Review: Sitebug.com

I get a really weird effect in mozilla firebird (0.7), after the page loads the image (middle right, under 'about us') disappears and goes to text saying "Home" then when you mouse over the bottom links or the side links the image comes back and the size difference between the image and text word makes the whole page jumps around.

you mention it looks ok in IE6 for you, it's a mess in IE6 for me, has big gaps and 'that looks good' text disapears on mouseover. want screen shot?

nice design

I believe your validation error is the span tag

I was editing the hover Javascript for a while about when you might've viewed it, so that might explain the funky images.

Screenshot for IE would be good. It appears generally in the right order for me -- only the nav has big gaps, and some minor spaces with the images. The 'That looks good' text is not floated in an IE-friendly way, I know. Will fix that when I get to IE-fying the site.

Replacing fixed the validation. Didn't know was invalid, but oh well, thanks.

Definitely looks better in NS7 than in IE6! I generally like everything you've done. It's colourful without being gaudy and still fresh feeling.

On the portfolio page in NS the top section is messed up as the 'that looks good' and text are all under the picture of the girl rather than beside her.

Do you want a review or just a browser check?

In Opera 7, on some pages, the first paragraph of text is getting bumped down below the photo. This happens on "get in touch" and "about us"

I know you said you weren't much concerned about how it looks in IE, however, I feel the need to let you know that I find the menu on the right very, very hard to read with the white lettering on the lilac background. It's very hard on the eyes.

Also the gray banner beneath the light green text at the top is also very hard on the eyes.

is valid, just isn't valid when you nest stuff between it

I checked again and it must of been bad timing, works good now in firebird, and also not as bad in IE, IE6 has what you mentioned now, the gaps etc, so I think I now see what you see.

looks like you forgot to change the "that looks good" on the 'get intouch' and 'about us' page, they are different to the other ones.
and the bottom links now just go to the top of the page and not to the right page

Haven't forgot - adding it as I add content to the pages.

Megan, I'm looking for both a design review and browser check (all but IE).

Edit: I think I've fixed it for IE, so IE reviewers welcome.

mommiegeek, I'll darken the background -- I was worried about the readability. The gray background is added by IE because it can't handle transparency in .png files. I've added a background now, so should be fixed. Thanks.

Looks much better in IE6 now except for the quick contact text which is almost unreadable.

Thanks. The header image is just two stock photos that I put together, both from deviantart.com. The shots were really good -- especially the colours -- such that I didn't edit either of them, except to rotate the butterfly, paste it over the leaves, add a shadow, and crop the whole thing. Took a few days of searching to find excellent images, though.

I don't think I fully understand about the reloading butterfly. What's supposed to happen is when you hover a nav link, the blue butterly image becomes a different green image for each link. Mouse out of the nav and the blue butterfly re-appears. Also, to show current location, the blue butterfly image becomes a blue whatever image for each page. If the images appear to be loading, it's because they're quite big (I'm yet to optimise them). Or am I missing the point?

I'm also fine-tuning the colours now, so may do something about the greens that I'm personally not entirely satisfied with either.

Julia, what is it about the Quick Contact text that's unreadable? The colours, size, or both? I'm having some difficulty getting that to work right.

Actually it's not so bad today! When I looked and posted that comment the letters appeared to be overlapping each other but it's ok now

I really like this a lot, abhi. I'm envious, actually. The colour scheme is fantastic. Really unusual combinations and so bright and eye catching. I love that purple colour and the green really sets it off. It's interesting to study this design and notice how simple it is, and yet how great it looks all put together.

One thing I'm not sure about is the secondary mouseovers. They seem to distract from the simplicity of the design. Since there is no really significance of the mouseover image it might be a good idea to just eliminate that aspect. YOu could still use a different picture there on every page.

I'm also not entirely sure about the logo. Maybe use a more exaggerated font, so the letters are wider and slightly more unique looking. That looks too much like a basic sans font.

Thanks! I did this design with the content in mind, and also aimed to create a right-aligned nav. The colours are straight off those stock photos.

I'll think about the mouseovers -- the images are also large and slow loading. May not be worth even optimising them.

We don't have any proper logo to speak of. It's something we've been wrestling with for a very long time now. Right now I've used Arial and Trebuchet as a placeholder... definitely intend to change that.

Thanks again!

...since your not listening to my IMs I'll post them here...

I still think the squarish Butterfly thing we made when we were at my house should be the logo. The text "Sitebug.com" has the bottom chopped off, can you move it up a bit so it isn't?

And like I have said...add height and width to the images...

IM = instant messages ?

the more you look at you the more you'd dislike it (perfectionist), get a few untrained eyes on it, 3rd party opinions