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Thread ID: 87578 2008-02-26 20:21:00 New website - please give me feedback Tony (4941) Press F1
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643915 2008-02-26 20:21:00 Please check out this (www.ceramics.co.nz) website. It is still work-in-progress, so there are bits that are incomplete and technically it is still slightly rough around the edges, but I'd really appreciate your feedback - both technical and aesthetic. I'd especially like to hear from people who are using less-common browsers. It seems OK on IE 6 & 7, Firefox, Opera and Safari, all under Windows, but those aren't the only browsers around. I'd also appreciate feedback from Linux users.

It is designed to work at 1024 x 768 and above, so at that resolution there should be no sideways scrolling.

TIA
Tony (4941)
643916 2008-02-26 22:06:00 Hi tony

It looks OK, don't take offense to the following as it is just my view

Some menu links are hard to read specifically the Home and the classes link as the firey background behind them is dark at that point, try squinting and looking at them and you'll see what i mean
Again with the menu, when i mouseover a link the firey background dissapears behind that link, is that supposed to happen as it looks a little odd

also having the firey background with the red background behind looks a little strange, personally i would say go for one or the other, but thats just me

Clicking on the photo to take a tour doesn't work, but i assume thats a work in progress?


Products page

Images need to be optimised
your images need to be optimised, you have them saved as jpegs at 99% quality for webwork between 70 - 80% is fine it is also 75% smaller which means faster loading pages for customers

as an example

ToolSet_target.jpg (on your site) = 29.55Kb
whereas if it is optimised it comes down to about 7Kb
Morgenmuffel (187)
643917 2008-02-27 02:37:00 looks good to me useing Ubuntu linux kjaada (253)
643918 2008-02-27 03:21:00 Some menu links are hard to read specifically the Home and the classes link
I know what you mean, although it does depend somewhat on the browser and monitor. Things are a lot less clear on my old PC with a CRT monitor on IE6 than they are on my LCD with Firefox. The menu is a huge compromise. The original implementation was a sliced image with rollovers, which looked great and was very visible, but was very inflexible. When we realized we were going to want to change the menu moderately frequently, especially in the early days, we went for this solution which is just a <ul> with changes on hover. We may yet change it back to the original if things get very stable. I've tried various colours for the text, but because of the effective gradient on the background, nothing works totally well for each menu position. The disappearing background on mouseover is deliberate to highlight the menu item.


Clicking on the photo to take a tour doesn't work, but i assume thats a work in progress?Yes it is, although clicking on the left side of the picture should now work.


Images need to be optimisedI agree. I am going to do a pass through the whole site before it goes live and sort that out.

Thanks for taking the time to comment so thoroughly.
Tony (4941)
643919 2008-02-27 04:57:00 I'm sure a lot of work went into the site and well done. Not my personal prefernce style-wise but still it's not awfully bad. What's with all the "csobj" elements throughout, are they to do with a CMS? sal (67)
643920 2008-02-27 05:51:00 From a users perspective, I like the website. It is easy to navigate and looks professional. I viewed the website @1280x1024 under both Firefox (Linux) and Konqueror (3.5.8-9) and apart from links appearing in a different colour, they displayed the same.

The only issues I noted were:

ASP News (www.ceramics.co.nz) - the mouse over turns the panel blank white in both Firefox and Konqueror

From your links page:
http://www.pottery-4u.com/ - is this supposed to be a directory page?
www.australianwoodfire.com/ - server not found (probably a temporary issue as google last cached it on 19)
Jen (38)
643921 2008-02-27 06:01:00 The only issues I noted were:

ASP News (www.ceramics.co.nz) - the mouse over turns the panel blank white in both Firefox and Konqueror

Does the same thing in IE 7.

So if it doesnt work in IE 6, 7, Firefox or Konqueror, what does it work with?
Speedy Gonzales (78)
643922 2008-02-27 06:03:00 Seems good navigation throughout. Maybe add forms for visitor/customer interaction, particularly for payment and delivery methods. Perhaps also a subscription form for newsletters and updates. You might get an idea from this NZ site roses are red (www.rosesarered.co.nz/). Here is a web developer (http:) tool bar for fire fox that I use to analyze css, images, javascript, and other features... kahawai chaser (3545)
643923 2008-02-27 06:05:00 What's with all the "csobj" elements throughout, are they to do with a CMS?They are Adobe GoLive "components" - re-useable chunks of code that GoLive keeps track of, so you can update once and the whole site reflects it. (e.g a menu change). Although GoLive produces ghastly HTML, and most of the code you see is hand-done, it does have some quite nice management facilities - such as components. Tony (4941)
643924 2008-02-27 06:05:00 It'll be because the hover has a background image path set to "../_Do_Not_Upload/Original%20images/ASPnewsOctober2007.gif" which I'm guessing doesn't exist yet. sal (67)
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