# Bier Graphics



## Qion (Apr 15, 2007)

I've got a new site up, and I'd appreciate anybody who wants to help out a bit visting it for me! 

Any comments are welcome, as long as they've got some basis. 

web.mac.com/biergraphics


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## Ferdinand (Apr 15, 2007)

Very nice and modern website and REALLY good pictures!!


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## Qion (Apr 16, 2007)

Thanks for those very kind words; so far I've gotten positive feedback, so that at least tells me I don't have to do complicated flash animation in order to be visually appealing.


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## fryke (Apr 16, 2007)

You might want to replace the homepage's graphic with real text, though.


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## Ferdinand (Apr 16, 2007)

What d'you mean with that?


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## fryke (Apr 16, 2007)

The main page's text is all in a picture instead of actual text. Can't select any text there, for example. It's kinda wrong.


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## Qion (Apr 16, 2007)

That seems a bit pedantic to me. It's not hard to type out "Bier Graphics" or really anything in my write-up (why would you want to anyway?). Besides that, my email functions as text and hyperlink so I don't really see the issue.


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## fryke (Apr 16, 2007)

Well, then why use hypertext at all?  You could just use pictures for everything then. But that's not what the whole idea of the world wide web is about. All the text you have inside that picture, for example, is _not_ seen by Google or any other search engine, so the relevance of that page in any search engine will be quite low. There's no words to find on that page, see?

I understand that you want those nice effects on the type, but it's just not a good idea to have this much text inside a picture. Also, you're wasting a lot of bandwidth there. 134 KB for that "text". If that text actually was text, you wouldn't use 137'216 bytes, you'd probably use 500 bytes or something. I know, I know: Bandwidth's not an issue, right? It is, it always is. Look at how "pedantic" people feel about their favourite browsers loading pages in 0.2 or 0.1 seconds. Well: 134 KB for a tiny bit of text is _far_ too much.

Safari (and some other browsers) can have shadow-effects (or lighting effects) on type like you're using with simple CSS. Using almost _no_ bandwidth doing it! The type stays selectable and machine-readable, too.

From a web-coder's point of view, putting text into an image is simply a bad habit.


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## Qion (Apr 16, 2007)

fryke said:


> Well, then why use hypertext at all?  You could just use pictures for everything then. But that's not what the whole idea of the world wide web is about. All the text you have inside that picture, for example, is _not_ seen by Google or any other search engine, so the relevance of that page in any search engine will be quite low. There's no words to find on that page, see?
> 
> I understand that you want those nice effects on the type, but it's just not a good idea to have this much text inside a picture. Also, you're wasting a lot of bandwidth there. 134 KB for that "text". If that text actually was text, you wouldn't use 137'216 bytes, you'd probably use 500 bytes or something. I know, I know: Bandwidth's not an issue, right? It is, it always is. Look at how "pedantic" people feel about their favourite browsers loading pages in 0.2 or 0.1 seconds. Well: 134 KB for a tiny bit of text is _far_ too much.
> 
> ...



It was just inclusion. I was going to have the graphic background (the 134 KB) regardless of the text being embedded. You have a point with the search engines, though. I'll reconsider based on that.


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## fryke (Apr 16, 2007)

The background's size I didn't check, only the text-image's size: http://web.mac.com/biergraphics/iWeb/Site 2/Welcome_files/shapeimage_2.png - that alone is 134 KB.


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## Qion (Apr 16, 2007)

You win.


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## Mikuro (Apr 16, 2007)

I agree with Fryke on that point. But more importantly (from your perspective, I imagine), you can accomplish a similar visual effect using the text-shadow CSS property. Something like _text-shadow: #FFFFFF 0px 0px 4px;_ might be to your liking. Best of both worlds!

I am a big fan of user-centric web design. User-centric means giving the user control to view the content the way _they_ want it, and having it actually _work_  even if you, the designer, never imagined it being viewed that way. If the user wants to use a specific font, or text size, or blah blah blah, and the web site respects that, then that's user-centric, and it makes for happy users. That's why I recommend against things like text-as-graphics and absolute positioning. Absolute-positioned elements take a lot of power away from the user. I can't tell you how many sites are made illegible for me because their absolute-positioned elements don't play nice with my browser settings. (I like 18-point text. Is that so wrong?!)

Of course, I understand the need for creative control, especially when you're selling creative services. It's important to look good, but sometimes that comes at the cost of usability. There's no universal sweet-spot. Personally, I'd try to keep the presentation simple and let the content do the work. As a user, that's the kind of design that works on me. Especially when the content is as nice as yours!

On that note, I think an array of small samples on the main page would be a big plus. As it is, there's a lot of empty space next to that bullet list. The background is nice, but it's not going to make anyone ooh and aah like the stuff on the demo pages. A few images strewn about at various degrees of rotation might do the trick.


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## Qion (Apr 16, 2007)

Alright! Thanks Mikuro. 

I've updated the Welcome page. Now the text is actually text, and there are a couple rotated previews. I like clean designs, and putting previews on this front page was bad for my karma, but if "they" like it more than I then I come yet again to the graphic designer's clients' compromise.


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## Qion (Apr 23, 2007)

Do the dotmac pages not get scanned by Google? Why is the macosx.com result the only one with my website?


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## Ferdinand (Apr 23, 2007)

The text you chose is REALLY hard to read, totally squished together, maybe make it not bold?


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## Mikuro (Apr 24, 2007)

Qion said:


> Do the dotmac pages not get scanned by Google? Why is the macosx.com result the only one with my website?


There's no reason .mac pages shouldn't be indexed. Mine is (or was back in the day, anyway). For tips on improving search engine visibility, check out Google's FAQ.


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## Qion (Apr 24, 2007)

Ferdinand said:


> The text you chose is REALLY hard to read, totally squished together, maybe make it not bold?



It's fine on PC monitors, and I guess not so much on Mac monitors when using any type of font smoothing. I'll change it when I get back home.


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## Ryozo (May 23, 2007)

Qion...I'm do gonna kick your too-talented-at-graphic-art arse in chess at coffee tomorrow!!

(nice site, pen tool on crack usin' boy)


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