Hey folks,
I am just wrapping up a website. This is my second one using freeway, and its been great. I’m looking for some feedback on the site, any and all kinds. I’m a relative beginner to this stuff so if something doesn’t work so well let me know! Thanks so much for any input. 
-Waylen
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A list of 10 quick things I saw:
Home Page - Make the ‘Sales & Information’ (at the bottom) into HTML text instead of graphic text. There’s nothing special about the font being used, so no sense in leaving it graphic text.
Page Titles - It’s imperative to have good page titles for search engines as well as a way for users to understand what you’ve directed them too as well as it being connected with the main site. So instead of ‘Paintings’ going to a page with a title of ‘2009’ it should match the home page in a way that it should read: ‘Paintings by Elsa Marley | Paintings | 2009’ or something like that. Just so it flows because remember that people don’t always find your home page first in the search engines.
Paintings Page - The picture tiling (vertically, as a whole) is off, it’s (being the grid) heavier on the left than it is on the right.
Paintings Page - The links in the year’s are off. If you click 2006 it goes to ‘index.html’, if you click on 2007 it goes to ‘paint.html’, yet when you click on 2008 or 2009 they go to their respective dates in the file names. I’d suggest you change that or, again, there’s no consistency. If you’d still like to keep the 2009 start, then I’d suggest putting 2009 first and putting 2006 last. So essentially a flip from first to last and last to first.
Footer Navigation - I’d suggest using the CSS Menu action for the footer navigation as it appears rather clumped together. Perhaps by adding the action in there you’d be able to spread it out a bit and could do some rather cool things with it. The action makes it super easy so it shouldn’t be hard to apply a horizontal menu and let loose.
History Page - The vertical-alignment for the years are off. Meaning that 1970, 1960, 1950, 1937 are not vertically aligned in the cell they are in like the other dates. Also 1960 is the only one that has a bold style with a color of #603400 which resembles the second column, not like the others in the first.
Copyright - I’d consider styling the copyright information to make it look like the rest of the text. So, instead of using a ‘serif’ font you could apply your Verdana font to it, which is what you’ve used on the rest of the site. Verdana, 14px, probably smaller because it’s a copyright, but it’s your choice.
Resume Page - Give it a kick in the pants. The fonts don’t match the rest of the site and, I saw the other thread on this, the large gap at the bottom seen in Firefox. This would be easy to adjust as you’d have to do a bit of box-model here and insert an HTML into another HTML item and so forth.
Contact Page - I’d better vertically center the ‘Esla Marley’ text so it sits in the center vertically of the box it is in. In Firefox it’s off center and looks a bit strange.
Navigation - You may want to consider using actual HTML text for the navigation. You could achieve a similar look using a Verdana or even a Helvetica font and then Uppercase it and then use the CSS Menu action to make it cool looking.
Overall, for your second site, it’s really nice and clean, plus it validates. Good job.
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Hi Waylen,
Looks a great web site for an Artist Portfolio. I to am looking to do
something similar. How did you do the fade in and out of Paintings? Is that
done as a Freeway Action? Also how did you add the yellow background to the
web page?
Not a bad web site though,
Regards David
2009/11/15 Waylen email@hidden
Hey folks,
I am just wrapping up a website. This is my second one using freeway, and
its been great. I’m looking for some feedback on the site, any and all
kinds. I’m a relative beginner to this stuff so if something doesn’t work so
well let me know! Thanks so much for any input.
-Waylen
freewaytalk mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options
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Thanks Dan!
wow I really appreciate the in depth feedback on the site. A lot of nuances that i missed. A couple questions I had were:
I’m not sure why the 2006 & 2007 links don’t work. they work for me, and the lady I’ve been building the site for. I found that odd. All links look fine and fw as well. Hmmm. Also Im not sure the flex height will work out, the more I think about it with the design as it is. The html box could be made flexible height but its sits on a graphic item that has the outerglow effect. Its been along time since i first started the site and I think I may have had trouble with the outerglow looking good on the html box. I think the trouble was it bled into the content area.
Thanks Again!
@David–Dan has a great tutorial on the fading slideshow effect at danjasker.blogspot.com. It not too hard to set up.
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I Made an html box with adjustible height, it does the trick but the outerglow effect looks hideous. Totally different then the graphic item underneath. Outerglow is all within the box. Is there away to have the outer glow look like it does in a graphic item? This would be the only way I can see the flex height working while still keeping the glow as part of the design. (the glow was inspired by the artist, she wants to keep it I’m pretty sure).
Thanks
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