Magnasmific Web Site

[Alexander McGee]

Hey, im looking for criticism! So dish it out please. I need ideas for this website. Im selling web design, so keep that in mind. Its not supposed to be flashy, its supposed to look professional.

Thanks!

http://magnasmific.iradiated.net

[Trashed20]

Nice and clean. I like the colors. I think it looks professional. Alot of empty space though. Still good

[Raven_Writer]

I really enjoy it also. I only have 1 complaint, and that's the Flash menu (it's my own feeling...so don't bother caring about this complaint).

[HFWang]

Flash menu is annoying, it slowly animates in. My time is a bit more valuable than you think it is.

In terms of design, I'd suggest brightening up the colors you used for text in the heading (Magnasmific) as well as the text in the navbar. Maybe consider upping the brightness of the borders too. The background color of the content boxes could also be notched down slightly, (and the background made a tad lighter in color) so that the contrast is more subtle.

Its a solidly designed site (though IMO the flash is overkill, replace it with some css based list navigations and it'll look the same, minus the animation). (Examples of css-list-navs are available at http://www.maxdesign.com.au/presenta...atic/index.htm check out the vertical navigation ones, pretty solid stuff)

One suggestion, you don't really have to listen... but maybe move that welcome box to above the news posts, and then make it a two column layout. The content looks really narrow in lower resolutions. As for the news posts, maybe consider moving each post into one box, that way the title of the entry shows up more clearly, and the entries are all bound together (so they don't appear like seperate parts of your document, instead of just being a series of news postings)

Not trying to be harsh, or anything. Just some ideas that struck me. Good looking site, a bit utilitarian, but I'm assuming thats the idea.

[Alexander McGee]

thanks a lot. keep it comming guys!

[Raven_Writer]

Originally posted by magnasmific
thanks a lot. keep it comming guys!

At 10:39 P.M. -5 GMT, I was not able to reach the site (Page Cannot Be Displayed...yadayadayada)

[Alexander McGee]

looks like the server was down. all better now.

[Raven_Writer]

I would recommend using a darker color in the white boxes than a lite grey. It's a bother on my eyes.

[apk]

try to make it viewable on all browsers without having to scroll to the right. and i would get rid of the flash (unless everything apeared faster)

[robot180]

As a fellow web designer, I know that negative feedback is very important and people are afraid to give it because they think you will hate them for saying things about your site, even though that is why you asked. Here is my opinion about your website.

Left/right scrolling is not a good thing. People have to scroll up and down, which usually is easy because most people use scroll wheels, but when they have to stop where they are and move the mouse arrow down to the bottom and concentrate on moving the scroll bar, they can get annoyed. I would suggest putting everything into a table or div tags or something and setting the width to like 700 pixels or whatever so that it is slightly narrower than most browsers. Remember that some browsers, like MSN, has a large toolbar on the left.

It might be a good idea to change the font color of the table of contents on the home page to white and make it more bold. Also, there is a CSS command that is something like "text-decoration" or something that will automatically capitalize the first letter of every word.

You could try making the table of contents unique for the home page and making sort of a very narrow, horizontal naviagtion bar, with the same links as the table of contents, to go accross the top of every page besides the home page.

I don't have very much of a problem with the colors. I like darker colors because it is better on your eyes. Maybe putting some more, brighter, graphics would do better than changing the colors. Try making a bright logo to put in the top left corner of each page. You could even use div tags to move the website's title so that it overlaps the logo. Remember to use GIF's though, since this logo will show up on every page, it won't slow down the loading of each page as much as a jpeg would.

Another idea is to add some kind of hovering effect in the table of contents to make it a bit more interactive. Use the onMouseOver and onMouseOut to change the color of the buttons when the mouse moves over them.

I may have said this already but...I like a little animation in a website, just as long as it doesn't take to long. That is one thing that I liked about the FIRST website. It would be better, though, if it was only on the home page, or if you could set it up so that it only did that on the first page that the person goes to on your website. After that, the table of contents just pops up like usual.

I am legally blind. I am also the web master for a website for the blind and visually handicapped. If my vision was even worse, I might complain that the font is too small, but that isn't something to really worry about. However, if you are trying to sell stuff, like amazon.com or something, customers who are partially blind and go to your website that can't read it, they may leave and you will loose the buisness. (I can read the font by the way.)

I am sure that if I had more time, I could list a few more ideas. Feel free to give negative comments about my website in the thread: something about w3c validation. I could use the comments.

[Alexander McGee]

yea, the brozer thing is confusing me. See, most people now a days have 1024x768 size desktop. I design to that spec. The people who have (or are viewing) in 800x600, need to either change there preferances, or get a new computer. There is no need to scroll left or right if you can view everything.

and as for flash, whats is the big deal with flash? i say, don't knock it until you try it. is it that you guys dont like to have the person to have a plugin? Over 90 percent of the people online have the flash plugin. Flash makes things smallm and look good.

[HFWang]

Originally posted by magnasmific
yea, the brozer thing is confusing me. See, most people now a days have 1024x768 size desktop. I design to that spec. The people who have (or are viewing) in 800x600, need to either change there preferances, or get a new computer. There is no need to scroll left or right if you can view everything.

Did you want our comments or not?

I run 1280x1024 thank you very much. I keep all brower windows at 800x600 for several reasons.
1) I read faster. Narrower columns improve reading speed as you are less likely to get off track as you track across a column
2) Your site is nice, but not THAT nice. I do other things when I'm on the computer, being able to do multiple things in multiple windows makes me a happeir person, and things get done (usually) faster

and as for flash, whats is the big deal with flash? i say, don't knock it until you try it.

I know how to use flash, and I have no problem with flash if you use it for a movie. You're using it to waste my time. Its not so much that I have an inflated ego (ok, maybe it is) as it is the fact that the time wasted was utterly unneccessary.

So why did I not like it?
1) Its pointless. You could have reproduced roughly the same effect in html/css and had a lower filesize. It would load faster, and spend less time animating
2) It animates unneccessarily. I don't care if you know how to use flash! If I was a client, I'd look in your portfolio to see your flash talent, not your navigation. Again, it is USELESS. All it does is waste time, increase bandwidth usage, and mean I navigate through your site slower, and hey! Suddenly I have a disincentive to buy from you, because I want my customers to get in, buy something then get out. Your site doesn't do that.

You asked for comments, and we provided. It is your RIGHT to ignore them obviously, but maybe you need to get off your "upgrade your computer if you need to scroll" and realize that maybe just MAYBE other people will look at your site, and maybe they don't want to get a new computer.

[Ryan Dognaux]

I like it. The flash is cool, keep it but maybe make it actually go a little faster... because it takes a bit too long to finish its cool animation. If I were you I would also create a logo of some kind, because the page is kind of bare at the moment. A colorful logo would do ya some good

Other than that, cool site! Keep it up.

[HFWang]

http://zyx.freeservers.com/histo/histo.htm

look at the intro. most flash i have seen is like that, just a bit shorter.

[robot180]

I think some of us are getting a bit carried away with this. Two people told me in the last week that I am a really great web designer so I feel that I should share my knowledge.

Think about it this way, put yourself in the user's shoes. Again, I don't mean to criticize you, but that is the whole point of this.
Example:

You are making a website that sells stuff. (like Amazon.com) You set a list of goals for the website and make a general plan/design of how the website will work; what each page will do, the general theme and navigation bar etc., and how information/products will be organized on the website. Since this will be a complex website, you want to do the least amount of coding as possible.

Now, let's look at it from the user's perspective. A possible customer comes to your website. They are looking to buy some products that are worth a total of $100. It costs your company $80 to get the products. If the sale goes through, you will make $20. (Let's say you charge them for shipping seperatly.) You set up the page that contains the links to all of the products that the customer is looking for, but the page is set for no left/right scrolling in a 1024x768 browser. However, this person has, I don't know...lower vision from old age. Therefore, they set it to 800x600, and get the left/right scroll bar. Let's say the descriptions for the products goes off the screen and they have to scroll right and back left and right again to read each line. After the first two or three products, they may get tired and only buy about $20 worth of products that costs you about $18 to get. (since you are not buying in as much bulk) You only make $2 compared to the $20 just for making your pages a little narrower, which isn't really that hard. Now, don't forget that if thousands of people go to your site every day, this could happen maybe about 50 times a day. Which means that you loose $18 times about 50, every day. That adds up to a lot of money.

Maybe that helped, if not it may have helped someone else. The moral of the story is a quote, something that my web design teacher always says, "REMEMBER YOUR AUDIENCE". This is very true. Make your website accessable to as many people as you can. You can't always make it accessible to everyone, but the more, the better. Put yourself in the user's shoes and think about what they want.