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Advice on webpage?
Hi forum,
Thanks to lots of help from the forum here, I've created my first XXP5 website.
Please do have a critical look at it and let me know your opinion please.
I'm aware the contact page is not showing the address yet.
I already received remarks that the page will not load automatically (index.htm)
unless you add a '/' (slash). I have no clue what may be the reason....
At first I thought it might have to do with dns entries, but previously I had a simple OpenOffice writer page saved as index.htm and this loaded without any problem.
Here's the link: diamond-centenaire.be
Don't spare me, I can only learn.
Erwin
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Re: Advice on webpage?
Hi Erwin
Only had a quick look
-- Globe took a while to load.
-- Text contrast with background a bit low.
-- Text alignment ragged (English version).
Good start for a first try :)
Drwyd
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Re: Advice on webpage?
Hello Erwin
The page loaded fine for me. I have cable so most pages load very quickly.
Your animated flags were created over a white background and so there is a white fringe around each flag.
If you created the animations yourself, then recreate them using a darker background and the white fringe will disappear.
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Re: Advice on webpage?
Thanks for your comments,
Gary, didn't make the animated flags myself. Was annoyed at the white rim myself. Have been thinking of converting them to flash. Could this be a solution?
Drwyd, fully agree with you.
Have also experienced on slower connections, that the graphics will first load as white squares - find this very ugly.
Is there some way to cover this up? Have the background colour display?
Erwin
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Re: Advice on webpage?
Just my opinion:
Your background is too dark.
The white around the animated flags degrades the site.
Other than that I do like the site.
I am still working on my first new site using Xara 5 pro.
Good luck with your site,
Mike
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Re: Advice on webpage?
Nice looking design, but it's all a bit dark. Globe is beautiful, but loads rather slowly.
The white fringe around the flags is awful. But even if you'd manage to remedy that, I would use small stationary flags. That will look more elegant, matching the style of your website. Also, include a Spanish and an English flag.
By the way, the flags are wrongly linked, redirecting to the wrong languages.
I don't quite understand the navigation on the 'Press' page, with different kinds of buttons. Things get even more confusing on the 'Links' page, with another row of buttons (in yet another style).
As a matter of fact, after some more browsing, I got lost. You need to rethink the navigation of your site.
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Re: Advice on webpage?
I think I would have less trouble with the dark background if there were more contrast. A lot of the body text looks gray where it needs to look white so that it stands out against the navy. If your text is already white, then the problem is caused by the size of the text — IOW, it's too small to be used this way.
I'm guessing that your design concept is something like a dark blue velvet presentation box that shows off the sparkles in the gems. I like that idea, but you haven't got enough "sparkle" yet.
The flags do get in the way on the home page. They could be quite a bit smaller and still get the point across. If you're going to keep them waving, you do need to redo them in flash. If necessary, build them on a background that's the same color as the background in the website.
Also, the larger images of the jewelry look too soft to me. Did you resize those images? Sometimes I get much sharper detail by shrinking the original photo to the dimensions I need in the destination (the ring photo I just measured was 272x248 without the white frame), making a bitmap copy at a very high resolution (say 600 dpi/ppi), then exporting the bitmap copy at 96 dpi/ppi to use in the website.
Hope this helps,
Allison
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Re: Advice on webpage?
Unless you created the animated gif flags yourself it's going to be very difficult to remove the white fringes either via gif or flash.
I would also question why the language side of your site is given such prominence. Most multilingual sites just have small icons to allow visitors to select the language of choice and then serve up the complete site in that language. In other words you may have a navigation system that has Home / About / Rings / Necklaces / Bracelets / Contact Us etc. Clicking on the Spanish flag serves up these pages in Spanish as well as the menu bar etc.
The spinning globe doesn't highlight your business, diamonds do. The large diamond image is weak/lost in the other graphics. It needs to be the most prominent graphic in my opinion.
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Re: Advice on webpage?
Well you could make the flag yourself if you have xara 3D(6).
Not as good as these ones, but still.
http://www.talkgraphics.com/showthre...highlight=flag
(Yeah I know, I am plugging my own stuff ;) )
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Re: Advice on webpage?
I am sorry to be picky, but when I went to your English page, the text seemed to be jaggedly and portions of the text was very confusing. I got lost :(