[IBC] OT:Evergreen's site, was In need of bonsai trees/supplies

At 09:53 AM 12/2/03 -0500, Craig wrote:
> Pat Patterson wrote:
>
> > G'day all,
> >
> > RE: "...www.evergreengadenworks.com... their website is old and
> unappealing..."
> >
> > I find that the information on the evergreen websight is
> great...pictures and
> > other bells and whistles would be nice, but, keep in mind that Brent has a
> > nursery tend.
>
> I'm with Pat.  I feel that Brent's site is probably the most informative
> site on
> bonsai in terms of information.  No, it doesn't have flying toasters and
> dancing
> bears to entertain the viewer, but that isn't necessary.  There are plenty of
> glitzy websites which are all image and no substance.

Folks

I usually don't respond to this type of post, but I would like to say
thanks to my defenders and to explain my philosophy about website design.

There's no doubt about it. My site is primitive. The basic design of the
home page is exactly the same as I designed it when I went online in '96.
No, there aren't any dancing gifs, banner ads, or frames, but it loads in a
fraction of a second on even the slowest of dialups (like mine). Living in
the country and watching pages load at 1 to 2 KB per second on average,
teaches you things about website design. I have waited a minute or more for
a gif to load just so I could push the image button to go somewhere else in
a site. I typically have to wait a full minute for any homepage to load.
Yes, they are pretty, but 95% of the time I just want information while
surfing, not eye candy.

Then there is the stuff that just doesn't work. Memorable are the screams
of the spouse when a site loses her order, can't process her credit card,
or can't get there from here. At Evergreen you have to write things down so
you can fill out an order. My God! how tough the world is this days. How
did we ever get along with paper catalogs.

Where it is necessary, I use some of the best techniques available. Just go
to the image page and look at how fast the thumbnails load and the quality
of the photographs. When graphics are the point of the page, I spare no
effort in bringing you the best I can. Otherwise, I could care less if you
read text in a gif box to make it look a certain way. I will just present
plain text and let your browser interpret it the way YOU want to see it.

I have had several people offer me help on the website, some even for free.
I appreciate those offers, it comes from people who care, but I just don't
see that the product is really better than what is already there. On the
other hand, I get plenty of compliments from folks on how easy the site is
to navigate. So, until nearly the whole world is high speed, including me,
it will pretty much stay the same, except to get better and better from an
informational standpoint.

Enough said please, back to bonsai.


Brent in Northern California
Evergreen Gardenworks   USDA Zone 8     Sunset Zone 14
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.EvergreenGardenworks.com

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