New Website for my Record Label

[Tim Julian]

Hi all,

I've just put together my new website for my homegrown record label, Fragile Colours Music. It all operates on a shoestring and I found Xara to be a wonderful tool for putting it all together. I'd be interested in any feedback on it, any comments/suggestions much appreciated

www.fragilecolours.com

Any photos on the site that needed editing were done with Magix software, and the recording software that I use in the studio is Magix Samplitude Pro V11, a totally amazing product.

Cheers,

Tim

[gwpriester]

Cheers Tim

Welcome to TalkGraphics

Very nice work.

[zaphodeist]

Very well put together Tim, it works smoothly and has its own feel. Being a fan of Dr Feelgood I enjoyed the Brilleaux snippets especially

Good luck with your projects

[pauland]

A couple of comments - I haven't looked too hard.

The menu bar is very hard to read without mousing over.

Your logo is a jpg making the colours rather wishy washy - particularly the red, because of compression artifacts. I think your logo deserves to be a PNG so it can look it's best.

Nice work.

[Tim Julian]

Thanks guys, it was a bit of a learning curve.

Pauland, I've had a look at the menu bar, there seems to be something in the text formatting that is giving it an 'embossed' or 'engraved' look, I tried making the text larger but they became worse. Not sure how to go about fixing that one, but I'll persevere with it. I've got a PNG for the logo, will get that updated soon.

Cheers,

Tim

[gsthunder]

Thanks guys, it was a bit of a learning curve.

Pauland, I've had a look at the menu bar, there seems to be something in the text formatting that is giving it an 'embossed' or 'engraved' look, I tried making the text larger but they became worse. Not sure how to go about fixing that one, but I'll persevere with it. I've got a PNG for the logo, will get that updated soon.

Cheers,

Tim

Overall I like your site and think you did a good job. However, I agree with the other member that it is very hard to read the navbar. The issue is there are 2 lines of text on the buttons in the Satin Sheen Horizontal navbar you used. The background one is set slightly lower than the front line to give a shadow, or embossed effect, as you say. 3 things you can do...

1 - Use your text tool and highlight the text on the navbar one button at a time( don't ungroup or modify the navbar in anyway - when the navbar is as it coems from the design gallery highlighting the text lets you recolor that top/front line ). Once it is highlighted go down to the bottom left and click on the color pallete/box. You have 2 options to "cheat" and make the shadow across the bottom go away...

A - The local fill color is the darker top line of text. If you want the text to be dark then select the local line color and make it the same color as the dark line of text( fill color ). This will add a line around the text which should cover the background text( increase/decrease line width to get the desired effect ). Makes it look like BOLD text.

B - You can also choose to set the fill color to the light background color( white )which gives it a bold text look in white without any lines added. IMO lighter text on such a dark navbar background looks best but clearly your call. Maybe you could experiment with different shades of gray and see how it looks?

NOTE - doing A or B means that on mouse-over( if there is a different layer that shows - disabled on your site right now ) you will see a slight jump because the text will not be the exact same size anymore. Unfortunately this is the draw back of this easy cheat "IF" you will have a mouse-over effect. Seeing as you don't this cheat will work.

2 - You can ungroup the navbar and then each individual navbar tab/button and remove that 2nd line but it requires editing both the mouse-off and mouse-over layers. It is a pain to do it and you need to do so in the right sequence or when you are done and regroup the navbar it pulls the mouse-over layer to the front. Xara made an error in not allowing for easier editing of these navbars IMO.

3 - Your other option is to use a different navbar. Trader Horizontal is very, very, similar with the only real difference being round ends vs square w/ rounded corners on the one you used. The text however is just one line( i.e. no shadow/embossed effect ). Try swapping to that navbar and see if it will work for you visually.

Hope this helps. It is nice having navbars as part of Xara but like so many of these extras( the widgets, form builders, social media buttons, etc... )they either don't work well without tweaks and tricks being applied or you can't do much with them beyond what Xara presets them to do. So much time and effort is needed to make these things work right or to edit them( if you even can )that it isn't worth it most of the time. That is why I am keeping Webstyle4 and using it to make my navbars. Much more control over making them.

Good luck.

PS - FWIW your site is taking forever to open for me today.

[Tim Julian]

Thanks gsthunder,

the Nav Bar has been a bit of a pain for me in the webdesign process - I think I might follow your suggestion of replacing it with the Trader Horizontal. I tried making the bar bigger by resizing it (that's when the orange effect mouseover disappeared and wont come back). One of the acts is having a CD launch party this week, so I'll have some more photos to add and some news to put up, I'll try and fix the Nav Bar then.

Thanks so much for your input, very helpful! The server that my site is on is over here in New Zealand, so that may be part of the reason for the slowness of the loading.

Cheers,

Tim

[Jimmy399]

Outstanding design...I really like it.

suggestions:

The "Welcome" at the very top of the home page is unnecessary. You already say "Welcome" in your first paragraph.

You may want to consider a wider resolution (955) despite what all of the "books" say - the website will appear very narrow with small text on higher resolution monitors, which is what most users have.

maybe a different navbar/menu - with mouseover effects?

Good use of the popup photos for the photo gallery.

The photo on your "About" page has a link that doesn't do anything.

Add a contact form on your "Contact" page? Xara has widgets available that can be easily plugged in or you can use third-party software.

That's about it. Hope I haven't been to critical. Besides, these are just MY opinions - I'm not saying they are correct, appropriate or beneficial - just what I think might improve your design.

By the way - HOW DID YOU GET THE FACEBOOK THING TO WORK? - I haven't been able to figure that out yet.