Preserved Topic: [i:face]

A thing I did over one year ago, but didnt use anyways. So I put it here to show it to someone at least
<img border=0 align=absmiddle src="http://www.ozones.com/forum/wink.gif">
http://www.inode.at/hitmen/shiva/guest/tyron_iface_old.jpg

-> talk to you later

The Good
1) It's simple!
2) Good clean icons always add to a iface. What are you planning to do with the mouseover?
3) Nice pipe effect.

The Bad
1) Lens flare BAD! Use a soft white bubble to get a better effect.
2) Some slight jaggies going on around some of the edges. Anti aliase is your friend <img border=0 align=absmiddle src="http://www.ozones.com/forum/smile.gif">
3) Drop Shadow to add some depth. It will give it more of a 3D feel.
4) The brushed metal look is lacking some depth as well. Try a few different lighting effects to give it more of a smooth feel to it.

The Ugly
1) The background color is terrible with that iface. Lose it.
2) Your light sorces are scattered all over the place. Find one position where the light is at and stick with it.
3) Experiment with some wires or mabey some rust to add a more realistic metal feel.

Final Thoughts
Your on the right track man! Stick with it and most of all, have fun!





[This message has been edited by The Jackal (edited 13-09-2000).]

EWW! Rust!
I still wanna see a design with like...marble and wood...I might kill Punksoft and make a "Sloloem design" site using that...organic stuff is always nice to see especialy with the metallic/high-tech designs that permeate the web.

Ouch your iface cut me, to many jaggies. j/k

If it had a litle less jaggies itwould be nice, take off that lens filter use a whire one. Loose the green all around.

THX!

To "The Bad":
1) Do you mean some little white reflection or sth like this?
2) Right <img border=0 align=absmiddle src="http://www.ozones.com/forum/smile.gif">
3) Also Right! But that was what had to be done next.. (still not totally finished).
4) Yep. Still my big lolly -> metal textures.. any good suggestions to get good results?

To "The Ugly":
1) Forget about that. Wasnt supposed to use this. Just used some other than white
2) You are right about the light. The two screens belong together, but if I compare them to the pipes, I see what you mean
3) That is what I am doing. Got some good wires, but am trying metal textures at the moment, also with rusty effects, as in the one I saw from r@m. Any good tutorials for rusty metal surfaces with screws and so on?

Thx again, Jackal, always good to get qell done critique!

BTW: could it be that the jaggies just come, bcoz i saved a .jpg without optimizing it?

The jaggies can come from that. As far as tutorials, try this link. Planet Photoshop has some of the best tutor sites around. It will get you going for what you need.

im gonna jump in here and say that icons are the absolute worst way to go. people want to know where theyre supposed to click to get where they want. typical web surfers want text links. im not saying they have to be typical text hyperlinks, but a decorative image saying the word "information" is more informative than some picture of a stick guy sitting at a desk.

mystery meat navigation is just plain poor design, regardless of how pretty/cool/clean/attractive it is.

want a decent example of good use of icons? (in my opinion)

then go to.. www.zerominuszero.net/jinjer/ ..woohoo!

crazy.. i realized the code might be fucked up on some of your computers, sorry. i've been too busy with two new jobs to fix it.

cheers.mikey.milker

I admit that it can be somewhat hard to do, but if used right in a good layout Icons are a powerful effect in web design. Just my two cents <img border=0 align=absmiddle src="http://www.ozones.com/forum/smile.gif">

Thanks for all comments, but la'dsasha, I think you generalize too much. There is not just black and white and you cant get a "standard surfer".
Sure I know what you mean with telling me about text links, but then I would ask my self, what do I wanna tell people with my site, is it a site with information, do I want the surfer to get straight to what he want, do I want to play around a little with him.. etc. So that makes your last sentence useless in my eyes, also if I know what you mean but this is too general, as if you would have read it in some book about "how to make webdesign". To get such a statement you would have to ask "why?" "for whom?" "what?" and so on.. hopefully you got what I mean
<img border=0 align=absmiddle src="http://www.ozones.com/forum/smile.gif">
Nevertheless, I wanted critique for this just to see what I did wrong, also if I wont use it. THX for this in any way.



[This message has been edited by tyron (edited 14-09-2000).]

i personally do not like to click on "icons". i search for text links/images. i am certainly not your average web surfer. i want to know where im going. i want to know if its an internal link, an email link, an external link, a popup window, etc. i dont want to hunt for navigation.

why would you go through all that extra effort to alienate your visitors or create little things that wont get appreciated?

btw, i dont read design books, they all suck. i have read articles and i apply a little bit of common sense to them. and, well, they do make sense.

I didnt say that you are not right in certain cases, but as I stated before it depends on what I wanna reach with my page..

Calm down kids. To each there own. I see both points, but it is a mtter of opinion. Can't we all just get along!? <img border=0 align=absmiddle src="http://www.ozones.com/forum/tongue.gif">

no bad feelings while writing this, surely not
<img border=0 align=absmiddle src="http://www.ozones.com/forum/smile.gif">

and: I do come along with la'dsasha. No Problems for me. I like if there is a discussion going on without getting angry etc.. so..

thx again for each opinion on this pic!

My 2 cents: I like icons. They're clean and nifty. But, I do agree that the page should offer some more information to confirm what each icon stands for. The example Mikey offered did an excellent job of this. After a user has spent some time on the site, he probably won't read the explanation anymore and the icon will serve as an easily recognized visual cue (which reads faster than words). But, I believe the words need to be there until the user is comfortable.

Oh, and I forgot -- the one critique I would add to what has already been said: it's too wide. It doesn't even fit in an 800-width window.

But, I do like the metal pipework a lot. I never could get wire and tubing and stuff to look right. I should work on that.

I see from the buzzword "mystery meat navigation" that sasha's been reading some of the same articles that I have on web design. I agree that it's not always the best idea. I also know that you need to know your user. Mystery meat might confuse my mom but my sister will be fine with it.

In the case of 'mikey's mystery meat' (beats the heck out of dead end productions?) with the secondary rollovers, I think my mom could even handle that. Well done milker, that's some of the best mystery nav I've ever seen.

I did a site that had 6 nav elements and *every* one was *exactly* the same, a 20-px blue circle with a ring around it. They did however have secondary rollovers explaining each. Absolutely no one that used the site had any problems with it at all.

It's good to read books and articles and study, study, but in the end form your own opinion based on the education, not what some guy says is the 'standard'. God knows this is how IE & NN operate, no?



[This message has been edited by JKMabry (edited 14-09-2000).]