I would like to hear any opinions/thoughts about this work-in-progress test site please. It’s a bit of a departure from the sort of sites we normally produce, as in currently it consists of just 1 page! It views and loads okay on Safari on Mac but I don’t know if does the same in other browsers yet.
Are there amy fundamental flaws with creating it this way?
I like the scrolling panorama effect. Your text in left corner of photo doesn’t seem to relate to what you are showing as there is nothing in the image to click on. Also, I don’t know why i’m looking at a particular scene as it seems unrelated to the subject text buttons.
Thanks chuckamuck, that’s why it’s a work-in-progress, I didn’t want to put a load of work in with the content only to find that the great and the good on this site said ‘you can’t do that’. It’s an idea that doesn’t make sense at the moment but I’m going to build on.
I like the sample and hope you share it when the image and description are meshed up. Wondering what kind of graphic you would use; a panorama carousel?
Frank H.
On Jul 8, 2011, at 9:15 AM, chuckamuck wrote:
I like the scrolling panorama effect. Your text in left corner of photo doesn’t seem to relate to what you are showing as there is nothing in the image to click on. Also, I don’t know why i’m looking at a particular scene as it seems unrelated to the subject text buttons.
Will the content for this be all on one page or will there be individual pages?
If you set your monitor or browser viewport size to 1024x768, which typically most sites build 960-1000px wide, your navigation at the bottom is cut off. If that isn’t seen, do you think people will scroll and see half image and whole navigation? Will the effect have the same effect?
You might want to consider using actual HTML text for the navigation links so you gain in the SEO aspect of the site.
So, as I haven’t read any damning comments, I’m going to assume that the idea in essence is okay. I realise that their are parts of the ‘site’ that might be a little confusing at the moment, but that’s because it isn’t anything like finished.
Dan J,
There will be individual pages linked from this - I just haven’t put a great deal of thought into it yet.
Hmm, I’m going to have to think about that one. Admittedly, I’m working on a 27" screen so the site is pretty small in the middle of it. I’m also trying to create something that does look a little ‘different’ but functional at the same time - a little more thought is required I think!
My only concern with the html is how the buttons will rearrange if the text is zoomed - again, something for me to think about!
Can anybody see the small grey crescents around the curves on the tabs? I’m trying everything, but don’t seem to be able to get rid of them - any ideas?
Hi Neil,
Your tabs have white backgrounds and the rounded corners are being anti-aliased against what appears to be a grey colour which is giving the tabs a few grey pixels around the edges.
You can see one of the tabs here; http://thinktankcd.com/Test/TTtempsite/Resources/item19b1b.gif
There are several ways to avoid this as far as I can see;
The normal state tabs (not the rollover ones) don’t need to have rounded corners as they are white against a white page colour. If you make the tabs have square corners the anti-aliasing will be removed.
Choose to anti-alias the tabs against white rather than the grey you have at present.
Change the image format of the tabs from GIF to PNG with millions of colours. This will give the rounded corners smooth blends between white and transparency.
Regards,
Tim.
On 13 Jul 2011, at 11:16, neil.west1 wrote:
Can anybody see the small grey crescents around the curves on the tabs? I’m trying everything, but don’t seem to be able to get rid of them - any ideas?
I’ve modified the design and uploaded it again, but now things aren’t working quite as I expected them to!
When you click on the ‘graphic design’ tab 4 items fade in using show/hide layer and the background image scrolls across using carousel. The problem is that 3 of the items fading in are scripty lightbox images, and they appear to have disabled the carousel action. Is this because they are incompatible actions or because I’ve got them overlapping?
Okay, revised again, can someone tell me why my fade durations are all the same even though they range from 1 to 10 seconds i.e. when you click on a link, the items that appear should fade in at different rates. (I only set a couple at 10 seconds to see if I could see a difference, they will all be set between 1 and 3 seconds)
Okay, other than meta tags etc, the site is finished. Can anybody spot anything that doesn’t appear to be quite right before I upload it into it’s final destination.
Hi Neil,
Overall I think the site is great and works really well. A couple of things caught my eye however;
The overall size of the site is very large (mainly down to the single page layout and use of PNGs). Consider further compressing your images as far as you dare using tools like ImageOptim (http://pornel.net/imageoptim/en).
Normally I wouldn’t recommend setting Freeway’s output to more efficient (File > Document Setup > Output > HTML Code) but your site is going to be large whatever we do so try and save a few bytes here by compressing the code down.
You may want to experiment using the Externalize Action (http://www.freewayactions.com/test/externalize/) as it will slim down the inline code and optionally compress both the styles and any JavaScript. You may find that using the Action on a single page site like this actually increases the time for the page to load as the browser will have to load multiple files from the server. Do your own testing and see where the Action gets you.
The current page title is set to ‘home’ and could really do with being more descriptive.
I would encourage you to show your contact details (or at least a phone number) all of the time and especially on the home page/section. The phone icon could easily be missed.
Okay, other than meta tags etc, the site is finished. Can anybody spot anything that doesn’t appear to be quite right before I upload it into it’s final destination.
Thanks Tim, that’s a fairly comprehensive list of things that I now need to look into. I realise that the size of the site is going to be a bit of a problem but, as you say, if there are any areas that I can crop a bit, it can only make it better.
I just hope with time I can be that creative…
I’ll have to leave the critique for the pros.
wow!
Frank H.
On Sep 13, 2011, at 4:48 AM, neil.west1 wrote:
Okay, other than meta tags etc, the site is finished. Can anybody spot anything that doesn’t appear to be quite right before I upload it into it’s final destination.