I’d be very glad to have comments on my new web site. I’ve been using Freeway for a few years but I’m not a pro web designer so any tips or tricks or reactions would be helpful. It’s:
www.thebestbits.org.uk
Thanks,
Donald
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On Mar 30, 2008, at 11:22 PM, Donald Bousted wrote:
comments on my new web site.
Trivial, but why no periods at the ends of full sentences?
The video of Whitsand Bay is very appealing. But for living in
southern California, knowing how much colder the water probably is,
and not playing golf, I would consider it a holiday destination.
Jim
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Sometime around 31/3/08 (at 02:22 -0400) Donald Bousted said:
aka http://www.thebestbits.org.uk
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Sometime around 31/3/08 (at 02:22 -0400) Donald Bousted said:
I’d be very glad to have comments on my new web site. I’ve been
using Freeway for a few years but I’m not a pro web designer so any
tips or tricks or reactions would be helpful.
Sure - my main comment is - why 100% graphic text? That will restrict
your search engine performance massively!
My second comment is that you’ve created something that’s well
controlled - but feels like a Filemaker database interface from the
1990s.
Browse around other sites, find one that you like, and have a go at
building a few pages of your own to match it. Just as an exercise, a
way to stretch your Freeway abilities. If you get stuck - well, we’re
here to help. 
Your site works, but I think you need some production challenges (no
graphic type except perhaps just for headlines) and design goals (an
existing layout to emulate and learn from).
k
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Hi Donald
Because it is not ‘slick’ in any contemporary sense as mentioned in other
recent threads - but has the first instances of ‘slick’ - it has an old
fashioned amateur look to me. As if you would have added further effects if
you’d known how.
I wonder if it would work as an understatement to release any special affect
You have gone for a muted look - but ‘best bits’ as a name suggests some
verve. The clips were sort of hidden in a back room - and I am not sure that
they played correctly as No2 about a game started with Whitsand Bay?
Its a tricky thing to feel out this sort of thing if it isn’t your normal
mode of expression - but I think it is well worth the journey.
That it works and is uncluttered and simple is good by my lights but it
could work for you a lot more than it does. So I would ask - does it express
anything about the feel of you and your work? Is it congruent with what a
prospective enquirer will meet if they engage you in any way?
I am not an authority about anything - I am just a bloke who dropped in and
shared my first impressions.
all the best
Brian
Donald Bousted said recently:
I’d be very glad to have comments on my new web site. I’ve been using Freeway
for a few years but I’m not a pro web designer so any tips or tricks or
reactions would be helpful. It’s:
www.thebestbits.org.uk
Thanks,
Donald
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The great thing with Freeway is that you don’t really have to stretch your imagination at all. The web is really all about content, but it must sit within a generally acceptable looking design.
If you see something you like out there in a site design it is a relatively easy thing to use that design to copy (!) the layout structure and use that as a template for your own site. This is documented somehwere in the Softpress help section I seem to recall but can be as easy as taking a screen shot of the page you like and using that as a template on a new page, having dialled down the transparency.
Designers are well versed in the intricacies of grid layout and can do it far better than the average man on the street or business owner. Why not harness that expertise?
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I am going to go on to say that although the freestyle work is what freeway handles extremely well, what it doesn’t handle well is really repetitive tasks which could be accomplished so easily by having sort of ‘drop in’ snippets for really ‘simple’ things. Reference my discussion about trying to get a simple html word to center within a box!!
There are some pluses and also some minuses here. Unfortunately as things stand an ‘easy’ thing to do can sometimes take hours.
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