lovehistory.net

This week I spent a lot of time working on the design for my website, trying to take some of the very helpful criticisms I received to heart. I dedicated most of my energy to developing a better information architecture for my site. This meant a re-worked menu bar, which now features a drop down menu that will hopefully direct users much more obviously to my content. The code I used is here, for anyone else who’s interested. I found it to be very easy to work with.

I also redesigned the Watch the Films page so that the actual films themselves are embedded in their entirety on this page. Each film is accompanied by a brief essay and two links, one in the essay itself and one in the caption, directing the user to the film’s dedicated essay page. The film icon next to the film’s title/header also links directly to the film’s dedicated page when clicked. On the essay page, the film in its entirety is presented on the top, but I have re-sized the embedded video so that it is much smaller. This way the user is instantly visually clued into the continuing text. It’s not all hidden below the fold. The essay is both foregrounded and still paired to the film.

The site is otherwise still very light on content. This is partially a reflection of my desire to get the design right first. Once I have that structure in place, I think it will be much easier (and I hope faster) for me to plug in that missing content. It’s also a reflection of my continuing struggles with YouTube. For one thing, I have a very slow DSL connection and I’m not sure how to broach how unacceptable this is with my landlord. Downloading and uploading videos halts my entire connection and I can’t do anything else online until the long slog has finished. So that’s annoying.

Also, I ran into some weird copyright issues. I found some great videos on the Internet Archive that the site identified as in the public domain, but when I uploaded them to YouTube I discovered that there they are flagged as copyrighted. There’s an appeals process, but if you lose they make it sound like you’re doomed to hell fire for all eternity, so I abandoned those particular videos. I also had a time trying to figure out how to upload videos longer than 15 minutes, and when I figured out the solution was to click the link at the bottom of the upload page I felt stupid. So.

Other than uploading context, there are still visual issues that must be addressed, such as the design of my header image, the saturation of my color scheme, and my treatment of the yellow borders. I wanted my page to look like a movie poster, but the point about the yellow against the white is well-taken. I also have yet to even attempt my print stylesheet.

I must also give Jeri a direct shout-out, as her continuing and very thoughtful critique has really helped me understand where I need to go with the site.