HOT Team Website

[Beth Sweet]

Hey everybody. I redesigned our website over this past summer, and we finally have it up and online. The link is http://www.huronvalley.k12.mi.us/sch...am/index1.html If you would give me some feedback on opinions, I would really appreciate it!!! Thanks!!!
Bethy

[sanddrag]

The Photo Gallery page seriously bogs down my computer. It takes an extremely long time to load even over a cable connection. This is because all the photos are resized 640x480. You have a couple videos on your site that I'd love to look at but are scared to due to the huge file size. On the animation page you say 30 minute animation when I think you mean 30 second. Last, you should be able to get to any page from any page. Hope this helps.

[Beth Sweet]

Thanks sanddrag, I'll definately get the minute/second thing fixed!!

[Raven_Writer]

Originally posted by sanddrag
The Photo Gallery page seriously bogs down my computer. It takes an extremely long time to load even over a cable connection.....

I agree. I got a 1.5 Megabit-per-second ADSL speed, and it took about atleast a minute or two (which would usually only take a second or two).

In my opinion, javascript is a really bad choice, espically if it's done on everything.

Nice layout though, Clean, simple, small.

[Yan Wang]

Same stuff said above plus -

The homepage images aren't crisp enough - the jaggies need to be anti-aliased.

On the pages, the HOT logo sticks out way too much, when the main focus should be the text below them (which, due to the boldness of HOT, sometimes runs off into the red border of the image).

Yeah, navigation needs to be improved.

The layout is very nice as it's simple, but something about the huge areas of white are unappealing.

Yah.

[Raven_Writer]

If at all possible, try to have someone make a background w/ your logo or something, and then use text for the linkage. If your server allows scripting (preferablly PHP), I (or someone else) can make a lil' menu for you.

[sanddrag]

DHTML works great for menus too www.team696.org I can make you one if you want it.

[AJ Quick]

Time to learn a little bit about compression and thumbnails I think! The files on the site are huge! They take forever to load, so maybe some compression can be used. The images aren't really thumbnails.. they are just shrunk down 1mb each images... so that is really taxing. Using a 5k per image thumbnail will work wonders.

Site looks good otherwise.

[Raven_Writer]

Originally posted by AJ Quick
Time to learn a little bit about compression and thumbnails I think! The files on the site are huge! They take forever to load, so maybe some compression can be used. The images aren't really thumbnails.. they are just shrunk down 1mb each images... so that is really taxing. Using a 5k per image thumbnail will work wonders.

Use either PNG (24-bit), or JPEG (jpg, jpeg) for good compression. Thumbnails can also work to.

[Pat McCarthy]

If anyone is trying to access it right now our district's server is down, and it usually takes a few hours to come back up.

[Beth Sweet]

Thanks to everyone for all of the great feedback! I very much appreciate it all, and I'll get to work on fixing everything!!

[Raven_Writer]

Originally posted by PCPat
If anyone is trying to access it right now our district's server is down, and it usually takes a few hours to come back up.

Actually, when you posted that, I tried to, and I could view it just fine.

(Yes, I did refresh the page after clicking the link to )

[Pat McCarthy]

It must just be my computer then...

[Beth Sweet]

Does anyone else have any ideas about the site?

[Raven_Writer]

Originally posted by cutiebethy
Does anyone else have any ideas about the site?

I'd suggest not doing the color changing when moving the mouse over an image.