Ted Spencer's studio website is up!

Archived from groups: rec.audio.pro (More info?)

<prestokid@aol.com> wrote:
>
> [...] and please let me know what you think!



Okay, but remember, you asked for it! I'm gonna be as brutally frank
with you as I'd want you to be with me. Hopefully you'll return the
favour if/when I ever finish mine!

I like it. The appearance is good and so is most of the content. I was
able to find my way around easily.

I like the discussion of your clients, but it was pretty long. More
summary, less detail. More discussion of YOUR role though. This site
is about what you can offer potential clients.

To that end, I'd suggest that you make one of your links "What I can do
for you." If I'm looking for someone to record my band, I want to know
right away if you or your facility do that kind of work. Or if I need
someone to design sound effects for my low-budget epic, should I be
contacting you?

A couple other random suggestions, take 'em for whatever they're worth
(or leave 'em altogether):

Lose the line on the opening page about how you designed and created the
web site. I know you're proud of it, but it dilutes your message. Lots
of people design their own web sites. So what? What does that have to
do with your recording studio?

Make the buttons in your "personal" section match the ones elsewhere on
the site. Don't mix design styles. It looks scattered and borders on
amateurish (like the posters on the supermarket bulletin board with
seven different typefaces).

Finally, some of the pages have a LOT of content. Maybe take a page (no
pun intended) out of Digidesign's book. Look at their "Hot News" page.
Make each item a two-sentence description with a link for more details.
That way I can quickly scan the page and get an idea what you've been up
to without having to sift through several paragraphs. If something
catches my attention, I click the link and read more.

Congratulations! You did at least on thing better than almost everyone
I know... you FINISHED IT! Mine has been "coming soon..." for over a
year. Good for you! Nice job.

--
"It CAN'T be too loud... some of the red lights aren't even on yet!"
- Lorin David Schultz
in the control room
making even bad news sound good

(Remove spamblock to reply)

Archived from groups: rec.audio.pro (More info?)

Thanks very much for your comments. I'll answer a few points here, but
later I'll review the site and consider them more fully.

<<Okay, but remember, you asked for it! I'm gonna be as brutally frank

with you as I'd want you to be with me. Hopefully you'll return the
favour if/when I ever finish mine!

I like it. The appearance is good and so is most of the content. I
was
able to find my way around easily.


I like the discussion of your clients, but it was pretty long. More
summary, less detail. More discussion of YOUR role though. This site
is about what you can offer potential clients.


To that end, I'd suggest that you make one of your links "What I can do

for you." If I'm looking for someone to record my band, I want to know

right away if you or your facility do that kind of work. Or if I need
someone to design sound effects for my low-budget epic, should I be
contacting you? >>

A good thought for sure, but the range of possibilties is so wide that
it's perhaps better left to an in person discussion about a specific
project. To use your examples, yes I can record your band, but possibly
best as a freelancer, engineering at least the basic tracks for the
sessions for you in a larger studio, since my space is fairly limited
(this notion is referred in the site in a number of places), then
overdubbing and mixing at my studio would follow. As to the "sound
effects for my low-budget epic", it depends on what "low budget" means,
and the nature of the sound design work itself. I certainly have the
skill set to do the work, and have done it in the past. I guess my
response is that almost all general questions of this type would be
answered "yes", at least conditionally.


<<A couple other random suggestions, take 'em for whatever they're
worth
(or leave 'em altogether):


Lose the line on the opening page about how you designed and created
the
web site. I know you're proud of it, but it dilutes your message.
Lots
of people design their own web sites. So what? What does that have to

do with your recording studio?>>

It's relevant if someone likes the site design enough to ask me to help
design theirs. This has already been brought up by some people.


<<Make the buttons in your "personal" section match the ones elsewhere
on
the site. Don't mix design styles. It looks scattered and borders on
amateurish (like the posters on the supermarket bulletin board with
seven different typefaces).>>

I tried, but found it wasn't possible with the software I used
(NetObject Fusion8). There was no way I could find to overlay buttons,
text and hotspots (all in the same place) on top of a photo properly. I
had to create the entire thing aside from hotspots in Photoshop and
import it as an image, then overlay just the hotspots. I was unable to
create anything in Photoshop that closely resembles the button look
(which came from a prerendered template set in Fusion), so I decided to
take an entirely different approach graphically. The "wood" buttons
were a stock item in Photoshop, and were relatively easy to add to the
image. Having a different look for what was more or less an "off topic"
page seemed excusable, although I fully see your point about
consistency. I would have preferred to do it the way you suggest, and
treid pretty hard to before giving up.


<Finally, some of the pages have a LOT of content. Maybe take a page
(no
pun intended) out of Digidesign's book. Look at their "Hot News" page.

Make each item a two-sentence description with a link for more details.

That way I can quickly scan the page and get an idea what you've been
up
to without having to sift through several paragraphs. If something
catches my attention, I click the link and read more.>>

I'll consider that. The site is already pretty big - about 30+ pages. I
was conscious of trying not to make it too labyrinthine. Good comment
though.


<<Congratulations! You did at least on thing better than almost
everyone
I know... you FINISHED IT! Mine has been "coming soon..." for over a
year. Good for you! Nice job.>>


--
"It CAN'T be too loud... some of the red lights aren't even on yet!"
- Lorin David Schultz >>

Thanks again Lorin, much appreciated.

Ted Spencer, NYC
www.tedspencerrecording.com

Archived from groups: rec.audio.pro (More info?)

<<Great site Ted,

One minor comment - you could make the "alt" text for your images
something
useful, funny, or interesting, rather than just the code for the name
of the
image. Or else turn it off, because "CRflmprjTN03" etc is meaningless
for
the viewer of your site. >>

Thanks Geoff, I'll look into that.

Ted Spencer, NYC
www.tedspencerrecording.com

Archived from groups: rec.audio.pro (More info?)

"Geoff Duncan" <nacnud@paradise.net.nz> writes:

>One minor comment - you could make the "alt" text for your images something
>useful, funny, or interesting, rather than just the code for the name of the
>image. Or else turn it off, because "CRflmprjTN03" etc is meaningless for
>the viewer of your site.

I thought the the "proper" way to do the popup msgs in more recent
HTML versions was to use the TITLE attribute, not the ALT.

Ted, with my browser (Mozilla 1.7.7) the text is overlaying the
borders and images (eg. the "Located on Manhatten" text is partially
over the image and partially outside of the border, beginning with
"seesions on a freelance". Makes it difficult to read. Of course
maybe it's something about my browser config since no one else
mentioned it.

Archived from groups: rec.audio.pro (More info?)

On Fri, 05 Aug 2005 13:51:25 +0000, georgeh wrote:

> Ted, with my browser (Mozilla 1.7.7) the text is overlaying the borders
> and images (eg. the "Located on Manhatten" text is partially over the
> image and partially outside of the border, beginning with "seesions on a
> freelance". Makes it difficult to read. Of course maybe it's something
> about my browser config since no one else mentioned it.

In Mozilla 1.4.3 and in Firefox, the "Ted" is outside the upper box. I
assumed that was intentional. The text in the two blue boxes looks fine
at the default browser settings, but if I increase the text size, It does
overrun the box. I've not used NetObjects Fusion8, but most html
generators are bad to generate non-standard html that tends to display
better on their native OS/Browser than on others. Which is why you need
the "Best viewed on..." disclaimer.

Archived from groups: rec.audio.pro (More info?)

"Agent 86" <maxwellsmart@control.gov> wrote in message
newsan.2005.08.05.15.13.52.54659@control.gov...
> On Fri, 05 Aug 2005 13:51:25 +0000, georgeh wrote:
>
> > Ted, with my browser (Mozilla 1.7.7) the text is overlaying the borders
> > and images (eg. the "Located on Manhatten" text is partially over the
> > image and partially outside of the border, beginning with "seesions on a
> > freelance". Makes it difficult to read. Of course maybe it's something
> > about my browser config since no one else mentioned it.
>
> In Mozilla 1.4.3 and in Firefox, the "Ted" is outside the upper box. I
> assumed that was intentional. The text in the two blue boxes looks fine
> at the default browser settings, but if I increase the text size, It does
> overrun the box. I've not used NetObjects Fusion8, but most html
> generators are bad to generate non-standard html that tends to display
> better on their native OS/Browser than on others. Which is why you need
> the "Best viewed on..." disclaimer.
>

The 'Ted' is outside the box on IE, Mozilla, and Firefox, and I'd suggest
that's a design issue that some find distracting.

While the overlays and submenus work in the newest Mozilla client, they do
not seem to work in Firefox 1.0. Can someone else verify this?

jb

Archived from groups: rec.audio.pro (More info?)

On Fri, 05 Aug 2005 14:09:59 -0400, reddred wrote:

> The 'Ted' is outside the box on IE, Mozilla, and Firefox, and I'd suggest
> that's a design issue that some find distracting.

It's a symptom of the html <layer> tags. The text is not actually
"connected" to the background elements it appears to sit upon. You can
see this if you change your browser's text size settings. Go both smaller
& larger & look at how the text changes but the boxes don't. I agree it's
a design issue, but I doubt it was intentionally designed that way. It
really looks more like the way a GUI based html authoring tool would
generate html. That's one of the reasons I don't particularly care for
code generators in general.

> While the overlays and submenus work in the newest Mozilla client, they do
> not seem to work in Firefox 1.0. Can someone else verify this?

Everything seems to work in Firefox 1.0 for me. That's on Fedora Linux. It
may be different on Windows.

Archived from groups: rec.audio.pro (More info?)

"Agent 86" <maxwellsmart@control.gov> wrote in message
newsan.2005.08.05.19.58.08.946777@control.gov...
> On Fri, 05 Aug 2005 14:09:59 -0400, reddred wrote:
>
> > The 'Ted' is outside the box on IE, Mozilla, and Firefox, and I'd
suggest
> > that's a design issue that some find distracting.
>
> It's a symptom of the html <layer> tags. The text is not actually
> "connected" to the background elements it appears to sit upon. You can
> see this if you change your browser's text size settings. Go both smaller
> & larger & look at how the text changes but the boxes don't. I agree it's
> a design issue, but I doubt it was intentionally designed that way. It
> really looks more like the way a GUI based html authoring tool would
> generate html. That's one of the reasons I don't particularly care for
> code generators in general.
>

Netobjects occasionally makes 'mistakes' but is by and larger very good, and
I assume it's a design issue because of the way the text is postioned in
relation to the 'Home_NBanner.GIF' layer. If the text were further right, it
would interfere with that .gif.

> > While the overlays and submenus work in the newest Mozilla client, they
do
> > not seem to work in Firefox 1.0. Can someone else verify this?
>
> Everything seems to work in Firefox 1.0 for me. That's on Fedora Linux. It
> may be different on Windows.
>

No, it's fine, I just forgot that I have Javascript turned off in Firefox.
Sorry, Ted.

jb

Archived from groups: rec.audio.pro (More info?)

<<I see a lot of CRT screens there, and the one on the extreme right,
next to the big tape machine, looks a little worrisome. I'd be afraid
the CRT could cause some partial erasure of a tape.
I'd feel more comfortable if it were somewhere else >>

Make no mistake about it, I worried about that too, but tested it very
extensively for many hours of exposure and found no ill effects. In
initial testing I parked a 2" tape, mid-reel, in one spot all day (with
the machine turned on), and left the monitor on as well. At the end of
the day no evidence of magnetic interference with the tape could be
detected. No thumps, dulling or any other field artifacts were evident.
It's been located like that for several years now, and never caused any
problems. Believe me, I was very, very vigilant about it until I proved
it to be of no concern. It appears that monitors' magnetic fields are
highly directional, and this one evidently isn't projecting in that
direction.

Ted Spencer, NYC
www.tedspencerrecording.com

Archived from groups: rec.audio.pro (More info?)

prestokid@aol.com wrote:

> Was the rest of it visible after scrolling? What resolution was your
> screen set to? If it was less that 1024x768 then it would make sense. I
> decided to optimize it for that resolution (or higher), and put a
> warning on the home page concerning that.


No. Less than 1024x768. Like I said, my next computer (with a 20"
screen) will allow for these "new millenium" web sites.

Best of luck to you, and say Hi to Courtney.


Don

Archived from groups: rec.audio.pro (More info?)

"georgeh" <georgeh@gjhsun.cl.msu.edu> wrote in message
newscvqst$qht$1@news.msu.edu...
> "Geoff Duncan" <nacnud@paradise.net.nz> writes:
>
>>One minor comment - you could make the "alt" text for your images
>>something
>>useful, funny, or interesting, rather than just the code for the name of
>>the
>>image. Or else turn it off, because "CRflmprjTN03" etc is meaningless for
>>the viewer of your site.
>
> I thought the the "proper" way to do the popup msgs in more recent
> HTML versions was to use the TITLE attribute, not the ALT.
>
>

Cool, the point being to put useful info in there, rather than meaningless
labels and suchlike

cheers

Geoff