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please take a look at our site at www.norrissignworks.com and let us know what you think. all comments and suggestions are welcome. Thanks and have a nice day!
-------------------- Norris Sign Works 102 Doogle Lane Shallotte, N.C. 28470 Posts: 117 | From: Shallotte, N.C. USA | Registered: Jan 1999
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I think it looks good. If it were me I would tone down the background image. It makes it very busy and hard to focus on the images. Another thing that really bothers me is music on a website. Of course, that's just me. The overall layout looks great!
-------------------- Amy Brown Life Skills 101 Private Address Posts: 3502 | From: Lake Helen, FL, USA | Registered: Feb 2001
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I thought that the music wouldn't bother me, but when I heard it... well sorry Buddy, but I guess we all have different tastes. I agree with amy on the background as well. A lot of textured backgrounds I've seen that work could be a light greyscale or even with your tourquoise (sp) colors but low contrast and somewhat transparent. Otherwise content looks good.
The site looks pretty good. There are some nice signs in there.
I would agree with the above as well. The music is a tad imposing for me and the background gets a little busy and detracts from the images.
Other than that, I like the feel of it and like the consistant accessability of the buttons on the left as well.
-------------------- --If you don't care where you are, you ain't lost.
Tony Potter Blind Mice and Company 3001 Bever Ave. SE Cedar Rapids, IA 52403 (319) 573-9001 www.blindmiceandcompany.com tonypotter@yahoo.com Posts: 209 | From: Cedar Rapids, IA | Registered: Nov 1999
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Please don't take this in any way as an offence, I'm just pointing out a few things that I learnt in my last web design course. I agree with the last statements about toning down the background. See if you can get by with a more neutral sort of a background, where it is not the focus, but the content on the page is. Just a reccomendation, but perhaps a plain coloured background would work best on the front page. You can find out the hex code for colours by going into photoshop and getting information on the colour that you want.
The bar across the top looks a little out of place, as it does not extend across the rest of my screen. This is because my monitor is set at the highest res setting. Perhaps fading it out to transparent or putting a reccommeded resoloution note on the page would help (eg. This site is best viewd with internet 4.0 or above, at 400 by 600 or something along those lines). In nearly all cases, you should design around the lowest common denominator, that being for a person who can only view 400 by 600, which it seems you have done most of the way. See if you can get that opening page picture to align itself underneath the header bar, and it will look a lot neater and tidier. Same goes for the contact info down the bottom, and the mud map.
Music is ok on a personal website, but unless your site is for a music company, it is not usually reccommended for a company website. However, I didn't get any music when I opened the site, so maybe you have gotten rid of that.
Sorry if it seems like I have ripped your site to pieces, I didn't really mean to. I do like it by the way, they're just tips and ideas on how to make it look a little more professional.
Also, see if you can incorperate the colours of your logo into the colour scheme of the site. At the moment, you're using a bright blue and red as your main colours, which kinda drown out the more muted colours of your logo on the front page. Again, just an idea.
All in all though, it still looks good, ok? Sorry bout the rant...
From Kat.
-------------------- From Kat Johnston (previously Katie Wright, for those who can remember that far back) Posts: 530 | From: Brisbane, Australia | Registered: Feb 1999
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If the background weren't so busy, the page might open a whole lot faster. Slow pages can kill.
I never browse with sound enabled, except to a music site. Before I learned how to shut it off, surfing sounded like spinning the radio dial. Kind of a hoot when one was a stoned teenager, but irritating otherwise.
-------------------- Bruce Williams Lexington KY Posts: 945 | From: Lexington, KY, USA | Registered: Mar 1999
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6.8 seconds. That is how long people are willing to wait for a page to load, before they try elsewhere. At least, that's what studies say
Kat
-------------------- From Kat Johnston (previously Katie Wright, for those who can remember that far back) Posts: 530 | From: Brisbane, Australia | Registered: Feb 1999
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The way to possibly fix up the excess space and weird spacing, is to do the lot as a table. Create your site, in 400 by 600 format, centre that, with your page information (not menu bar stuff) in a cell inset into the larger table. Now, make your background in your table a light grey (example), and make the background of the page a dark grey. This will centre the eye on the highlighted area, make your website more viewable, as it is centred on the page, and lose the need for a background, as there is enough interest with the colour change, without the 'in your face' style background. If you do use a background at all, make it a simple, non-obtrusive texture.
If you want some help seeing what that would look like, feel free to send me all the graphics etc, and I can do a mock up for you. I have a bit of spare time at the moment, so I don't mind doing that for you.
Kat.
Oh, and if you have a computer image of your logo, in gif/jpg/photoshop format, that'd be appreciated too, if you do decide to let me have a quick stab at it
-------------------- From Kat Johnston (previously Katie Wright, for those who can remember that far back) Posts: 530 | From: Brisbane, Australia | Registered: Feb 1999
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