Nice looking websites

[peteinct]

Hi, my wife is trying to design a website for her art. She would like to see examples of photo rich websites that looked good so she can look at their layout. As a former dial up user I always hated looking at picture heavy sites and preferred text based ones.

Does anybody have any suggestions?

thanks,pete

[Brad Johnson]

In general terms picture heavy is bad. Use thumbnails on the main page to get to pages with a lot of pics or graphics. This will let the dial-up users at least access the main page with as little hassle as possible. Make graphics as minimal as possible for the same reason.

Also, it depends on who the target audience is for the page. If the page is consumer-targeted, keep it simple as many still have dial-up accounts. If the page is business-targeted, you have more options as most businesses now have some type of enhance-speed connnection.

Brad

[TarpleyG]

Also, refrain from using a big background image (especially from a singe file).  It's slow for dial-up users and it's slow for those of us that use RDP a lot and it shows really poor site design skills.  Pick a color, preferably solid, and stick to that.

Greg

[Brad Johnson]

Pick a color, preferably solid, and stick to that

Just be sure to stay away from bold primary colors, except as accents. Bold backgrounds make it hard to focus on text or other graphics. This is especially bad if the background colors are not only bold, but also at the ends of the color spectrum (blues or reds). Trying to read anything on a bold blue or red background is pretty much guranteed to give you a headache. Try it in Word or Publisher sometime to see what I'm talking about.

Brad

[garrettwc]

Pick a color, preferably solid, and stick to that.

I like a dark one for the background. Like black or charcoal gray. It really makes the colors in the photo/artwork stand out.

In this forum, I'm using the Mercury color scheme to display. That is a close example of what I am talking about.

[TarpleyG]

Here's the one I designed and maintain for my shooting club.  Took me a weekend to put it all together.  Just gives you an idea of what "simple" can look like if yoy are determined.

http://www.tssa.net

Greg

[peteinct]

Tarpley, I like your site. My club has a site but it isn't as good as yours. Thanks for the replies everbody! pete

[caseydog]

Photo rich websites , ummm www.olegvolk.net , bout 3000 or so there.



Ray