There must be _some_ useful way to organize them into groups - by
year, by theme, whatever. The artist might have an opinion on this.
Because of the way the human mind works. Too many images is just too
much. You want to get an idea of the available images, and a dozen,
or half a dozen, well-selected images should give that. Then, if
there is still interest, one might want to look at more images, say a
dozen at a time, or maybe twenty, then proceed to the next bunch.
That's how people normally present images - or, actually, we often
present them in a linear manner, one at a time, as in a slide show.
Thumnails are often a good idea, but too many thumbnails is just too
much.
What you describe is a typical gallery-page site, and that's fine but
after a while they get to be boring. The Internet (-and everything)
must progress so I offer a new alternate to page-after-staid-page of
redoubtable thumbnails. If someone is searching for a particular
image, it's more efficient to look on a single page with many pics
rather than several pages with few. Also, one can scan-and-scroll to
get a more comprehensive view of the artist's style than would be
rendered by a single "representative" page. If certain people of the
past hadn't taken that fresh, daring step, we'd still have horses,
outhouses, and braless women as the primary available means for doing
what they respectively do. I wish to reach out, to "boldly go where no
man has gone before", and in the process, new and better means for
utilizing The Web will arise!
That's something to be ashamed of, not proud. The page completely
fails to work, with the silly text "Javascript required". (Required
for what? If I have Javascript turned off, then I, or whoever turned
it off, must be assumed to have a good reason. It is foolish to
expect me to turn Javascript on just because some page says
"Javascript required", without giving the slightest hint of the
content or functionality that might become available.
The choice is between a 7k page with j/s or a 50-60k page (or more)
without. AFAIC, paranoid people can go elsewhere. However, your point
about "preliminary information" is worthy.
The sensible approach is to include, say, a dozen images in the
normal way on the first page and maybe, just maybe, some Javascript
code that pre-loads the other images to browser cache while the user
is looking at the first bunch.
Sensible, yes. Optimal, no. The technology is here; let's use it to
the fullest.
