DOT COM DOMAIN & BIG SITE UPDATE

Hey guys, I have finally completed…well…almost completed the large update to my online portfolio.

There are a few more changes I need to make to it, but I feel it is now ready to be shown. One main problem is if you have a monitor resolution of 800 x 600px, then the links get cut-off – I am working on this fix, but let me know if you have this problem.

I would appreciate any feedback regarding the update, so leave me a comment here if you have any views. My older portfolio is still available to view on the web at: www.tomhargreaves.com/v1 so feel free to compare them and tell me which you prefer.

One issue of my old portfolio that I tried to fix was its load time...

Please tell me what the load time of my website is the first time you access it. It is important that you count only the first time, as the pages are cached and will load much quicker there after.

If it loads reasonable quick I can improve the quality of my images slightly.

After over a year of waiting, I now own tomhargreaves.com so this will be my new domain from now on.

I would greatly appreciate your feedback guys.

Cheers,

Tom

If anyone wants to know what the updates are then read on:

• Firstly, and most importantly, all my images have been updated to feature my most recent photography…I will also make a big effort to keep updating it regularly as I take more shots.

• As well as updating my images, I have also filtered out a lot of my older photos to keep the folio compact. Quality not quantity guys.
The older shots can still be found in my dA archive. The back page of my portfolio book has a link to this.

• Faster and smoother page turn movement

• After getting feedback from my older online portfolio, it was brought to my attention that it took you a while to figure out how to navigate through my ‘book’ style, so I have now added a border around the whole book and an introduction section telling you how to navigate.

• In addition to the above, I have given each of the photography ‘genres’ in my portfolio their own tabbed button. When clicked on, the book opens directly on that page. This is an improvement of my older book, which flicked through the previous pages before it got to the section.

• Other links have also been added to my site underneath the book. When clicked on, these links load up in a lightbox-style, within the flash movie. The pages are:
About - short history of myself
Prints – opens dA prints
Blog – opens my new blog (http://blog.tomhargreaves.com)
Links – new feature for link-exchanging with websites to increase traffic
Contact – contact form to send me an email
Copyright – detailing my copyright

• Added a ‘zoom’ feature on all pages in my portfolio. When clicked the image shows twice as big allowing you to see more detail. As a result of this, I had to compress my images more to keep overall site size down. Click the zoom button again to continue browsing

• Added ‘keyboard navigation’ to the pages in the book. You can now flick through my portfolio using the left and right arrow keys. This feature is intended for people who prefer not to use a mouse.

• Changed flash preloader to a round one