Hallelujah

[misterx]

Vaughns Photo Art, version 4.0, is live.

http://www.vaughnsphotoart.com/

Let me know if you find anything difficult to use.

The site is designed to flex between 750px wide (for 800x600 screens) to 1230px wide (for 1280x960 displays and up). 800x600 is not optimal though. Generally the bigger the better. 1024x768 should work dandy though. It has been tested on Firefox 2, IE7, and IE6. IE6 doesn't get a logo, because it doesn't play well with png transparency. Opera users... ummm... sorry. :)

How 'bout them nifty image popups? Note... they size the image down to fit on your screen, minus a bit for a border. Less than ideal, since it can give a slightly jagged look sometimes, but it was the only way I could make it work on a small screen like 800x600 and still have images large enough for decent viewing on larger screens. If you don't like the resized version, click the more info and there is a plain link to just the image, no popup. Full size images are 700px in the largest dimension.

I'm probably going to add more stuff to it in the coming days/weeks. Besides more images, here's some of what I'm considering:

• a "Tell a friend" feature, for emailing links to individual pages
• moving home, contact us, info, & view cart to a toolbar, if i can figure out where i want it
• comments for each image (less likely, as I don't feel like moderating it)
• one or more random products pulled into the homepage for display
• A recently added images page, auto generating. Right now it's all recently added so no point.
• any suggestions?

And thanks to shirokarasu for the pic of me on the homepage. :)

Comments

[natf.livejournal.com]

You know what would be really cool? If we could click on the top randomised banner and go to the image that is currently being displayed there so we could order it without having to search for it!
;-p

[natf.livejournal.com]

Ooo one other niggle. The navigation buttons to page through a gallery? e.g.:

«:1:2:3:4:5:6:7:»

Most of the ':' are not part of a link and so are not underlined and so you can see where the links are seperated. The first and last ':' seem to be part of the '«' and '»' links and so, visually, it seems that '«:1' and '7:»' are both all one link each. Does that make sense?

(Sorry - you did ask - and I am not called "the pedantic website and software usability-tester/QA from heck" for nothing!

[natf.livejournal.com]

What I *should* have said first (but is the kind of thing that I always forget to say because it seems so obvious to me) is that the new site looks amazing! It really *does* go without saying that the photos are amazing, though. ;-p

[natf.livejournal.com]

e.g.:

«:1:2:3:4:5:6:7:»

See what I mean kinda? It implies at first glance that '«' takes me to page 1 (start) and '»' takes me to (in this example) page 7 (end).

Can I suggest, instead, that the following would be clearer?

«:1:2:3:4:5:6:7:»

[natf.livejournal.com]

OK - bad news. On Firefox/mac, when I click on an image thumbnail to see it bigger, I get what looks like a greyed out web page with a spinning 'loading' animation. Forever. Well, I gave up after 5 minutes. I must admit to expecting either a popup window to appear or, preferably, a navigation to a page with just that one image on it so that I could navigate back using my browser (the kinda site I am used to using - user expectations and all that). I am assuming that my copy of firefox does not have some plugin or other installed, but I have no idea which plugin that would be.

[misterx.livejournal.com]

hmm, i have no mac to test on. I may just have to break the popup functionality for macs and let it default to viewing the image instead.

It's nothing but javascript, layers and css. No plugins needed.

[astaciamorrigen.livejournal.com]

It looks great! I think the new layout is easier to use, and I love that you've added human pics.

[misterx.livejournal.com]

More of those to come, hopefully.

[misterx.livejournal.com]

Are you any good with smarty templates and php? Here's the code I believe builds the pagination links:
/navstr
{
$this->smarty->assign('prev','');
$this->smarty->assign('prevurl','');
}
if ($start + $end < $count)
{
$this->smarty->assign('next',''.$this->Lang('next').'');
$this->smarty->assign('nexturl',$thisUrl.$delim.'start='.
($start + $end));
}
else
{
$this->smarty->assign('next','');
$this->smarty->assign('nexturl','');
}
$navstr = '';
$pageInd = 1;
for ($i=0;$i<$count;$i+=$end)
{
if ($i == $start)
{
$navstr .= $pageInd;
}
else
{
$navstr .= ''.
$pageInd.'';
}
$navstr .= ':';
$pageInd++;
}

$navstr = rtrim($navstr,':');
$categoryItems = array_splice($categoryItems, $start, $end);
$this->smarty->assign('items',$categoryItems);
if (strlen($navstr) > 1)
{
$this->smarty->assign('navstr',$navstr);
$this->smarty->assign('hasnav',1);
}
else
{
$this->smarty->assign('navstr','');
$this->smarty->assign('hasnav',0);
}

[spooky-kittie.livejournal.com]

Love the new site! Much easier to use and just all around better. I really like the new pictures too.

wish i could find something to improve on to return the favor but.......

[cuntishness.livejournal.com]

i like the new site...a lot.
good job.

[papayas.livejournal.com]

i like it - i find it easy to navigate and visually pleasing. the rotating banners are also nice.

my qualm: is there any way to make it so that when you have an image open, you can just click a button to view the next image (within the same pop-up window)? i find myself to be very much a "next, next, next" image viewer and become frustrated with sites that have photography as nice as yours, but no easy way to see the large images easily in succession.

now, that's personal preference, though, so you should go with what feels right to you.

one other thing i wanted to mention - having the X to close the window on the bottom right is cool, but not intuitive, so it can become annoying.

i think the "tell a friend" feature is a great one - i hope you do that.

overall, really great, though - congratulations!

[natf.livejournal.com]

Ah. For some reason Javascript is very broken for me in Firefox. I should try it in Safari for you. There is no such thing as IE for mac since OSX 10.4, btw...

[natf.livejournal.com]

Yup - it works in Safari (the browser that comes with OSX). I guess it is a Firefox thing - maybe do that fix you suggested if you detect firefox and mac?

[natf.livejournal.com]

Are you any good with smarty templates and php?

Not any more I am afraid. My brane broke. I can just test stuff now. Sorry.

[misterx.livejournal.com]

For what it's worth I had someone test it in Safari and it worked fine. Not sure why firefox, of all browsers, is having an issue.

[natf.livejournal.com]

It may just be *my* copy of firefox ofc. Can the person that tested it in safari for you test in firefox as well on their mac?

[misterx.livejournal.com]

nope, they were borrowing their boss' 'puter.

can I consolidate apostrophes in that?

boss'puter?

[misterx.livejournal.com]

I'm having trouble figuring this one out. I may have to just live with it for now.

[misterx.livejournal.com]

I added the Next/Previous in the popup window. Good suggestion. It only works for items within a given page though, so you can only "next" through 6 images (or 12 on the "recently added" page i just put in). I may change the default gallery size to twelve. Still thinking about that.

Putting the X on the bottom was a conscious decision. Despite being non-standard, I think it makes for a better presentation of the image. After the first time or two, I think people will figure it out. *shrug* personal preference.

Still working on the tell-a-friend thing. And by "working on" I mean "still thinking about".

[papayas.livejournal.com]

yes, personal preference, i agree.

i like the "next" option.

[misterx.livejournal.com]

Do you think 12 is too many images?

I suppose it depends on your screen size. On mine I get three columns of images.

[papayas.livejournal.com]

i get 3 columns, as well.

i don't think 12 is too many, but i tend to like loading a lot of things one one page (i have my friends page display 50 at a time)...

[papayas.livejournal.com]

ON one page, i mean.

[misterx.livejournal.com]

heh, me too. :)

[misterx.livejournal.com]

Thanks... more new pics to come. :)

Re: wish i could find something to improve on to return the favor but.......

[misterx.livejournal.com]

thanks. still working on it but I'm pleased with where it is so far.

[misterx.livejournal.com]

btw, is LJ randomizing your picture icon selection? everytime I hit reply, it comes up with a different icon selected. You get Boop for some reason.

[papayas.livejournal.com]

i'm not having any icon issues - mine seems to still only be showing my default.

the boop icon is yours? i guess i can see you in it. :)

[misterx.livejournal.com]

Just a followup, found a friend with a mac and firefox 2.0 and it worked on his. Don't know what to think now!

[misterx.livejournal.com]

"Tell a Friend" feature has been added, click on the "buy/more info" link to see it.

[papayas.livejournal.com]

looks good!

[natf.livejournal.com]

Probably my firefox installation and combination of extensions. I now use Camino - a much better behaved mozilla browser - where it works perfectly!