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New website

Posted: Thu Jan 12, 2012 12:02 am
by TH360
Just finished my website and would appreciate any constructive criticism on it.

http://turningheadsphotography.co.uk/

Re: New website

Posted: Thu Jan 12, 2012 2:59 pm
by Hopki
Hi,
Very cool website, I hope you don't mind, but I am going to be really picky as you asked, :-).

I would avoid large panoramas on the opening page of your website.
Try making the file size as small as you can while still offering reasonable quality, but then have no fullscreen option.
However if you want the fullscreen option you may consider using multi resolution so when the fullscreen button is clicked the quality increases.

Also I noticed that in your Portfolio, all the panoramas display the splash screen to tell the user how to navigate the panorama. This happens every time you click a thumbnail and can get quite annoying.

Also in the portfolio page the panorama to the right, the load bar is not centred, it is a little to the left.

For the HTML5 I would make sure that you have the double click toggle fullscreen option selected, this can be found in the Advanced Settings tab of the HTML5 output. When I navigated to your site with an iPod Touch 4th generation which has the same size screen as the iPhone 4, I could not centre the display, the double click fullscreen option would then make the panorama fit the screen.

When you navigate to your site with said apple device and the HTML5 version is displayed, double tapping and going fullscreen means you would not need the small text and the Apple device images for the iPad/Phone. They are to small to be read in any case. Perhaps some text in the HTML5 skin saying, Double tap to fill the screen. Then you could give the text the actions, Enter Fullscreen => Set Element Scale to 0 , Exit Fullscreen Set Element Scale to 1.

All the very best.
Regards,
Hopki

Re: New website

Posted: Thu Jan 12, 2012 3:18 pm
by TH360
Many thanks Hopki,

Picky is what I was hoping for!

Will reduce the file size of front page as suggested. Are they taking a while to load on your computer?

Was getting tired of seeing that splash screen pop up myself! What would you suggest as there is no way of knowing if the user will know how to use the panoramas and which one they will click on first?

Spoke to a client yesterday who seems to think that the images are distorting a little on the sides and that they were making the rooms look a little small so am currently working on a squarer pano which doesn't return to horizon as this seems to look a little better. This should also do away with the need for the ipad/iphone logo but will add the double click as suggested. Simplifying the skin a little as well so will add text for this.

Again many thanks as I want this to look as good as possible, any other opinions are welcomed,

Jonathan

Re: New website

Posted: Thu Jan 12, 2012 6:14 pm
by Hopki
Hi
I am on a 25MB connection, and lets say my computer is not slow, they seemed to take a few more seconds than I would normally expect for an in-page loaded panorama. The speed was ok if opening from a link.
You can have the splash screen when you first open a panoramas, but not for all the other nodes in the same tour.

The distortion, setting the FoV to say 60 rather then the default 70 should solve the problem, but then may be your zoomed in to much??
Regards
Hopki

Re: New website

Posted: Mon Jan 16, 2012 12:42 am
by TH360
Hopki,

Have updated the website now so hopefully the panos look a lot better.

Have tried decreasing the tile size to reduce file size on the homepage but this reduces quality too much I feel, is there another way round this?

Simplified the skins to eliminate the need for the fullscreen iPad/iPhone button. Had a bit of a problem when double clicking to toggle fullscreen in that the header would stay over the pano image. My web designer thinks this that normally this could be sorted with 'z-index' but for some reason this isn't working and he cannot see a solution to it.

Hopefully the splash screen is not on every panorama now.

Jonathan

Re: New website

Posted: Mon Jan 16, 2012 5:03 pm
by Hopki
Hi Jonathan
Increasing the image compression is far less destructive then reducing the cube face size, try 75 to 80%.
What is the file size of your swf files, most aim for 1.5 to 2MB. For an in-page pano, I would aim for 1.5, but this is just my opinion.
Regards
Hopki

Re: New website

Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2012 10:50 am
by TH360
Thanks Hopki,

They were a bit higher than that so having a play around with them at the moment.

Jonathan

Re: New website

Posted: Thu Feb 09, 2012 2:00 am
by PMtv2000
Besides Hopkis comments above - I'm on a 1mb line [ Mallorca, in the sticks :( ] things open ok but for me but the initial size of the pano window seems to be too big and doesn't show the whole picture on screen. [ 19" not too bad on 21" ] how this translates to a laptop at 1366x768 ?

Re: New website

Posted: Thu Feb 09, 2012 10:33 am
by TH360
Thanks for having a look, can I ask if it's too far down the page or too wide for the screen?

Re: New website

Posted: Thu Feb 09, 2012 11:29 am
by Werner
My experiance for iFrames is, that Fullscreen at iDevices not working :o(
Does anybody have other experiance?

And if you have the page with the pano on the iPhone you allways be in trouble to manage the screen...

And I be with Hopki, make it multiresolutioned! That loads much faster for the initial Page.

Regards
Werner

Re: New website

Posted: Thu Feb 09, 2012 1:18 pm
by Mnollock
Nice work, good to see somebody else from the wonderful West Midlands on here!