I’m building a webpage for our school’s Morris Dancing team, and would welcome your input. I’ve deliberately kept it very simple, so it can be viewed even by older browsers (I started to say “I made it with no bells and whistles,” but my husband pointed out that it has LOTS of bells, and at least one whistle!). Particularly, if you know of any Morris or music links that I should add, please let me know!
I figure this is only slightly off topic, as I play the whistle for the group and, of course, put Chiff & Fipple on the “links” page
The only change I would recommend is where you have yellow links on a white background. Could be a bit tough to see. The yellow on blue to the left works, though.
I’m concerned about that too. I like the yellow against the blue, but it is a bit hard against the white. I wonder if I can change the link colors only for the white cells? If not, I can probably flop the colors, making the background white and the text cells light blue. I’m trying to stick as much as possible with Sea Horse’s team colors (blue, white and gold).
Great Website. I never heard that side of the history. I have heard that it is an archaic fertility dance (like a male side of Maypole dancing), but not the Moor aspect. You might want to get a close up of someone for the “kit” page, and maybe even pictures of kits from other teams so people can get a better idea.
I assume you have an adult team in the area as well? Were you at the Kansas ale this past Memorial Day? The team I used to dance with in Minnesota went down. We also just started a kids team in Minneapolis last year. Which I thought was odd with my misinformed “fertility theory”, but it makes more sense now.
Your fertility theory isn’t at all misinformed…it’s one of the two major theories (I used the language “springtime ritual to bless the land” because that’s a large part of what the “fertility” thing was all about, and I figured it would be less alarming to parents ). My guess, from my reading, is that it’s probably a combination of both…perhaps an ancient Celtic or even older pagan ritual got itself combined with sword dances (certainly some of the dances have a “sword dance” feel to them…the one the kids do to “South Australia” is a prime example. Some of the dances the adult teams do have a slightly risque element that supports the “fertility” idea).
Yes, we do have an adult team locally: Seabright Morris and Sword. Our teacher is a member, and got the idea for the kids team because so many of Seabright’s members kids wanted to dance too (the “our story” page tells that tale). Seabright did go to the Midwest Ale, but the Sea Horse hadn’t been formed yet, so the only Sea Horse kid that went was the instructor’s daughter. I’d love to join them, but my choir rehearses on the same night they have their practice, so unless and until one or the other changes nights, I’ll have to stick to playing whistle for Sea Horse.
These yellow links against white background aren’t too legible.
Why don’t you use instead a deeper orange, like the one in the middle of your sea horsie? This way you can preserve this contrast you like against blue, and oppose it even better to the green of previously seen links.
I like the choice of main font. However, on home, the caption of the pics is bigger, easier to read than the text. Should be reverse. Try a “classic” serif font in italic (f.i. Garamond italic) one size lower, or why not dare a Script like NuptialScript which is naturally both slanted and smaller, and fits Morris spirit well?
Great website, Redwolf, and obviously a terrific team of young dancers too. I wish, I wasn’t that far off on the other side of the globe, otherwise I’d come along sometimes with my pipe and tabor to join the fun.
I agree about the yellow, but I think Zub’s correct about orange – I’ll bet that would look good against both backgrounds. I mgiht leave “visited links” orange too – the green against blue is difficult for me to read.
Overall, I like the site. It really doesn’t look like you were designing for older browsers – I would not have particularly thought that if you hadn’t said it. One thing I don’t like is having the top of the screen taken up by something so large, but that I only look at one time. It forces me to scroll down every screen to see the good stuff!
I really like the site! In fact it’s under my “Favorites” on my computer now. I have always wondered what Morris dancing was about!
After scanning the tune list I was surprised to see many tunes that I know. I’m way too busy gigging with my band on the weekends to get involved performing something else, but would love to jam with you guys sometime at one of your practices! (I can add English concertina, Boehm flute, guitar, ocarina, and of course pennywhistle…)
VERY COOL WEB-SITE!!!
Thanks for posting it!
p.s. I did get ‘Syntax error’ messages, when I switched between pages, but everything seemed to download okay…
Edited to correct the type of error message I was getting.
Glad you like it Currently, I’m the only musician for Sea Horse…the other musicians in the photos play for Seabright (and happened to be playing in those shots because Sea Horse was doing a mass dance with the other teams, which gave me time to get in a few shots with the old digital). I keep hoping we’ll find some other people to play…we had a recorder player for a while, but her child decided not to dance anymore, so she dropped out.
I’m going to tinker a bit with the link colors and caption text tonight, or perhaps tomorrow morning. I may tinker with the banner some next week, when my daughter’s at camp…that one’s dependent on resizing the image (no problem…just fiddly). Thanks for all the input, folks…it’s really helpful (been a few years since I built my last webpage, so I need all the input I can get).
Redwolf have you checked out Claus site. He didnt mention it but it is a very interesting site. I guess Ill have to learn more about this stuff. Claus had a clip of a hymn they do a while back (I think it was Easter time) that realy got under my skin. There realy is something of the “green man” core music which stirs some anciant cells. Good luck with your site, it looks good to me.
