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Site Review.. 10

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Wullie

Wullie

Programmer
Mar 17, 2001
3,674
0
36
GB
Hi all,

I've just completed yet another re-design of my site and am looking for any comments, good or bad.

There are a few things not yet in place, and a few problems that I already know of, I just want to see if anyone here finds anything else.

The site is a lot more basic that my previous one, but that was the whole point, I wanted something simple, fast loading, easy to naigate and maintain.


Thanks in advance, Wullie

sales@freshlookdesign.co.uk

The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change. The leader adjusts the sails. - John Maxwell
 
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Hi Wullie,

First impressions for now: IE6 1024*

1. Nice use of colours
2. The main header stands out well, looks good.
3. The left column with the links looks a little cramped, maybe it's that image above "Design area" pushing the links down that creates the effect. Would it be better to get those links higher? maybe remove that image?
4. The Who are We? header, would it need to stand out more?
5. Also, is it best to open your site with a question like that. Perhaps a better header might be something more descriptive, "Webhosting and Design Specialists" or something?
6. I like the use of space, but it's just that left col which looks a little off-balance.
7. And on the other pages the nav links are pushed further down by the home link.
8. I like the layout of the suport page, just need to center that line.
9. You have the same 3 questions on most of the pages. I'm not crazy about that idea. I always like a good relevant title, the visitor knows at a glance what page they are on.

Hope that helps, I tried to be harsh LOL
I think it's a definite improvement over the last site, much clearer and easier to read!


É

:: ::
 
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First of all, I think it's much better than it used to be. I just skimmed it quickly as I'm in a hurry, but I noticed a couple things:

1. In the portfolio page, it looks lopsided on the first and last pages. What about having a faded out version of the "previous" and "next" images on those pages?

2. The menu rollover images take a second to load and it makes it seem delayed. Could you not either preload the rollover images, make them transparent and change the background color, or embed the font (if that is the reason for using images) and use background colors instead?

Just a couple quick thoughts,

Rick
 
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I like it...good job, no wait, great job!! I have not failed; I have merely found 100,000 different ways of not succeding...
 
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Thanks guys,

Cian,

3) Not sure about this, I will leave this image for now and see how i goes.
4) Don't you think it stands out enough?
5) I am trying a new approach with my wording on the site.
6) Once again, see how it goes.
7) Unfortunatly, I need that link.. [wink]
8) The line should have been removed, it has now.
9) These are going to change, I have them there just now until I get round to it.

Ristmo

The next and previous links are one of the things that I am pretty stuck on, those were one of the last things added to the site, I am working on something to sort the layout.

As for the rollovers, those should have preloaded on the original page, unless you clicked skip. I am adding a preloader on each page, the one that is there is basically for testing purposes.

GUJUm0deL
[smile]



All

Thanks for all the comments, I really appreciate it.. Wullie

sales@freshlookdesign.co.uk

The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change. The leader adjusts the sails. - John Maxwell
 
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Hi Wullie,
The site looks great. I really can't see anything I found that I didn't like in it. I also like it more then the last.

as usual great work from the other side of the world. A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
admin@onpntwebdesigns.com
 
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Thanks mate, I appreaciate it.

Are any of you guys using dial-up? If so, how was the load time?

I am using cable and the server is local so the pages are lightning fast. I tried with dial-up but I have used cable so long that I can't remember how long pages used to take to load normally on dial-up.

If someone could test that, and also the preloader to make sure it works, then I will be eternally grateful. [smile]

Thanks everyone. Wullie

sales@freshlookdesign.co.uk

The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change. The leader adjusts the sails. - John Maxwell
 
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that was the one thing I forgot to say
I'm using dial up and I recieved the loading page but then when I was sent to the site I still had to wait for everything to load. (about 1.5 seconds) Thought it was kind of defeating the purpose of the please wait while loading. Also why have a skip link on a please wait loading page

also
IE 5.5 1024* looked very good

hope that helps A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
admin@onpntwebdesigns.com
 
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Hi mate,

Sorry, I should have mentioned, I changed the preloader that was there to begin with.

The bar no longer appears. That was just used until I got the actual preloader working ok.

The reason that it still took time to load was that the preloader only loaded the rollover images and not the others, it should hopefully work ok now.

Thanks, Wullie

sales@freshlookdesign.co.uk

The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change. The leader adjusts the sails. - John Maxwell
 
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Oh, and the skip link was on there because of browser problems, mozilla did not work and just showed a blank page.

Wullie

sales@freshlookdesign.co.uk

The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change. The leader adjusts the sails. - John Maxwell
 
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IE6 1024 Cable Modem:
Very very nice, clean design, good color scheme, nice layout, easy to understand. The only problem I have is that the images did take a little to load, even on cable, 6 seconds to complete download of all images. As you may have noticed from previous posts I am big on replacing link images with CSS text, in this case i think it would speed up not only the download but the display of your links, and you should be able to duplicate font and italics easily.
-Tarwn "If you eat a live toad first thing in the morning, nothing worse will happen all day long." - California saying
"To you or the toad" - Niven's restatement of California saying
"-well most of the time anyway..." - programmers caveat to Niven's restatement of California saying
(The Wiz Biz - Ri
 
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I'm on a "56K" dialup but my fastest connection I have gotten when I checked was 11K. It takes about 10 seconds for everything to load (sites with few images--google take about 3 seconds, others, with images--8-13). I didn't skip the preloader, but they still aren't all the way loaded. Today is a faster connection than usual and it took about .5 seconds for the rollover images. Faster than yesterday, but it's still seems "delayed".

Rick
 
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All of the sites that we design are clean looking, fast loading, unique, cross browser compatible and are suitable for any sized business, organisation and also individuals.

Correct spelling of organization on Website Design page.
 
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remember when I kept doing that wullie [lol]

I've learned to look up spelling for different parts of the world before correcting anything due to the wide variety of users on TT being in all parts of the world. A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
admin@onpntwebdesigns.com
 
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Onpnt

It is pretty annoying when I have to code web pages in a different way than I would normally write words.

You would not believe the amount of times I use colour and centre in my code and it takes ages for me to notice the problem.

Ristmo

Does the preloader work for you now? I really cannot see the problem with this. All the testing I have done, both on local and remote machines has worked ok.

Thanks guys,
Wullie

sales@freshlookdesign.co.uk

The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change. The leader adjusts the sails. - John Maxwell
 
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Guess what? I tried the page in Opera 6.03 today and it took 56 seconds with an average of 2.2Kbps. The good news is yet to come! The Rollovers don't work in Opera so it didn't take any extra time to load those!!! I couldn't stand designing for different browsers untill I switched to XHTML and started really minimizing my js. Anyway, in IE 6 (the one that doesn't brag about being the fastest on earth), it took 14 seconds to load, the rollovers work, but the preloading still isn't working. It still takes between 1/2 and 1 second for every image, everytime I rollover.

Rick
 
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Hi mate,

I know about Opera not showing the rollovers, that will be fixed soon. The reason for this is that I changed the code on some of the pages to overcome this rollover problem. Opera still see the original images so that is not really a big problem just now.

As for the load time on 56k, I can only put that down to your connection, no other machine running Opera has had this problem.

I am going to try a few other ways to preload the images, so if you don't mind will you try them out when I get a few sample pages up?

Thanks again,

Wullie

sales@freshlookdesign.co.uk

The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change. The leader adjusts the sails. - John Maxwell
 
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Sure. Testing is the easy part--It's only frustrating (for me) when it's my own site that won't work.

Rick
 
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