My Final Revamp - Strov-Graphics [new url too]

**David Strover** · 20 April 2016, 12:21 PM

http://www.strov-graphics.co.uk/

This is the final revamp of the few websites I have created or maintained using Xara.

I'm not trying to rule the Internet or take work away from proper designers and web-designers or anything, (I know my place in the overall scheme of things) and if I'm honest the most common visitor to most of my sites is....me!

I changed the web-hosting because iPage were too bloomin' expensive.

This one holds some of my infographics/graphics which in the coming years will be mainly about Swindon Wildcats IHC (in the UK) but the archive section holds other work I posted onto the old site during the last few years. All of the work included was created from scratch or assembled in Xara Designer Pro X11.

I know it's not perfect and I will dip back in and out to fix or change things but honestly it's audience will be very small most of whom never seem to notice any errors at all!

Cheers
David

**gwpriester** · 20 April 2016, 12:42 PM

Love the bold graphic look David!

Don't love the animation effects on the photos though. Keep it simple. The blow up of the photos is enough. Or use something less cute for the mouse over animation. It detracts from the clean graphic quality of the sight.

(My opinion of course).

**David Strover** · 20 April 2016, 12:49 PM

Hi Gary,

Yes, to be honest I was playing about with stuff, so a lot of the animations will disappear. I've got to think about a mobile variant too but it is going to have to be fairly different from the main version, too many images.

Cheers
David

**xtom** · 20 April 2016, 01:49 PM

Yeah I find some of those wobble affects can be annoying, not just on your site but in general. Maybe if they were sped up or just used on one button/image it wouldn't be as bad. With all these new fancy animations and effects we have to experiment where best to use them and try not to go overboard. Nice clean site overall though.

**pauland** · 20 April 2016, 02:36 PM

"My final revamp" is a phrase bound to invite a fall!

Where the navbar is positioned the background goes from red to a grey. Unfortunately the edge of the red isn't straight, nor does the navbar quite align with it, so you can get slivers of the background showing between the button ops and the colour transition.

The front is way to busy and do we really need to repeat graphics and information.

If you put more space between the text in a box and the box sides, it would look better and be easier to read.

I agree about the over-use of effects.

Paul.

**David Strover** · 20 April 2016, 03:37 PM

Originally Posted by pauland

"My final revamp" is a phrase bound to invite a fall!

Where the navbar is positioned the background goes from red to a grey. Unfortunately the edge of the red isn't straight, nor does the navbar quite align with it, so you can get slivers of the background showing between the button ops and the colour transition.

The front is way to busy and do we really need to repeat graphics and information.

If you put more space between the text in a box and the box sides, it would look better and be easier to read.

I agree about the over-use of effects.

Paul.

EDIT - Cheers Paul I've found it and hopefully with some work can fix it - I just couldn't see it originally but I have really good close up look and I've found it. Excellent. David

Hi Paul,

'Final Revamp' really means for this current spate of going a bit mad with websites, just bad wording, mind you I'll probably leave it now for a few months as I get very busy once the season starts.

Thanks for the once over - I will be getting rid of the animations etc and the front page will have other images rather the only one I've added at the moment.

The only problem I have is the nav-bar problem - I cannot seem to replicate what you have noted on any browser - perhaps it my old eyes or poor ability or something but I can find anything showing - also I will now double check but the red and grey blocks were made with shape in Designer and unless I nudge them I cannot see how they cannot be straight but you are more experienced than me and do this for a living so I will double check everything.

Cheers
David

**pauland** · 20 April 2016, 03:55 PM

Here you go.

Unfortunately the compression here hides the clear step and lines that I see.

**David Strover** · 20 April 2016, 04:15 PM

Thanks Paul, I found it - very annoying. Even more so looking at it through Designer on the design workspace and on the preview screens and it's not there. As a quick fix I've dropped the top grey block down now, so that the buttons show red against a grey background and then go grey on click - if that makes sense.

I guess that's the restriction of Xara and using professional software - I just couldn't see that on my laptop and it only showed up on publishing.