My new website is here: simonbolz.com
A few years ago photo websites needed to have a horizontal slideshow. It
was slick and cool. But after a while it's just getting boring. And it
interrupts the natural browsing behaviour which is from top to bottom.
improved I thought when re-designing my own webpage? 1. Necessity of Flash
With all the jQuery scripting there is no advantage for flash slideshows
anymore. I wanted a quicker browsing experience on all devices, so Flash
had to go in my series pages and the interface is mostly HTML now, also.
I used Google webfonts (Droid Sans) throughout all my pages. 2. Larger images
I shoot with 21 or 40 megapixels always. So why showing only small
images? Bigger photos are much nicer to watch. A whole new experience.
In my new website all photos are respectively larger. I chose a balance
to fit on the screen of most users (79% according to 1 year of
statistics). By fitting on the screen I am speaking of the vertical
height. Horizontally I included scripting that scales down the image on
smaller screens without the nasty pixelation. 3. Video integration
As I produce small clips to my series, I thought of integrating them on
each page also. They are not that cool yet but at least there is room to
improve. 4. A new homepage
What's interesting about a homepage? Photographs! So I gave all space to
them. I reduced all other information to a minimum, so you'll have a
nicer browsing experience now. Small screen resolutions automatically get a different layout (in modern
browsers which most of my visitors have). By using the .f4v instead of the .flv video format and by downscaling
the preview video it can now be 30 seconds long with only 750 KB to load. 5. Logo? What for?
I decided to remove my "Simon Bolz Photography" logo. There is no need
for it. You know my name, I shoot the series. There is no big company
attached to it. I do everything on my own. 6. Besides some more stuff
New colour scheme with different grey tones and a blackberry highlight
colour (instead of my old pink). Balance of vertical and horizontal
lines in the whole layout. High contrast in font sizes. A more subtle
simonbolz.com stamp on the photographs. A new directory structure. More
modern code and scripting. No more unused (and unuseful) buttons like
"share this" or "tweet this". And for the statistics: 732 large scale
photographs with a total of 146 MB as of January, 2011. So here is my new website. Nothing but the naked truth ;-) http://www.simonbolz.com Any remarks, questions and feedback? Please, let me know!


