Rate my homemade picture viewer

[delsols]

http://www.babydylant.com
Rate our bAbY pIcTuRe vIeWeR.

We don't expect high traffic for this webpage. Its mainly for family and friends.

Edit-
Regretfully, our Picture Viewer has moved to www.baby-dylan.com (http://www.baby-dylan.com) Read why here (http://www.webdeveloper.com/forum/showthread.php?t=66733).

[delsols]

come on don't be shy...

[the tree]

What am I supposed to say? Cute kid? Considering that your target audience probably couldn't care less about the design, you're not liable for any accessability legistaion and there's no use in getting any search engine ranking, you haven't got anything wrong. So by some logic one could augue that it's perfect but even then it's beside the point.

[Green-Beast]

Cute kid... got his own website already.

[LJK]

Hi -
Whatever the Viewer was supposed to do -- didn't.
I left a bit traumatized, in general.

El

[delsols]

Tell me more LJK...
-- what browser were you using
-- screen resolution?
-- did you try clicking the category buttons on the face of the viewer?
-- are they not obvious enough?
any feedback welcome
much ablige
dels

[LJK]

Hi -
Firefox 9...
All resolutions...
Yes, I tried - a text cursor over the 'buttons' and a pointer over the categories...nada.
El

[Vanda]

Delsols, That's a really neat page for your baby! The picture viewer is pretty niftly. The only thing I didn't like is the thumbnails being so squished and kinda stretchy looking.

[tims15]

I agree with Vanda, the picture is quite cool, but the thumbnails are a bit squished. Apart from that, it looks really professional. It puts my own attempts to shame ;)

[delsols]

Many thanks for the kind replies.
I am yet incapable of writing my own scripts. So, to make my picture viewer, I combined two free scripts found at "the garbage can known as The Javascript Source (http://javascript.internet.com)"
The first script uses Tabs/hidden content for the buttons and thumbs.
The second uses a simpler content swap for the photos.
As I learn more, I hope to perhaps combine these two scripts, thereby making my webpage lighter and more efficient. But for now I have a bigger problem.
-- I haven't learned how to make our short mpg. videos play in the picture viewer. We are still using a popup window, containing thumbs, whereas the thumb links to the video file in a 'new window'. The biggest problem I've found in doing this is often this will open the video in an IE media window, AND windows media player, simultniously.

Basically, I want to switch multiple videos into the same window portion, like my picture viewer does with photos. Can someone offer a point in the right direction?

climbing the curve,
a gracious reader

links, if needed:
website (http://www.babydylant.com)
video thumbs popup window (http://www.babydylant.com/videos.html)
(popup looks different when clicked from website)

[delsols]

Agreed, the thumbs appear squished. Their actuall size is 25 x 25 px, displayed as 85 x 50. I've prioritized dialup load speed over thumb clarity. Again, my small audience is foremost in mind. They are mostly dialup users, who will nonetheless click every picture anyway.

[delsols]

Check out the latest version of our Dylan Viewer, the DV_3.0.
baby-dylan.com (http://www.baby-dylan.com)
Its still table layout, with a couple of inline frames and a dab of js. Does anyone know a quick and easy way to learn css layout.

Edit--
Someone please click 7-9 months and tell me if and why the progress bar keeps going after the page loads.

[KDLA]

The photos are pretty dark. You might consider using a darker background around them and lightening the webpage background. Also, lightening the photos/adjust the color before posting might help, too.

Lastly, how about putting the viewer closer to the top of the page? Since that's mainly what the page is about?

Just a few thoughts -
KDLA

[spufi]

Lastly, how about putting the viewer closer to the top of the page? Since that's mainly what the page is about?

Agreed. What is at the top? A counter. Basically we don't care how many people have come to your site. You do. You can get that info via your webhost if they are anything decent. How recently it was updated is really kind of null and void since the viewer tells us when the last photo was taken. The age of the kid could be handled in an about page. Heck the viewer gives an age range so we could probably figure out roughly how old the kid is anyway. Scrolling down shows things like a weight tracker which I can't even really see unless I highlight it. Here's what you really should do. Have four pages, viewer, about, contact, and news. Pic whatever one you want for the home page. Use a blogging tool for the news(Word Press is your host meets the requirements, Blogger if it doesn't). You can throw in the weight updates in your news. Add the "Web Accelerator" message just below the viewer too. It just seems so hung out there where it currently is.

[delsols]

Thanks alot guys for the advice. I think I'll take a little from both of you, in the next build, let the dv_3.0 become the webpage, and utilize multi pages.
brilliant
thanks again