Updated Gotvinsanity.com

Welcome to TWF, vincentda! We'd really appreciate it if you could help us out and review some other sites before asking for your own review

Nice intro - I'm on a T1 here so I couldn't tell you about loading time but I'm guessing that it must take awhile on slower connections. The problem for me is that nothing made sense in there. I just have no idea what you're talking about... ooooohhhh this is about Vince Carter! I know who that is! You might want to make that a little more clear.

Why do I need your CD to access multimedia files? How do I know where to get it? Have you thought about offering lower quality multimedia over the web? Then people could get sort of a sneak peak. Even inside the site it just says to go to the message board to find out more - you really should be more direct about where and why to buy this.

Inside the site now - it looks great! I am very impressed. A major problem with this, though, is that I'm getting a horizontal scroll bar at 1024. This should never happen - at the very least your site should fit into an 800x600 window. That's just the standard.

That slider is neat but it doesn't seem to do much besides slide... oh wait, there is something happening. It's taking a long time, and when I get it I'm not sure what this really is.

Overall the site looks fantastic but I think that it should be sped up a bit and things should be labeled more clearly.

first thing I came across was "You will need the gotvinsanity cdrom supplement to access most of the
multimedia files within the site." normally I wouldnt stick around as I dont need to download more stuff, especially just to view one sites files.

I tryed to skip the intro but sadly it made me watch the whole thing, again, (not a big flash fan) normally I would be outta there.

get to the main page, loaded ok on a 56k but has a big scroll on 800x600, hor and vert, with a big blank section on the left and under it (the flash show).

I have no idea what the sites about, but at a guess I'd say a basketball player? normally I wouldnt hunt down the sites topic, zoom outta there

I clicked on images, the main picture went really dim, hmm have I broken it? ohh ok, it had to load (took a while), that left blank area has me worried, do I need the cdrom supplement thingy to be viewing it? but it said for multimedia files (which I havent seen any mentioned yet).

pop ups, you have this nice layout but then you use pop ups to display the thumbnails, not sure if thats a good thing but I'm sure the fans would love all the pictures

I just took a peek at your soucre code, you have the table 1024 wide (image-213, flash-800 and image-11) got me curious now.

i downloaded the black image on the left (bg1.jpg), its just a black dot but at a file size of 9.94kb so I lighten it and see lined image of the basket ball player,
i downloaded the bottom image (bg3.jpg), (which i thought was just a black space), and once lightened can see its actually a image

you need to lighten all those images, i see you have more from the source, also you need a link back to the home page and others, i found myself stuck on the images page.

i got back to the home page and found the little "?" which i missed before, the first line of your FAQ explains it all, "I can't see the entire site or the image is too big?
The site is optimized for resolutions of atleast 1024x726. Also be sure you have the latest version of Flash."

I think your sites idea is good but the layout isnt, maybe make it work on 800x600 and using the lightened images as a background the 800x600 people see the flash alone and the 1024 + see the images around it

To be honest I did not take that big a look at your site. I hate to wait for a site to load. When I get to a site like yours the process is 'stop, back', unless I am really interested then the process is 'turn on kettle, make coffee'.

From what I did see the site looks great, but are all your users going to see it?

I agree with everything that's been said. I have adsl connection and it was ok speed wise but I'd hate to think how long it'd be on a modem. You need to bare in mind that the average surfer connects via a slow modem & has small screens set to max 800*600. You really need to design with them in mind but with a layout that also looks good at larger resolutions. The CD thing needs more explanation without having to go through to any message boards.

Good site, although I found the writing too small and generally a bit hard on the eyes.

thanks for all of the responses. I'm actually amazed at how much some of analyzed it, but the site is more aimed at impressing vince carter fans as opposed to graphic designers and so far the fans of the site have loved it. I really do appreciate all of the comments and as for the slow flash files, none of them are over 45k but I'm hosting it on a shared account with over 3,000 unique visitors hitting it a day.

As for the cdrom supplement: the purpose of it was to allow vince carter fans to see lots of qualtiy videos (about an hour of clear 352x240 clips) without having to spend hours downloading them or making me pay for the bandwidth. when you insert the cdrom it loads the initial layout and intro and subsections while loading the updated news from the web. So this allows carter fans to see updated news (40k) and watch long video clips without any major downloading. It probably sounds like a bad idea but i've sold over 60 of them since last thursday, but i'm not making a profit it's just for the fans.

I apologize for not reviewing anything before asking for one of my sites to be reviewed. glad to be here.

Hi,

Like it. The intro flash was great. Don't know who Vince whoever is and not into sport in any way but liked the flash intro and layout of the site. Congrats.

I'm on dial-up and there wasn't a great deal of waiting around. Certainly nowhere near like some sites. Once I worked out the slider I thought it was snazzy but only the net-savvy would find it. I found the ? for faq by searching for it after reading about it in one of the posts here. After the flash intro finished, nothing happened. I had to click on "skip intro" to get into the site. Bit like clicking on "Start" to shut down the computer.

For the net-savvy and those keen to search around for the links etc, it's a great looking site.

Annette

I had to mention it because no one else did, the music you use in the intro is copyrighted, and using it violates many laws.
Other then what everyone else has said, I do like the design. The site should fit 800x600, even though as a developer I use 1280x1024, my browser window is never maximized, and usually I set at the 800x600 threshold to do any surfing/testing. Scrollbars at 800x600 is unacceptable... in a couple years that will change, but we'll see.

-pb

I am looking at it on 800 X 600 and really didn't mind scrolling to the right one time. I think the site is jamming! Excellent job. It has it's little quirks here and there but over all I really liked it. Very clean. Although I am not a fan of basket ball and do not know who Carter is I can see how fans of his would love this site. There is one thing that I would add. On the first page after the music is over, I was waiting for something else to happen. Maybe some direction that it was time to enter the site. All you have is "skip intro". Maybe add an enter after the music is finished.

Nice design. I'm not sure if others mentioned this yet, but the white text on the red background is a bit hard to read. I mean I can see it fine. But when I'm trying to read it, it's like I'm learning how to read for the first time. What font is that? Is it a fixed width font? I find myself going very slowly across the text reading a word at a time. A little frustrating. I'm guessing it's the red background that makes it hard to concentrate. I clicked on the thumbnails and had an easier time reading the text in the other pages. Is there someway to let the readers to know to instinctively click those thumbnails for more information? Only reason I clicked them was because I was expecting some larger versions of the thumbnails for wallpaper purposes.

The links on the bottom, images, video and etc. Are a little too... covered up. They don't pop out enough for the reader to know to go there if they were looking for a menu. It took me a little while to realize the menu was there after I had finished scanning the white text on the red background. Giving them effects on hover might pop them out a bit.