What Next? BETA Review Request. Posted by JP Stones - ...it's almost done - and now I need your thou

On the tabs, it looks like the forums tab is a different color (could be my moniter as it just lost the color red ). It may be intentional though to promote the forums.

I like the graphics for the most part, the only thing I see is that you may not want to animate the arrows above the "Updates", "Click Here" etc. text to the right of the main text blocks.

I think the drop box looked better at the top for some reason. It just seemed to fit well there. Perhaps the bottom area could be normal links to the same places as the drop box, so there are two easy options for WC network navigation.

Otherwise I love it, I just wish I could see red as red and not black, I think I'll be getting a new monitor now...

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Page Resource: http://www.pageresource.com
JavaScript City: http://www.javascriptcity.com

Hey JP,

great design, looks in a way more professional than the old one. It gives the site a whole new feel. The old design gave the visitor a feeling of permanent "under construction" which worked really well because what-next is about building website. The new design, however, is a lot more grown up and complete. I dont think I've yet seen anything that looked better, especially not from people who did conventional design for 20 years or so.

I think all the playstuff like mouseovers and animated gifs are used very wisely and reasonable. There is nothing I hate more than any animated gif that I dont think should be there. I like the tabs, too. They do a very good job at organizing the site.

I think its pretty brave to use such a difficult design for the images right to the text on the homepage. I dont know on how often you plan to update those but they look like they take a while to make.

I wish I could see the IE stuff, but the computer Im using right now doesnt have.

There is one little glitch: the lower part of the watch on the very right side seems to be a pixel off to the right in NS 4.5

I would add some vertical white space @ the bottom of the pages.

Later,

Malte

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Malte Ubl - Germany
http://goKewl.com/

Almost forgot that I wanted to express how I miss those <something...> images. They were a really good and unique idea. You should try to somehow integrate them in the new design.

Hi JP,
Always have liked your web site, old and new .
Love the movement, menu and tabs.
animated arrows are driving me crazy though-- top one isn't synchronized with the others, reminds me of a classy christmas tree with cheap lights. Maybe a slower fade (top to bottom) arrow would look smoother?
Love the tabs, forum tab is a shade lighter then the others.
I really like the graphics (tools etc...) but they are so plain and take up lots of room.

I have mixed feelings about the star rating system. I'll try to explain using ad page:

burst! gets 5 stars so I'll assume they are the best(5 stars being the best)
unique media gets 1 star, is this the worst of the best? or the worse of the worse? and why even have them if they rate so low?
I'll guess the first that they are the worse of the best which considering how many companies like this there are is still a good rating but the lack of stars (below 3) makes them appear not so great.
On the hosting page you say that you and Chad have compiled the top ten of thousands, wouldn't the top ten all get 5 stars? Sorry if I'm confusing and rambling on here . I see these star rating systems all over the place and find them useful but never pay much attention to the 2-3 star categories -- the pro's and con's is a better way to rate in my opinion, so are the rating systems where people can rate/comment themselves -- lets me have more control over how it should be rated for my needs.
Another reason I feel this way is because I was searching for some "stuff" the other day and found a star rating system similar to this one -- the top 5 star in each category were all related to the same site, (site had big banners all over the page too) that made "their" rating system worthless to me since I've experienced the 5 star site myself and only think they were worth 3 .
We know you're not like that JP but that's because we know you .

Ad page: love the diagram idea, but still think it could be simplified/condensed and still have the same info.

take care,

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Carolyn Jones
icq# 5351437

Thanks a lot everyone All your comments are much appreciated - please keep them coming...

John:
- the forum tab is indeed a different colour, eventually I will decide on which colour to use for the tabs.

- the drop down box looked better up top but had to be smaller to fit into the graphic. This meant that I had trouble fitting all the text I wanted in it.

...get a new monitor!

Malte:
"I dont think I've yet seen anything that looked better..."
Thanks a lot, you have no idea how much this kind of comment means to me
- I plan on having about 6-12 of these blue images that should cover all sections of the site.

- I'm too clear what you mean by:
"I think its pretty brave to use such a difficult design for the images right to the text on the homepage."

- The IE stuff is pretty discreet, such as small chages in the table cell colour on mouseover. All very tastefull

- I have noticed this slight shift in N of the second table. Can anyone spot hoe to fix it?

- re: White space at the bottom. I thought there was enough, what does eveyone else think?

- I will see how it looks with those <...> tags. But I also feel it is a look which has recently become over used on webmaster sites.

Thanks Malte.

Carolyn:
- I will drop the animated arrows the, I think you and Jes [ICQ] are right.

- I see what you mean with the star system. The actual idea is that system rates the sites compared to each other. A bit complicated, I know. I will see what else I can come up with.

- re: the advertising page img. Can you send me a draft of what you mean?
Phew

Thanks again all of you. More comments warmly welcomed
JP

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The Webmaster Promotion and Resource Center.
http://www.what-next.com

Looks great JP!

One thing I would do is change the text link colours to stand out a little more - without the underlines it's hard to tell what is a link and what is plain text.

Oh, before I forget - the mouseover for the search tab shows the news image. Oops

I also don't like the animated arrows. I assume that you are going to change the "click here" text to something else for the final version? Or do they go with the text to the left of them?
Why do people always make their titles so long? I hate having to go in and change my bookmarks. So, I would shorten up the title some.

Do you not have a problem excluding users with 640x480 resolution? It doesn't fit.

Anyway, those are all the complaints I can think of right now. I really like the circle graphics down the middle of the page - actuallly, all your graphics look really good. Excellent job!

Hey JP,
Great looking site! I like what you've done with the table changing colors, thats pretty cool.

I think the navigaiton box should be somewhere closer to the top.

Add a mouseover to the e-mail and home images top left and on the rounded corner by the e-mail and home page, there looks like theres some blue there that should'nt be.

Very good job, well done.

JP,

I am finally getting to taking a good look at your new website... (I just moved from Pensacola, FL to Chesapeake, VA and still have an apartment half full with boxes).

First of all, I really like the Beta site! The tabs on the side will be quite nice once you fill in the functions, the change of color mouseover in the tables is great!

But... there are two things that do bother me - and both are minor.

1) Under your title bar you have the "Make Me Your Home Page" and the Last Update date. But the grey color is squared off... I would put that grey color into the background of the two images on either side... so there isn't a retangular square grey in an oval area.

2) Although I do like the non-underlined links, I found myself roaming the mouse to see what links I may have missed... and I even found a couple that I didn't notice right away. Now it is true that I probably would have noticed the links that I needed had I been reading everything as a user... but it still kinda bothers me.

Just my .02 worth (and probably worth about 1/2 of that...),

Matt

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1-On-1 Free Basketball Game - Wanna Play?
http://basketball-game.com

Thanks a lot guys!

megs:
I took most of your advice, thanks.
<Do you not have a problem excluding users with 640x480 resolution? It doesn't fit.>
I have just grown fed up with catering for a minority of users (sorry) and having to lower my design standards because of this. At this resolution I have far more freedom of design.

grandmaster:
Cheers, I will consider the mouseover idea again now.

matt:
I'm not clear on your first point, please clarify.

The links issue is a bit of a problem, though as I use CSS it can be changed in seconds

Glad you all like it!
JP

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The Webmaster Promotion and Resource Center.
http://www.what-next.com

Was just looking at your shifty clock. Say that 10 times fast;)

I see that the top graphic is in a separate table from the rest. Any reason why you couldn't add a row to the main table and put the logo.jpg inside it. Think that's the whole problem is the 2 tables don't align.

Maybe you could make the lower table 709 pixels wide:) Course then it would be out of align the other way in IE, but NS would be fixed.

Edit: Never mind, that doesn't work!
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Dan
http://cds-computers.com

Found it!!

The main table column that runs down the middle is 479 pixels wide. Change it to 478 and the clock aligns correctly in NS and IE

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Dan
http://cds-computers.com