I’ve been on a spring cleaning a remodeling binge with all of my company web sites these past few weeks. The past couple of years I had let some of the guys who work for me fiddle with one of them and things got sort of ragged. So in a little over 6 hours last Thursday and over the weekend I completely wiped clean my ParadigmProjects site and re-lauched it using the WordPress blogging tool as a Content Management System with the idea being once I had everything set-up I could hand off the production of content again without having to really worry about things getting all munged up again.
So today I set up the first photo gallery and I thought I ask what do you folks what do you like better a gallery that generates a slide show or one that generates pop-up photos?
Slide Show: Tennis Court Cabana
Pop-Up Photos: Tennis Court Cabana
Replies
I prefer the slide show setup. It feels easier to get back to the gallery page. I have grown to despise popups since it seems like I am constantly trying to find the darn x to close the image.
BTW-it must tough hauling the chop saw in the Mercedes sedan. I didn't see a lumber rack.
Bruce
Hiker -
"I prefer the slide show setup. It feels easier to get back to the gallery page. I have grown to despise popups since it seems like I am constantly trying to find the darn x to close the image."
Yeah Bruce , I'm thinking slide show now too. I like the use of pop-up photos but I'm thinking now it's a lot easier to move through everything that way. I think I'll keep the pop-up use limited to article use only.
"BTW-it must tough hauling the chop saw in the Mercedes sedan. I didn't see a lumber rack."
Well the saws and all the other tools and equipment usually travel around in a van (here my van in another slide show I just set up) but to tell you the truth I bought the Bosch 4410L 10" SCMS instead of the 12" because it would fit in the trunk of the Mercedes since most of the time I drive the Benz since I'm more of a desk jockey nowadays.
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I think the slide show is much nicer. The pop-ups are a pain if you want to look at more than one picture.
Was this the house that you asked me about from our newsletter?
Jon Blakemore
RappahannockINC.com Fredericksburg, VA
JonBlakemore - "Was this the house that you asked me about from our newsletter?"
Yup that's the place. I was back there just a few days ago talking to them about that skateboard half pipe they want that I think I told you about. They love their sports. Did you notice the golf green next to the tennis/basketball court? (/page_45.cfm). That's one of two holes on the property.
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Slide show. Also, I learned the hard way........from the glaze of boredom that floats across perspective's eyes.........
........Less photos
Very cool though....I like the single page / big thumbs layout.
I think I probably in reality made up my mind on going with the slide show display as soon as I posted the question.
I do have editing of the list of photos still to do and the addition of explanatory captions but the point here was really to get a content publishing system anyone could use to add to or edit the site.
I created the photo galleries using the Mac program that I've mentioned here before called Galerie and I've set it up now with some standard presets we'll use from now on.
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gotta get a mac..............
Slide show. If I want to single out a photo for its own window, I can right-click and open it in a new window. Too many windows gets messy. I have IE 6.
Rebeccah
Slide show.
BTW. Great work. Would be an interesting thread.
Chuck Slive, work, build, ...better with wood
Slide show
I like the slide show.
Everyone loves the movies...slide show..although videos would be a nice
add-on too and I know you're more than capable.
http://WWW.CLIFFORDRENOVATIONS.COM
The truth of the matter is I don't have a video camera (or rather one that will shoot video of anykind of worthwhile quality) but maybe that's in my future somewhere and just thinking about it gives me a couple of ideas too.
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I vote for the slide show. Nice pics.
Best to you and yours, Chris.
Building as thou art paranoid never harmed anyone.
Okay the slide show vs. pop-up photos issue is settled. I guess it was really actually settled as soon as I posted it but here's another question.
From the respective page within the web site that introduces the Tennis Cabana project I've got it set up there so when you read through the text you get a short description of what the slide show shows and when you click on a particular phrase it opens up the slide show in in own new window based on the phrase you just clicked.
What do you think about it opening up the slide show in it's own new window? Some people hate that. In fact I've got it set up now so all the links to the slide show open up the slide show in it's own window. My thinking is that way someone opens up the show and then dismisses and closes the page, they're still on my site because the originating page window is still open. Try it.
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I'm of the same mind.I'm on your website's main page. A certain project or link catches my eye. I click on it. I then navigate through a bunch of pictures or subpages on that project's page.How do I get back to your main page?I'd prefer the new project link open up in a new window or tab so I can then close it, instead of it opening in the original window and having to click click click backwards.I like it the way you currently have it set up. New windows (or tabs). Slideshow.Best, Mongo
Mongo - "I'm of the same mind.....I like it the way you currently have it set up.....New windows (or tabs).....Slideshow."
Mongo thanks for taking a look and giving me that affirmation. I ask because I have a friend in real estate who has something similar on her company's site and she says (or thinks) that people hate it when a new window opens.
I actually hate it when it doesn't happen. Like here. It fine when someone links to something off site but when I click on a file someone has uploaded to the Taunton/Prospero space and I click on it I want it to open in a new window not in the tiny frame the parent post was sitting in.
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When you click "Next" the new pics load fast. I think that no matter the format, loading the next pic or page quickly is a feature that will keep people interested.Best to you and yours, Chris.
Building as thou art paranoid never harmed anyone.
CarpentrySpecialist - "When you click "Next" the new pics load fast. I think that no matter the format, loading the next pic or page quickly is a feature that will keep people interested."
Well to tell you the truth I'll confess that I don't pay too much attention to load times with this site since it's intended audience is in the Westchester-Fairfield county suburbs of NYC and my thinking is our client's probably have (or should have) broadband. So if it loads okay for me when I test it on the web then I think it's okay for our intended audience too.
There's nothing I've done to tweak those photos to load quickly although I have done that at times for other sites.
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Edited 4/22/2007 7:45 pm ET by JerraldHayes
Get the best of both worlds:
http://www.huddletogether.com/projects/lightbox2/
It's an accessible javascript that gives you 'pop-ups' in the same window that can then be viewed with forward and next links if wanted.
I used it here to see an example:
http://www.nrvetclinic.com/phototour.html
Darrell I already knew about lightbox and while I think it looks really great it's not fast enough. So I just wasn't sold on doing the display for this particular site that way.
And the real consideration here was something else that I alluded to earlier. Setting the site up using WordPress and using Galerie to generate the slide shows I've got a simple low cost (both WordPress and Galerie are free) content management system that anybody in the company can use to create content for the web site. Really, after assembling the photos together that you want to use in a slide show (the most time consuming part of the process) using a preset I have now set up, it takes Galerie literally a minute and 25 seconds to resize, create thumbnails, and generate the gallery pages for 48 photos. You then FTP and its good to go. I really don't want everyone here learning to be web designers anymore.
Plus I would have to somehow hack Galerie to get it to work with that javascript.
I do like the lightbox effect so much though that I'm going to use it on a web site I'm doing for a watercolor and acrylic artist to display her work and I think the display effect there really sets and shows off her stuff off nicely. Actually to tell you the truth I think showing her that effect in a demonstration page got me the gig.
It is a real kool look and effect.
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Edited 4/22/2007 11:35 pm ET by JerraldHayes
Yea, I don't know what Gallery's HTML out put looks like. In theory, if you have access to the HTML output, it shouldn't be hard to hack any gallery app to add the proper attributes to the HTML for lightbox to work.Lightbox isn't necessarily slow, but it does require that all thumbnails be loaded before the effect works, so it's not ideal on pages with more than 10 or so thumbnails.There's advantages to no-javascript methods too, though, the least of which is enabling the end-user to be able to bookmark a specific image for future reference.
darrel - "Yea, I don't know what Gallery's HTML out put looks like. In theory, if you have access to the HTML output, it shouldn't be hard to hack any gallery app to add the proper attributes to the HTML for lightbox to work."
Ya know its funny but as I tried to go to sleep last night I realized hacking Galerie to run lightbox is probably pretty easy as far as hacks go given it just a matter of putting the javascript and CSS into the template Galerie starts from. I then started to think of all these other hacks I could do too and I couldn't get to sleep!
"Lightbox isn't necessarily slow, but it does require that all thumbnails be loaded before the effect works, so it's not ideal on pages with more than 10 or so thumbnails."
What I mean by slow is the actual display event is designed to be slow and I think that's what gives it it's drama and makes it so kool. While I plan to get rid of a lot of photos in the list that displays there (some of them are redundant) there are still a lot to go through so I want the user to be able to move through them quickly if they want to.
"There's advantages to no-javascript methods too, though, the least of which is enabling the end-user to be able to bookmark a specific image for future reference."
Yeah that's true too, and I haven't even considered that. Good point. And that makes me realize printing from the no-javascript method would be better too. A few years ago we got a client who printed out photos of a library we installed and then drew on top of the photos what he was thinking he wanted for his project.
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