New Dublin Robotics (1014) Site

[Deetman]

Over the summer and early fall we have developed the new version of our website. We are still working on adding content and other features for our team to use. I know the design doesn't fit 800x600 perfectly so I still need to do a little tweaking with and and any suggestions from you guys are always welcome.

www.dublinrobotics.com or www.badrobots.com

The badrobots URL is in reference to our t-shirts this past season, which had a robot picking up a stick figure and placing him in a movable goal with "BAD ROBOT!" written under it. We hope to continue this basic shirt theme idea, so we registered a domain accordingly.

[MrToast]

Very nice. I have no complaints.

MrToast

[rowe]

Let me start off with: your site is awesome. I love the rollover images on the menu. I like your graphic. The site seems really well laid out. OK, now to the critiquing, the links up in the top are repetitive, your menu system is not the complex that you need to display the most prominent links up top. You have a navigation bar on the top left, I like that, but I've noticed it only goes one layer in. I'd suggest that you follow it all the way in, for example: "Home - About Us - Bad Robot?" instead of just "Home - About Us". Don't stress about it, only do it if you can make sometime of PHP loop that is capable of generating the path for every page. I wouldn't suggest manually coding up every single page. Your search up in the top right isn't really clear that it is a search, I'd suggest a search button much like Chief Delphi's. A search button that yields a search field when clicked on, and an option for advanced search. Lastly, I'd try to make the FIRST logo a link to http://www.usfirst.org/. Other than those minor things, the 800x600 issue and a minor lack of content at the moment, it's an awesome site.

[jonathan lall]

Badass. The only two things from a stylistic perspetive I would take issue with are the aformentioned repetitive menu links (which look good but are a little silly when you think about it) and the fact that there is no cool graphic/focal point on the front page; there's only news. These of course are completely subjective, and everyone will have a differing opinion about them. Perhaps also the fact that there is no active or hover property for buttons could use tweaking, but that's an even smaller issue. As you said, the fact that it doesn't work in 800 x 600 is quite a large problem, and might be a tad harder to fix with tables (strange that you use them for a fixed-width site), but it shouldn't prove a problem, considering you were able to make such a good site.

[Kyle Love]

AWESOME site, but I have one suggestion...You need to make the background a little bit more colorful but don't over-do it with color...

-Kyle

Overall a great site the way it is though.

[rowe]

Originally Posted by Kyle45

AWESOME site, but I have one suggestion...You need to make the background a little bit more colorful but don't over-do it with color...

Now that it's mentioned, the background does seem lacking. I wouldn't put color in it though, I'd make it a gray to match the rest of the site, keep the gray lighter, but not strict white. You might want to make a little background image that is not distracting, yet keeps the eye occupied, even if it is in just the open space.

[Deetman]

I've made most (if not all) of the changes suggested here, including 800x600 compatibility, and I think the result turned out fairly nice. If you have any new opinions based on what I changed, just let me know.

Jonathon - I added a little bit of a focus point at the top of the first page, but I feel that it still needs a little something. Any suggestions?

[PCole]

Very well done.. I like the rollover effects.. good choice of colors.. looks nice.

One suggestion, at the bottom, maybe make an image for the shadow to finish at the bottom instead of just cutting off.

[rowe]

Looks very nice, but on certain pages, I get rendering problems in using Firefox 1.0 RC2. One page for example: http://www.dublinrobotics.com/index....13&Itemi d=41. It looks fine for a couple seconds, but then the copyright info jumps to the top left, and the white background disappears leaving the gray. The happens consistently on my computer, but someone check to make sure this problem is universal. Other than that, the changes are all for the better.

[Elgin Clock]

Originally Posted by Deetman

The badrobots URL is in reference to our t-shirts this past season, which had a robot picking up a stick figure and placing him in a movable goal with "BAD ROBOT!" written under it. We hope to continue this basic shirt theme idea, so we registered a domain accordingly.

Nice site overall, but not that user friendly with my resolution of 1024 x 768.
The text is very small. But, don't worry about it. I am used to websites not being up to par (i guess) when it comes to my preferred resolution.

BTW, any chance of trading shirts this year?? I love that Bad Robot concept, and would like a shirt from your team.
PM me if you are interested in trading.

[Deetman]

Originally Posted by rowe

Looks very nice, but on certain pages, I get rendering problems in using Firefox 1.0 RC2. One page for example: http://www.dublinrobotics.com/index....13&Itemi d=41. It looks fine for a couple seconds, but then the copyright info jumps to the top left, and the white background disappears leaving the gray. The happens consistently on my computer, but someone check to make sure this problem is universal. Other than that, the changes are all for the better.

I've noticed that a few times using 1.0PR, but I haven't been able to reproduce it. I made a few changes to the CSS just now and I haven't seen it happen since, but if you still get the rendering issue, let me know.

[karch]

preload your mouseover images and swap - don't force your user to redownload the images over and over again. it's distracting on the status bar, and it's not smooth.

other than that, it's cool.


one personal pet peeve, though... i've never been a big fan of the effect you used on dublinrobotics. but, that's just me.