faust & Jabo: Please read response to Elwell. :)

Jabo: I disagree. There are plently of coding types that limit new windows, or my personal browsing preference. I have no idea what you mean by: "The best way to show your art is making one site per artwork, so you will keep the design of the site even when in full-display mode." ??

Yes, there is a lot of code that limits your preferred way to browse. But that's what I mean. By letting everyone choose if they want to open a link in a new window, or in a tab, or in the same window (by default) you don't take anything away from people's preferences, contrary to your approach of letting everything pop up in a new window, which I for one hate like feces on my pillow. I prefer having as few windows open as possible and go through websites by using the browser buttons. I can't do that if you choose to code something that opens pop-up windows. But if you like pop-ups, you could always choose to control-click a link. Hope that clears it up, I guess my comment was a little too simplified. Sry.

And as for the one site per artwork: Maybe I misunderstood what you were trying to say in your response to Elwell, but to me it seems like you just use pop-ups so that you don't have to "code" a new page per image, but can just rely on the new window to fill the blank space instead. The problem you get there is that only your filename is relevant to search engines, while for a page that has a title and maybe even an descriptive text accompanying it, people could actually find your images through Google, which to me is in the Top 3 of important things about portfolios (being found without having to ask for it). So, if you name your images "23fg.jpg", no one will find them on Google Image Search, while if you name them "arctic-environment-with-wendols.jpg", you might be found. I prefer having one .html site per image, because a) I can put thumbnails to the previous and next images into that file, directly next to the image viewed and b) I can put text into it if I want to, maybe even tags and c) I can design a passepartout that looks good and weights almost nothing because it's coded and not in the image.

[Mirana]

Jabo: I guess my counter was that other people do not code for me, so I'm not too concerned about coding a way that I don't like, so long as it functions in the manner I need (IE: the img has it's own web address for AD linkage, no extra frills to slow load time, etc). I guess I wanted to know if there were specific "this is always BAD because..." reasons like Irene's.

Originally I did a html file for each img on the site (by hand). When I rehauled it I tapped my lil' bro to do some simple php work because I was too busy to learn a new code and he'd just graduated for it. I gave him about 4 months...and I just barely got the simple php out of him. He was supposed to code up a fairly simple html creation/database for me (which was almost done) so I didn't have to re-code all the original art files, but....brothers. :rolleyes: Guess I held out hope that he'd finish it up and in the meantime only coded html files for things that really needed info/details/links. I agree that individual files are the ideal way to go. I like reading info about the art when I browse!

[Alex Chow]

Great tips. Though I've seen it before, I forgot to bookmark it. I just did it so I can come back to this when I make a website of my own (which won't be for awhile since I still suck). :davi:

[Ryuartyi]

Excellent article. A lot of the things in there I was kind of hoping most people knew, or at least had a vague idea about.

Bookmarked.

[Serpian]

The funny thing is, that when I saw the part about centering your text in the corner of my eye, I thought it was some ad in the middle of the text! Go figure.

[Jason Rainville]

Updated my site (http://jillustration.nimblecomm.com/). (there's a fuck-up with the white lines that I'll fix) Just realized too that I really need to get some better design stuff on the move.

[~Faust~]

Can someone tell me what's the matter with those artist's statements? I see artists ranting about what they call their "philosophy" in a lot of portfolio-websites, but I don't see how that adds anything to their portfolio.

I just say this because Jason, your portfolio is pretty awesome and it even displays extremely well on my linux-system. It's easy, accessable and gets to the point. Only this philosophy thing just destroys it for me, it makes you look like a precocious teenager.

[Jason Rainville]

Can someone tell me what's the matter with those artist's statements? I see artists ranting about what they call their "philosophy" in a lot of portfolio-websites, but I don't see how that adds anything to their portfolio.

I just say this because Jason, your portfolio is pretty awesome and it even displays extremely well on my linux-system. It's easy, accessable and gets to the point. Only this philosophy thing just destroys it for me, it makes you look like a precocious teenager.

Originally it was for my design site, and one thing that's a definite plus in design is strong copy writing skills. Rather than have a 'copywriting' section in my portfolio I thought I'd just place a value statement I wrote for school in there.

IF however it's cheesy, poorly written or out of place, I have no real love for it and can get rid of it easily.