REVIEW REQUEST: Blood and Iron

Firstly welcome to TEF and thanks for reviewing some of the others sites

I wont say anything about it being 'yet another dark gaming site!'

It was very slow loading and I'm on a cable connection!

IMO the header is too big as it takes up over half the screen height at 800*600 plus at that resolution there is a horizontal scrollbar.

I quite like your little graphics but to me it's all a bit too disjointed and there's just not enough contrast (although white text is good on the blue) between the black background and the blue table backgrounds.

As for the links, I think you need to make the cursor change to a hand on mouse over as at first I didn't think they were working!

Hello derekc.
yup the cursor just doesnt seem right. needs to let people know they are on a link..I think the header graphic colour doesnt work, bit hard on my old eyes .overall the look is ok for what your trying to acheieve, personally i would have gone with the colour scheme used in the game.
good luck with the site.

I agree with Julia for the most part. That header is way too big - at smaller screen resolutions that would take up the whole screen. The links also need some mouseover effects (I'm so used to seeing those now that it's odd to see a navbar without them). I also think that you could get rid of the entire right column and put some of those ad links along the bottom. Poll & Feedback chat thing seem useless and may be slowing down the page.

You know that your navbar isn't cross-browser compatible, right? I'm using Opera 7 so I'm seeing those menu's all expanded. In Mozilla with the collapsed navbars I'm feeling that the pages are looking really top-heavy. Something should be done about those side bars to fill up the space on either side or something. It kind of feels like a T shape... unbalanced. Either that or you could put a text navigation bar along the bottom with some graphics like your navigation items. That would sort of anchor the page at the bottom.

I have to wonder what gamers think about all these sites looking so similar. I've seen the same thing in other genres though so maybe it's just the way people like things, I don't know...

I agree with the others on the cursor. I can't tell what the cursor image is and it just gets in the way. Sorta looks like a blob of something blue. Definitely need a change on mouseover with the navigation. I am also thinking that it may look better with a black background instead of the background image. And like Megan said, put a text navigation bar along the bottom.

I'm using Firebird 0.6 and the site looks good and functions well. I echo two other points in that the header graphic looks good, but it should be half the height.

Also, I think it may be a web-standard for the cursor to change to the standard hand when hovering over an image link

Otherwise, a great first start

I agree with the rest on the cursor is it a link or not? The header is a little BIG. The download time was a bit long for a dial up and on cable. I'm not use to seeing a split menu one on the left and a little lower on the right. IMO I think the dropdown menu should have some type of rollover effect. I like the color scheme overall flows nice. I would put a menu at the bottom don't really like to scroll all the way up to the top for another page (concept art page).

The cursor problem does create a usability issue, however I think if you created a roll-over image that changes the blue area of the button to red, it would spice things up a bit and also give some feed back to the surfer that this is clickable. (Although it would add even more to the download time of the page.)

You need to do something to reduce the file-size of your images. Reducing the actual size of the main image would go a long way to fixing d/l speed. That image alone is almost 107k.

Just my $0.02!

I think it looks quite nice, i like your navigation area, but the site is very slow loading, and for me on 56k, it kind of puts you off the site having to wait ages.
Anyway, i think the site looks really nice, just make it load faster.

I'll keep mine short. I couldn't find a way to navigate. The nav links didn't seem to work. Then I went back to this review and read another comment on how it's not obvious that things are clickable. I guess that was me. I may be a novice webmaster but I've been using the web since it began andKnowing that it looked like navigation, I still just assumed the links were broken because of the lack of cursoor-feedback. My assumption was obviously wrong but others may also be confused and not stick around your site.

P.S. The nav links do look nice now that I now I can open them up.