Design & Publishing . / . WEB . / . Tips & Tricks Index . / . Millsip on January's Review . / . Millsip (continued)
Dan Millsip comments on January's Site Review... (continued)
WD&R said: "we all liked the logo (banner) and thought the rounded corners are very elegant on the side bar..."
Dan said: The rounded corners derived from an experiment using tables. I wanted to use a coloured background tag within the tables but didn't like the squareness that the table boundaries resulted in. It took a number of times before I could make it work the way that I envisioned it -- tables nestled in tables, nestled in tables. To make it even more difficult, I originally had a tiled image on the background (glad I got over that!).
WD&R said: "We see a strong grasp of the craft, and the technical skills on the site and would now push for a bit of content-smithing..."
Dan said: I agree 100% about the content. My main priority was to develop a structure that would organize all the content that was on the previous site design, provide flexiblity, simplify the regular maintenance, and allow for the expansion of addition content (there's a LOT more to come). As a result most of my time was spent engineering the structure of the site. Admitedly, I didn't spend as much attention to typography and design as I would have liked to, but the next phase of the project includes refinements to this aspect of the site.
__ With regard to the "grasp of the craft", I've spent countless hours over the past two years learning to create inuitive navigation, quick loading pages, and trying new ideas and techniques with html and cgi -- some worked and some didn't -- but I'm fairly pleased with the successes so far. I've still got a lot to learn but that's a big part of the fun. I've often compared building websites to blues music -- it's the most simple form of music and nearly anyone can play it, but it takes dedication, hard work, and a lot of late nights to do it well.
WD&R said: "Several of the viewers mentioned the mug shot..."
Dan said: The intention is not to have the Chairman's photo on the page all the time and it will be changed every few weeks. With regard to "in reality the mug shot serves nothing more than the subject's ego...", nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, the Chairman had no say in the matter. I included the photo to bring awareness to the leader of the association since most members have never met him. I do admit however, that I don't particularly like it either, but felt that it was necessary as the Chairman is in a volunteer capacity and giving him some added exposure could only produce long term gains. His postition is a difficult one which demands great amounts of his time. Many of his expenses for travel, etc. are "out of pocket". We must also bear in mind that as a volunteer run organization it is necessary to give praise and show gratitude at every given opportunity to members who work hard to promote and administer the organization. This is even more important to the IAPHC than several other similar organizations as the IAPHC membership base comes from people who work in the field rather than those in corporate executive positions.
__ For many members this is their opportunity to excel in ways that they could never achieve in their workplace. Recognition for these efforts is an aspect of the IAPHC site that cannot be ignored. I can live with the photo of the International Chair for a few weeks each year. It's also worth mentioning that the Chairman's report received a considerable amount of traffic over the past several weeks.
WD&R said: "The same holds true for the "grip-n-grin" photos..."
Dan said: In this case, since the site is primarily designed for use by the members the same applies as above, it's recognition for the members who worked to help produce the Gallery award winning piece. I didn't want to reduce the "grip-n-grin" photo too much or the person might not be recognizable. Of course, the winning entry carries much more importance and this was not overlooked, however, there wasn't enough time to adequetly plan this section and the number of photos that I had to work with was very limited. The 1998 Gallery of Superb Printing promises to be a much more lavish display of the winning pieces and will likely include several more photos of the pieces as well as detailed production notes of how the winning pieces were crafted. (I was also interested in viewing the design of the Best Use of Typography winner but didn't see it either).
WD&R said: "...the continuing theme of the nav bars is wonderful. One reviewer however commented that they felt it took too much screen real estate".
Dan said: This was one item on the site that I deliberated on probably more than any other. In the end I opted not to reduce the size of the bar as a lot of members using the site are no longer "youngsters". Many are new to the web (and computing) and as the aging process takes place many of them wear corrective lenses or hold reading material at arms length to view it. This may seem like a trivial item but this observation seemed to warrant a good deal of consideration. I've received countless e-mails from members with comments about the ease of locating information, so as they say "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".
WD&R said: "I personally have a bit of a problem with the alignment of elements on some of the pages..."
Dan said: I'm the first to admit that I'm not much of a graphic designer. I did reverse the placement of the photos and the credits, and left justified 'A salute to the best of the 1997 Gallery' as the critique suggests and agree that it does improve the appearance of the page. Thanks for the lesson.
WD&R said: "...read that subhead. "1997" should go with "International" just as "Superb" goes with "Printing"..."
Dan said: I agree. And in a perfect world it would work. The web however, is far from perfect. What works on your screen is different on mine. I check the site with at least two versions of Navigator, MIE, and the AOL browsers in 640x480, 800x600 and 1024x768 on the PC and in the most current versions of Navigator and MIE on the MAC. The difference in font size is incredible (as you well know).
__ And to make matters worse, who knows what the person on the other end has done with their default font sizes. I originally had included break tags but removed them after I saw the page on a screen that had the default font set at 14pts -- it looked worse as the line breaks caused the word "Gallery" to sit on a line all it's own. I considered replacing the text with a graphic but I was already pushing the limit of the total page size and decided to leave it as is. For now, compromises are necessary. Hopefully as browsers evolve we won't have this problem in the future.
WD&R said: "The news banner says "Tuesday"..."
Dan said: Firstly, Tuesday Morning News is the name of the publication and it is updated each and every Monday night without fail with articles written by Kevin Keane, the IAPHC CEO. A quick click to the page would have made it clear that this is a weekly publication. This comment did however bring a perspective to my attention that I hadn't considered -- thank you. I've now reworded the text under the sidebar graphic to read "A brand new issue every Tuesday morning", hopefully this will make it more concise.
WD&R said: "Although there is some marketing taking place it's done in a tasteful..."
Dan said: This has been an aspect of the site that I have stood my ground with a vengance. Fortunately I've been able to convince the membership that we don't have to manage our site like every other company or organization. There are better ways to generate revenues without littering the site with grafitti style ad banners. Recently, we've obtained significant sponsorship from within the industry and will be implementing our sponsor program over the next two months. Will it work? I don't know. But it's worth a shot to avoid falling into the "banner trap". That's the beauty of the web... where there are no rules, there are only precedents to set.__ It's through the efforts of organizations like yours, that offer encouragement for others to find alternate ways to finance their efforts, that the web will be a much more valuable entity.
__ I very much enjoyed your review, it presented opinions in a very unbiased manner which are invaluable to me. Most of the graphic designers I know have very little to do with the web (although that is slowly changing) so I don't often have 'net savvy' people to offer constructive criticism.
Thank you.
BTW: You might find it interesting to know that I received a forwarded
copy of your newsletter from an IAPHC member in Cincinatti yesterday
morning before I had a chance to read the copy that was sent to me. I'll
do some investigating and see if there are others in our association who
also subscribe to your excellent publication.
Yours in Craftsmanship,
Dan Millsip, IAPHC Int'l Webmaster
e-mail: webmaster@iaphc.org
International CraftNet: http://www.iaphc.org
----- "Share Your Knowledge" -----
WD&R sez: We all learn from this kind of response. Bravo, Dan, and thank you again for taking the time to write. I think all of our readers will learn something about themselves, and this craft we're involved in.For those of you who didn't read the original review, download the January issues (pdf file) of WebDesign & Review
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