Graphic by Philip DeLoach
So, you want to put your art on the Web? You have a way to scan your work, a spot online to build your site, a basic knowledge of HTML, so what do you do to make your site a real stand-out?
Web pages have evolved considerably since I first arrived on the Internet! Now you see pages with sound, animation, frames, java, interactive virtual reality, and myriads of different plug-ins to make it all work.
How do you build your site now? You can have some or all of the available "bells & whistles"....or not.
Something to consider when building your site is what set-up your viewers are going to be using. You may want to just keep it simple! This is especially true of artists online since graphic images are slower to load than text. The new-fangled gadgets are cool but they take forever to download on some machines.
You want to reach the most people as quickly and efficiently as possible. Sometimes, with all the new stuff on a Web site, it takes away from the art itself and leaves the viewer irritated and frustrated because they want to see your art but they keep getting notices that this or that plug-in is required or for some reason your pages will not load properly.
Take sound for instance. If background music is not an integral part of your work I would suggest not using it. Many times when I visit Web sites that have background sound I disable the sound as it's loading by clicking on stop as it says "importing movie". It's irritating to try to explore a site and have this creepy music going all the time and changing to different creepy music each time you change pages.
Background images: Unless you have some spectacular image that is very fast loading, I would avoid using background images.
Java: Many viewers out there are on different machines that handle Java in different ways. Many people involved in art are on Macintosh machines. Macs have trouble handling Java, especially Java-based Chat. If you want your site to be inclusive, I'd avoid Java except where it's necessary.
Thumbnails: Thumbnail images are a good idea. The viewer can get an idea of the look of a piece before having to download the full size version. The set-up I prefer to use is to make a small .gif image of the piece as a thumbnail and reference it to the full sized .jpg version. That way the thumbnail image is also a good image.
Page size: I've noticed more and more lately that I've been running across Web pages that will not fit on my screen. I see that a lot in Web sites in Europe and outside the USA. I do not want to have to scroll to the right, to the left, up, and down to see the page. Some of these oversized pages use frames also and some of the frames, especially the navigation frame on left side, do not have scroll bars so that it's impossible to see all the buttons in the frame. I would suggest programming your site so that it adjusts to whatever screen width the viewer may use. This is not possible in all cases but it can be done to accomodate a lot of different screen widths. Bigger is not always better...
And so, what boils down to is this:
If it is not an integral part of your work and is not really necessary to the presentation of your work, don't do it! Your viewers will thank you.
Just a thought...