A Message from the Webmaster
Hello! Welcome to Joan's new site. Over 10 years, I've
come to respect her artistic integrity and enjoy her
personal qualities: warmth, insight, humor, compassion.
I've tried to build a web site that reflects her sensibilities. For example, we agreed we didn't want to be pushy about sales. So the site offers Joan's fine products with a low-key approach.
Please let me know if you encounter any issues that might help me improve your visit here. Thanks.
- Rafael Olivas, November 2007
I've tried to build a web site that reflects her sensibilities. For example, we agreed we didn't want to be pushy about sales. So the site offers Joan's fine products with a low-key approach.
Please let me know if you encounter any issues that might help me improve your visit here. Thanks.
- Rafael Olivas, November 2007
I recommend the browsers shown at right. You'll notice
that Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) is not among
them. I cannot in good conscience recommend IE because
of that browser's lack of respect for web standards.
This site is built to standards that all other major
browsers respect.
This is not a mere technicality. IE is notorious
for breaking page layouts, poor image presentation, and
forcing designers to adopt "hacks" to overcome its
rough handling. A site that seeks to present artwork
professionally can be thwarted by such non-standard
behavior. I encountered several such frustrations when
testing this site under IE. This site, like so many
others, employs compensating workarounds to address
IE's unruly behavior.
I will refrain from technical explanations or discussing corporate intrigue. Suffice it to say that much digital ink has been spilled in recent years on this subject. Many, if not most, web designers are dismayed by Microsoft's apparent unwillingness to adopt web standards.
The alternatives are better. Please consider them. Thanks.
I will refrain from technical explanations or discussing corporate intrigue. Suffice it to say that much digital ink has been spilled in recent years on this subject. Many, if not most, web designers are dismayed by Microsoft's apparent unwillingness to adopt web standards.
The alternatives are better. Please consider them. Thanks.
Suffering from Tiny Text?
A handful of visitors mentioned that text in this site seems too small. Even after some adjustments were made, at least one visitor continued to experience an issue with small text. One possible resolution is to increase your browser's viewing preferences. For example, in IE6, select the View menu, and then select "larger."
This site uses conventional text sizing. Body text is set to "normal" or a small step up or a small step down in size. (For techies: for example, main body is set for 1.0 em, sidebar text for 0.9 em, and price info in the purchase pages to 0.9 em.)
However, my own testing under IE6 showed that when browser preferences are set to ignore style sheets that some text, especially artwork descriptions in the album pages were ridiculously small. This seemed to be the case even when the View menu was set to "medium."
I suspect that some users with poor eyesight might be setting their browser preferences to ignore style sheets. If so, then this problem will exist in many web sites, not just this one. The solution is to restore the default settings (that is, to use web page style sheets), and then to only use the View menu to make text larger or smaller on an as needed basis.
If you are using IE6 and encounter this problem, chances are it's affecting your web experience elsewhere, too. That's just one more reason to switch to a better browser!