General Music Chat

I didn't see
access to a storefront or advertising of your
merch or music, just wondering. It looks great,
I wonder is it working for you?

Thanks for the input Lynard! I will probably be selling my CDs and Merc through this website. I will be building a "shopping cart" feature on an existing page. Thanks for the input.

Sir Jams, excellent points... If I did not know better, I'd say you've done this before

I used to design Sites...Used a lot of flash and action script...wrote up Educational tools and such...

I am now so disillusioned about the crap tools and website flaws, ambiguous conventions, lack of support (i.e MS is the only biz that can sell you a broken product and then charge you to fix it..) and every other tom-dick and harry tool that is out there. Its all crap! LOL!

I guess what I am saying is...you are dead nuts on by suggesting to keep the site simple. People forget that a website is really about information... Nobody gives a sh*t what color the button is , when they want to find out the balance in their bank, for example. On the other hand, you are correct about the life of the page, Video, music , text. These do add life to the page.

Ok done ranting now...

Santos, Text should be reserved as 'ad copy" Brief, succinct, informative and to the point. If you want to do a Bio or elaborate on a topic...its a good idea to just create a separate page (room) (environment) (map) for the user to explore. If the copy is long and extensive, Design such pages exclusively for reading comfort (see Jam's suggestions about dimensions)

hey Jerry!
Flash is generally used for animation and streaming content. These days, AJAX is better suited for that - also, you're using it primarily for entry effects and static text ~ seems like overkill to me. Personally, I'd go with a static design. Easier to design, and doesn't require plugins.

Hi Chris! Thanks for the input. It is much appreciated! I just converted the site to dot .php and will be looking into AJAX and XML soon.

I am thinking about the conversion to static text. I did the dynamic text to keep in line with the "animated" feel. Let me try a version with Static and see how it feels.

Width I think is too much. As a general rule of thumb, the less the eye has to travel from left to right when reading, or scanning pictures, the more aesthetically pleasing and easier to find things. The standard used to be 640 (-40 for scrollbar width = 600 wide). These days standard width is around 1024x680, but stock resolution is set at 800 (760 to eliminate scrollbars) despite the larger screens.

Personally, I like the centered / fixed width approach - elastic content is okay, but difficult to design. Call me simple

No, you are not simple at all. I have over 50, 000 visits to my site since the beginning of the year. Screen resolution = 1140x641 (98.26%) of visitors. I may keep the width and adjust the depth. Advice noted.

Aso for bio information ~ when people come to a music site, they don't want to read alot of text - they want to explore video, music and pictures (usually in that order), and they don't want music to start on its own. They may have had their speakers turned up and all of a sudden your site shakes their walls. It's usually best to let the user control when they want to hear music.

The player only should play automatically on the home page. I will turn down the volume at entry = 50%. I think it sets the atmosphere of having some type of music as an introductory to a website. Let me think about it.

Navigation should usually be closer to the top of the page ~ this is where people expect it to be, and if they are on a laptop with 640x480 resolution, your navigation will be at the bottom of the page

The non-flash version, IMO is really good, though I would move the bio off the cover to make it less wordy. If people want to read bio info, then they go to the bio page for that. Instead of a bio, perhaps a dated list of most recent projects so when they visit your site, they immediately know whether you're currently active or not (by virtue of seeing the dates and what you're doing).

Sorry to be the critical poster! ~ I'm somewhat biased given the fact that I've had website/application "usability training" ~ it's one of the terrible things they make me do at work :/

But the content is great!
chris!

Thanks Chris!

Sir Jams, excellent points... If I did not know better, I'd say you've done this before

I used to design Sites...Used a lot of flash and action script...wrote up Educational tools and such...

I am now so disillusioned about the crap tools and website flaws, ambiguous conventions, lack of support (i.e MS is the only biz that can sell you a broken product and then charge you to fix it..) and every other tom-dick and harry tool that is out there. Its all crap! LOL!

I feel your pain. Fortunately I'm not doing much site work these days. I've moved into applications/database design work ~ now I'm thinking of becoming a bar-tender in the Bahamas.

I feel your pain. Fortunately I'm not doing much site work these days. I've moved into applications/database design work ~ now I'm thinking of becoming a bar-tender in the Bahamas.

lol I also feel your pain.

I just got my Microsoft Certification with CRM. Can't find a job. Are you working with SQL?

At the moment, I am learning JavaScript and using Visual Studio 2010.

My brain hurts!

I feel your pain. Fortunately I'm not doing much site work these days. I've moved into applications/database design work ~ now I'm thinking of becoming a bar-tender in the Bahamas.

lol I also feel your pain.

I just got my Microsoft Certification with CRM. Can't find a job. Are you working with SQL?

At the moment, I am learning JavaScript and using Visual Studio 2010.

My brain hurts!

Fluent in Microsoft SQL (2008). Also worked with MySQL for several years, some Oracle and Sybase as well. Before becoming a .NET engineer, I was a PERL/Php programmer, and prior to that programmed in C/C++. 15+years of feelin the pain. If you ever get to the Bahamas, look me up - first drink is on the house ^.^

Firefox as well ... and though you page is a tad wider than my screen I don't find it detracting nor distracting at all.


Well done !

One comment ... I see no route to exit the photos area back to the home page or other parts of your site?

I had to click on the "back page " cursor on my computer to exit the photo area.

Perhaps I overlooked something?

lol yes. The Logo on the top left corner is the "return to website" outlet. Thanks for the input, I will fix that. Glad you like it.

When I looked at the Noisy Kungfu website last week, it inspired me to redesign mine. Thanks again.

UM ... that kinda makes me sad being as NKF no longer exists as an entity.

Though I always appreciate your visits.
Eventually we will have a JERICHO MARCH page.

But being as we lost our lead geek ... it could be a while before this comes to pass.

I feel your pain. Fortunately I'm not doing much site work these days. I've moved into applications/database design work ~ now I'm thinking of becoming a bar-tender in the Bahamas.

lol I also feel your pain.

I just got my Microsoft Certification with CRM. Can't find a job. Are you working with SQL?

At the moment, I am learning JavaScript and using Visual Studio 2010.

My brain hurts!

I have done work with SQL Server , Done a lot of DB design and development, Scripting, etc. and was working with Visual studio... But I am sick to death of all the loops and hoops...

I have faith that in about 15 more years, they will have the studio so comprehensive, and more of the tech will be standardized that I might gum my way through another evolution of it.

Employ XML at your own peril. You couldn't pay me to use it on my own site.

Javascript is not what you think it is - it looks familiar, but it's a different paradigm.

The combo might be the new rage, but it's icky to me.

Jerry

I like it. Made me realiize that I'm going to have to do that too. So many tasks - seems like it was much easier the last time I "played with madness."

Getting a job is a bitch just now. I was out of work for three months and took some hard looks at what I wanted. To my surprise, I landed just where I wanted to be. It feels pretty shake to not have an income stream.

I had thought that you had enough music angles going on to get by. Youi have multipe skill sets there. I hope you are exploring that at least while looking for a 'real' job..

I've done IT for a long time. It used to be a lot more fun. A surprising number of the guys in the early days were musicians. The bean counters and marketing types finally figured out how to make it suck.

Talbot

Mike Wrote: I've done IT for a long time. It used to be a lot more fun. A surprising number of the guys in the early days were musicians. The bean counters and marketing types finally figured out how to make it suck

Mike, indeed you are correct. IT was the black art of the underground...I was such a proud part of it... But then.... Commercialism got hold of IT with an iron-clad death grip... I'm not talking about PMing a project under the confines of a budget... I'm talking about the time I remember arguing with an account manager ...about how fn retarded it was,for him to actually sit there and try to apply metrics on 'programming lines of code..'. OMG! There are some folks that need to get spanked! LOL!

Programming parllells song writing... When will they realize they cant put metrics or factory standards on that...

I'd quit it if it sucked, or maybe start playing bass.





I couldn't resist.

Dog

I once tried (fruitlessly) to make a manager understand why eleminating lines of code could be as important or more, than writing them.

We have some entrepeneurs in America I suppose and some decent CEO types. But in my experience, the over educated, urtterly clueless middle management types and dept heads are America's ticket to irrelvance.

Talbot