Or use a contact form. It eliminates the spambot harvesting problem, and also has the advantage of gathering specific information so you have what you need to respond appropriately from the get-go, instead of writing back with a bunch of questions first.
I don’t know what your skill level is for programming, but there are canned PHP (and I’m sure other languages) form handlers out there. Or you could just use something like http://response-o-matic.com/.
My PHP skills are minimal, but I nabbed a form-handler from a predecessor at a job of mine a while back, and was able to adapt it fairly easily. I was able to find a fairly decent Javascript form validator, too. If you’re interested in either of those, just let me know.
Thanks for the feedback; major changes will be forthcoming tonight…
Little Nemo, what browser are you using, and what resolution is your monitor? That’s the first time I’ve heard of a problem like that.
I think I will switch to a contact form.
I’m thinking that I might drop the rights duration information from the page; it’s easier to explain in an email if someone requests usage rights anyway. But pretty much at the end of the three years rights expire and a user can either renew the usage rights agreement for an additional fee or they can cease using the image.
jjimm, thanks, I’ll rework those images and table.
Netscape 7.2 and 1024x768. Yes, I know, Netscape’s an orphan program now. But it was a standard browser as recently as five years ago so I’m sure I’m not the only person still using it.
Wow, as a full-time web developer I’d say don’t bother trying to support Netscape 7. You’re quite possibly the only person in the entire world using it, Little Nemo. Netscape isn’t just an orphan, it is dead as of December 28th 2007. The W3 doesn’t even list it on its browser stats anymore, which means its usage is somewhere less than 1%. Don’t you have problems browsing a lot of sites, Nemo? Wow, I am simply shocked…
I don’t even support IE6 anymore, and they’ve still “officially” got 17% of the market share.
Maybe your browser picked up Outlook as the default helper app mimetype before you installed Thunderbird, and never updated itself according to your system.
Try clicking another mailto and see what happens: test@test.com
Whatever happened, it isn’t Cuckoorex’s coding that’s causing the problem.
As I pointed out before, Netscape 7.2 was released in August 2004. It’s not some ancient program from the dawn of the computer age. There’s something wrong with an industry that considers the use of a five year old product shocking.
Hmm. These products are free. Each of the major browser releases multiple minor updates every few months, and a new major version every 1-2 years. Now most people have broadband, you can download or update them in a matter of seconds. Plus, the Mozilla engine of Netscape has found its home in other, more user-friendly, and constantly improved browsers. There’s nothing “wrong” with that, IMO.
Due to this reason, yes, a product from 2004 is pretty ancient in Web terms - the Web grows and evolves and changes, and often pretty quickly.
FYI I just checked the stats for the commercial sites I run.
Netscape share of visitors for the past month (all versions - actually all 7.2):
UK: 0.01% - or 2 visits out of more than 23,000.
US site1: 0.07% - or 3 visits out of more than 4,000.
US site2: 0% - or 0 visits out of more than 1,000.
5 visits out of nearly 29,000. Sorry dude, but there’s no way I’m going to bother wasting valuable resources making sure my sites are compatible with something with that level of usage. Your opinion about its longevity is yours to hold, but if you persist in using something that the vast majority of people consider outmoded technology, be prepared to be disappointed that people like me don’t care that you do.
When you’re selling your products do you tell your customers that everything they’re buying today will be useless within five years and they’ll have to buy completely new products?
If you could get a new car every two years delivered straight to your driveway, and free servicing on a monthly basis, would you stick to your 2004 model for which [stretching the metaphor here] all the mechanics had retired? [Stretching it almost to breaking point] particularly if the roads kept changing, and your jalopy wasn’t necessarily compatible with how they’d changed…
I know what you are trying to do with the typewriter font, but I hate it. Simple is good, but for art you need to go with “simple and striking” not “simple and ugly.” I also don’t like the white boxes around the picture navigation stuff, and the email button sucks.
Overall, I’m not too impressed. It looks like a decent website, but as an artist you’ve got to do better than that. You have to do something at least a little bit slick. I suggest you take a look at various artist’s websites, figure out what you like, and then rip them off.
But metaphorically speaking, the roads don’t just spontaneously change. The roads are constantly being rebuilt by automakers who then insist you need their new car to drive on them. My car/browser didn’t become obsolete by some naturally occurring process; it was rendered obsolete by conscious planning.
And the cost of replacement is there. Nobody’s really giving anything away for free. The sellers have just figured out ways to make the upfront price be free and hide the real price somewhere else. Which requires the potential customer to not just compare the prices but to find where they’re hidden.
Besides, maybe I just like my old browser/car. I’ve learned how to operate it and I know where all the features are and how to access them. Learning new programs may be an amusing hobby for some people but why do they insist that the rest of us have to join them in it?
I think you may be reading some sort of conspiracy theory into things here. It’s not that someone’s consciously planning on making your browser obsolete so they can charge you some mysterious hidden fees (and where are these supposed fees? I haven’t paid a single cent for a browser or any of the plug-ins I use…ever!) so much as developers are finding new ways to utilize the web for interactive experience. Plus, newer browsers have additional security features that older browsers are incapable of utilizing. If anything, I would be worried about my security using an older browser. And hey, I am a former Netscape user myself, I liked it, but it’s gone. No one can really force you to change, of course, but you shouldn’t be surprised if no one is waiting for you to catch up, either.
I’m not saying it’s a conspiracy - I think it’s more of a mindset. Computer programs are after all written by computer programmers. They work in the business. They want to have the very latest features and enjoy tinkering with their software. To use the car metaphor, they’re the guys that are constantly out in their garage, tinkering with the motor to get a little more speed out of it.
But for a lot of us, a car or a computer is just a tool to do a job. We want something that does the job simply without worrying about whether it has a bunch of features we’re not really interested in. And we want it to work reliably and invisibly without us having to put any work in to it. We don’t enjoy working under the hood.
Not to draw this car metaphor out much longer, but cars today require LESS tinkering under the hood to run properly. Same thing with browsers. Much more is automated or done for the user behind the scenes than was done before. You don’t have to tinker with ANYTHING on most browsers other than decided whether you want a pop-up blocker active or not. That’s it!
I’d also suggest adding a “Contact” button to your left-side nav menu, just so it’s easy to find. It’d be functionally identical to the About the Artist button, obviously, but if I"m looking for a contact page, “About the Artist” wouldn’t be my first guess. It also provides a means of going directly to the contact page from whichever page they happen to be looking at, rather than having to click around for it. You want it to be falling-off-a-log easy for people to get in touch with you, otherwise those who are even slightly lazy won’t bother.