Review Request: www.alt-realities.net/novus
Unlike many of the sites I've seen here so far, my site is not professional, but rather personal and fannish in nature. However, I plan on using my personal and fan sites for my portfolio, so I'm looking for reviews.
Here is the site: http://www.alt-realities.net/novus/
I'd like to get input on load time, navigation, and most importantly color scheme. I was really stumped on this one and I'm not 100% happy with the color schema as it is, particularly the text.
Also, if anyone is using a Mac or Netscape, I'd love to know how the site looks to you.
The Webmistress posted this at 14:52 — 9th December 2003.
She has: 5,586 posts
Joined: Feb 2001
Thank you for reviewing some of the others sites
Firstly I'm not a fan of iframes or frames in general, I don't particularly see the point and it just looks cluttered at smaller resolutions with scrollbars all over the place! That's a personal thing, although you aren't going to encourage SEs to crawl & index the site by using them.
I'm not sure on the colour scheme - first of all I thought no it doesn't work but now I think it is growing on me! I would have maybe gone with an orange as the accent colour rather than the neon green.
It all loads fine for me but I'm on adsl and it looks ok in Opera & NS7 as well, although the coloured scrollbars only work in IE and so spoil the overall look when viewed as plain grey!
Julia - if life was meant to be easy Michael Angelo would have painted the floor....
Megan posted this at 14:54 — 9th December 2003.
She has: 11,421 posts
Joined: Jun 1999
Hey, thanks for reviewing some other sites first!
This looks good. Normally I don't really like i-frames, but in this case they seem to be working quite well. They do tend to restrict the amount of space available for content, which may become a problem as your site grows.
One thing I found confusing is the "about THE TOMORROW PEOPLE" section. I was wondering where this TV series aired (UK? USA? Mongolia?
) and what ITV was. It would also be nice to have a little more information on there about characters etc.
The design looks good. I like the green colour scheme you've chosen, it's quite unique. I do think the side graphic could use some work but as your graphics skills improve you'll be able to work on that. It's probably hard to find good photos to work from.
Oh, and I'm using Opera 7 and the site seemed to work fine for me.
Megan
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Busy posted this at 21:25 — 9th December 2003.
He has: 6,151 posts
Joined: May 2001
worked fine on mozilla, and load time wasn't to bad on dialup.
on the join page the link to your site has a line throu it (as if you were using or something (didn't look at the code) and all your input boxs are green except the countrys
The subject on email links dont work on all browsers anymore, but since your using php maybe use a form to avoid the spam you'll get for posting your email address for all to harvest. can always display your addy as a image that looks like text for the people wanting it.
I reckon loose the frames, with the content you have, if you made your main table a little wider (on 800x600 anyway) you could nearly fit it all in on one screen without scrolling down, search engines would like you more as would people who love their mouse wheel
I'm not to keen on the green but think you've done a great job, has more a professional look than a personal look
You need to use width and height tags on your images, even thou the images (thumbnails) are below the text its still has the jumpy effect
I think I remember the show "Tomorrow people" from the 80's, maybe its another one
mommiegeek posted this at 19:43 — 11th December 2003.
She has: 25 posts
Joined: Dec 2003
Actually, the funny thing about the email is that it is actually javascript encoded so that a bot can't pick it up
If you check out the source, you'll see that one of the email address links actually looks like this:
//
Yet it pops up in a browser like a regular email address. Do you think I should switch to a PHP form instead though?
Suzanne posted this at 21:30 — 11th December 2003.
She has: 5,507 posts
Joined: Feb 2000
the Hiveware Enkoder is dandy, I wouldn't worry about it.
Busy posted this at 22:13 — 11th December 2003.
He has: 6,151 posts
Joined: May 2001
The one time I don't look at the source code
These days I am finding people are getting lazier and lazier and some perfer a form than using/opening their email program. personal perference I suppose.
so ignore me, your doing great
msburton posted this at 22:49 — 11th December 2003.
They have: 14 posts
Joined: Dec 2003
i'm a webmaster by hobby, not by profession, so this will be more of a user-based critique.
i'm not a fan of green, especially as a background, but if it has some pertinence to the content, stick with it. the colors complement each other. load time is fine on my cable connection.
i think the only good use of iframes is as a small 'news'/'updates' window. putting the entire content within it is different. i prefer tables. the mayhem that insues while scrolling through an iframe makes me insane.
-Matt
Iraq Media Developments Newsletter...and telecom stuff too.
Anonymous posted this at 01:05 — 12th December 2003.
They have: 5,633 posts
Joined: Jan 1970
Not sure about the colors, I been looking at it for a few minutes now.. im really starting to hate the green! maybe its because its 1am rite now .. pitty about the iframes makes the site look more clutterd ..crushed together, You could have maybe added a simple mouse over on the navigation menu to make it more easy to navigate around the site.. Well Done though good Job!
Rob Underwood
Abhishek Reddy posted this at 01:41 — 12th December 2003.
He has: 3,348 posts
Joined: Jul 2001
Typo: "they are alos the next stage in human evolution."
I don't remember the show... sounds like an interesting study of transhumanism.
Anyway, the site looks very good. I dislike iframes, and though I agree with Megan that it works here, I'm still not sure about the scrollbar popping out in the middle of the page. Not a biggie.
Text is a little hard to read on my monitor (low brightness, contrast, and glare).
Otherwise, it looks quite good. Nice work.
mommiegeek posted this at 13:14 — 12th December 2003.
She has: 25 posts
Joined: Dec 2003
Thanks! None of my early "testers" even caught that! I guess it's a prime example of when you think you know what you're reading, you really don't read it that closely :eek:
I'll fix that on the next update.
disaster-master posted this at 05:22 — 13th December 2003.
She has: 2,154 posts
Joined: May 2001
At first I thought there was too much green but it sorta grew on me. I think it looks good.
I usually balk at frames but as long at they fit within my browser window I can deal with them. Yours are fine.
The only other thing I would suggest is -- make the logo image clickable so that it goes back to the home page. Oh, I think if you add about 2 pixels to the top of your logo image the lines would line up with the background image.
mommiegeek posted this at 13:12 — 12th December 2003.
She has: 25 posts
Joined: Dec 2003
Thanks for all the feedback. For my next layout, I won't use the iframe.
I was just experimenting this time around and trying to find an easy navigable way to move around the site that didn't require too much in the way of coding the same page over and over and over. (It also took forever for me to come up with a design concept for this site considering the slim number and low quality of available pictures.)
When I get in the mood to change the layout (which will probably be late Jan or early Feb), I'll stop by the layout area and get some advice. I just wish I'd found this site before I'd pulled all my pages together
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