Topic: Please Review me.

I Just started a site for my friends band. I am near completion but I need some ideas for adding cosmetics. I need to make it look better and add some more graphics. Also Do you like the navigation and is everything easy to find. I also need a browser check Thanks is advance!

nice link there chief

:: Max ::

Somebody Smack ME!!! Ive been working all day. Sorry about that.

here's the link http://www.trakxero.com/main.html

*SMACK!*


___________________
b u n c h a p i x e l s

I'm curious about the drop-down menus. Why have a drop-down menu if there is only one choice? Whats the point? (IE Music, Photos, Show Dates).

Too many pop-up windows. Some of that content would fit perfectly into the main page. Pop ups are just annoying most of the time.

heh - time for an actual review now!

first and foremost:
- all menu areas with only ONE suboption should NOT have a submenu section. clicking on the option itself should take you there.
(edit - dammit krets! beat me! *smack!* )

- 3 menu options don't underline on hover. i don't know why.

- the one thing i felt a desire to do on the site was look at a bigger version of the cd cover. that doesn't seem to be possible.

- IMHO, the pictures could have descriptions. it would help what i believe the purpose of the site is, which is to help the user become familiar with the band.

- "mailto" links off menu options can be really annoying - i know they are for me! this is for two main reasons:
1) i EXPECT to go to a page when i click on a link. this runs against my expectations. when a computer doesn't do what i expect, i am not happy.
2) i may want to use yahoo mail. mailto links do not help me.

- i would suggest having no submenu options for contact, so that clicking on 'contact' takes you to a new page. this page can have on it:
brett: bretts_email@server
Joel: joels_email@server
etc... with each email being a mailto link, so i can click on it if i want, or cut and paste it if i want.

- the discography table looks too cramped. there's heaps of screen real estate, why not space it out a bit.

- there is no link to the homepage.

- if you all have new email addresses @trackxero, why are the contact email addresses something different?

- for the newsletter subscription, filling your email, selecting 'subscribe', and clicking 'join up!' makes sense; typing your email, selecting 'UNsubscribe', and clicking 'join up!' doesn't.

- i'm still not sure about the look of the page, but it could grow on me. you definitely chose some tough colours, it really takes a lot of skill to make it look good... and you could be almost there.

okay, i'm done for now!


ps - *SMACK!* *SMACK!* wee! this is fun!

___________________
b u n c h a p i x e l s

[This message has been edited by bunchapixels (edited 02-08-2002).]

My thoughts:
1. I find the way that the menu moves when you scroll to be very distracting - can't you fix it with a frame?
2. There's no link back to the home page once you enter the site.
3. It's a bit bland like you said. Have you browsed the many band sites that are in Google Directory? Must be some inspiration to be had there.
4. It's easy to add some Real Audio samples (for free with Real Producer Basic) that people can stream from the site, rather than just tie people to downloading an MP3.
5. Your clips are way too big - 1.5Mb?! They should be about 100k, which is 30 secs at 32kbs. I couldn't be bothered to wait with a cable modem - what about 56kers?

Let me know what you think...

http://www.smileycat.com

Thanks alot guys. The feedback has really helped. Let me work on some things tonight and Ill post when i'm done. If anyone else has some feedback shoot it my way, I can use all that I can get. I'm gonna try to find a way to spruce it up a little bit. The only reason I used pop-ups is because the content I am loading is small and I cant think of an effective way to present it in such a large area. Ill try to figure something out. Thanks alot guys (and gals!).

Peace
Mike

Mike/
just checked your site and u must b working on it 'cuz the only working links are the gallery and street team ones.
2 things ~
you should have the gallery thumbnails open into their parent popup (and then have some internal navigation there ~ check the galleries at the flash version of my site for an example -
right now they're opening into another popup window that looks to b about 100 pixels square and that's not good.
Also there are permanent scroll bars - you can make them only appear when necessary by changing the scroll bar parameters of the frame to "auto" rather than "on". (Makes the site less clunky)
Hope this helps and if you get a chance, please respond to my post on this forum
requesting feedback on my site

peace, pauly B


"...the magic key that opens the earth's
door is made of internal silence plus
anything that shines..."


[This message has been edited by pauly B (edited 02-08-2002).]