Some suggestions? — OZONE Asylum, home of the Mad Scientists

Some suggestions?

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Your Text: Insert Slimies » Insert UBB Code » Close Last Tag \| All Tags UBB Help	If the client loves it and you honestly couldn't care less about it, take the damn money and run! But if you do actually care about them getting a quality product and are willing to spend time on things they probably won't even notice, then by all means, knock yourself out. =) You can get a good cross browser menu script at [url=http://www.dhtmlcentral.com]www.dhtmlcentral.com[/url] -- don't know how well it degrades for older/non visual browsers but it'll right back to version 4.0 browser so you should be fairly safe. If you're really stressed about but still need the menu system then provide a text only version of the site. Ditch the "loading" parts, you don't need them, and they make the loading times appear longer. Without them the text should load almost instantly, and the user won't sitting around waiting. If they have to wait for each and every content page to load, they?ll be very weary of navigating to a new page (of which you have many for them to choose form), so you better have some well designed and succinct menu copy. If a user is reluctant about their browsing experience and you give them ambiguous menu options they?ll simply choose to go elsewhere. Of if you?re using flash, do the menu in flash two, which should eliminate your cross browser issues to a degree but it'll create some accessibility issues. But it's your job to decide what compromise to make in that area. Other stuff... Ditch the date, 99.9% of people viewing that site will be using a personal computer of some kind so the date it but a click away form then (or constantly visible in some operating systems) -- it's simply unneeded and it draws unwanted attention. People do visit websites to see a date, they go for content, so ditch any prominent non-content related items and put something useful in there instead. The same goes for the "powered by" message and the scrolling text/flash animation thingy. You dun need it and your site visitors certainly won't care for it, that and the txt on the animation it too small to read and it moves too quickly for anyone to take it in. If that information is really important print it all out in one place where it can be read easily, if it's not important, get rid of it. Content is king! Speaking of which, the menu is too difficult to read and it doesn't stand out enough. The bevel looks a little cheap and the font looks, well, ugly. Simplify the menu, plain flat colours and contrasting text should do the trick. I also see a lot of font confusion. Fonts are cool useful yet fickle things. The more of them you slap onto the one page the worse it seems to look. A lot of people often try and use different fonts to differ between content types, which are a bad idea that usually results in a messy looking design. Stick to two/three fonts max and unify them (i.e., one font for body text, another font for headings) and use bold and colour to signify contextual differences -- italic treatments usually look bad with aliased screen displayed fonts so avoid them. The colours are ok... not great but ok. I'm assuming that much of the colour is dictated by the logo which you can't change. In any event, if you do have some liberties with the colours I'd suggest starting over and letting the images you use dictate your colour scheme. Grab the eye dropper tool and start pick'n! -- Works for me =). Oh and kill those horrid greys, they just ain?t working with those light blue/white images ? drags the whole site down. Lastly, white space and form -- possibly the biggest problem with this site (design wise) is the lack of form and white space (and by white space I mean space in general, or negative space). Firstly, the site in the top left... kinda. It?s 10 pixels down and 10 to the left. Which just looks wrong unless your browser window happens to end 10 pixels form the bottom right edge of the design -- so centre it. Then there's the apparent complete lack of attention to margins and line heights, which all seem different making the site seem messy. Add that to the differing heights of the different graphical elements and you get one rather messy looking page. Sure it could be a lot worse, but with a little attention to the details in between the lines it could be a hell of a lot better. Yup, that about does it. On, one more thing, if you're going to have a menu like that, make sure every group has items in it, don't make some that have pull down options and some that don't -- it breaks the convention it draws from the traditional applications menus which will just confuse the user as te'll expect there to be a pull down menu for each option. When there isn't, the'll likely think it's broke. This is why it's important to understand why and where trends develop from, so that you don't use them in disabling ways. Ok, definatly done now. On a whole it ain't too bad, but with some serious elbow grease and a little more grey matter, which you don't seem short on, it could be a lot better. Loading...
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