Show us your sites!

[slavelle]

Steve,

Just wanted to comment that your site looks good and seems to be functional. I found it interesting that you created scrolling iframes and pulled another xara created html into them. This is actually a pretty interesting idea and one I wouldn't have thought of - I've thought primarily about really strictly written html for "easy editing" would be brought in there.

Regarding the Swish-created page. Except for the intro animation, which "could" be done with Xara Flash, though it would be harder in my opinion than Swish in this case, all of the rest of the map stuff could be done without Flash at all, using popup layers instead, which would be easier to manage and would allow you some of the other thoughts that Paul made above - maybe a mouseover and regular popup layer to show like you have things on hover now and a locking popup that has more pictures, restaurant listings, or even a little video. There are a lot of options here, obviously - my point is that you may want to think of redesigning that part from the perspective of simplicity in future updating. I don't think it would "miss" the flash startup of that page, especially if the content were made more compelling than some links and a small thumbnail.

Hope this is helpful.

[adcsigns]

just wanted to share. thanks to all you wonderful experts that contributed to its completion.

Paul

http://www.adcsigns.com

[salaam]

I have now finished? my site if anyone would share their views. (still not 100% in FF).
http://www.bartley-associates.com
This page displays after completing the form.
http://www.bartley-associates.com/thanks.htm

Thanks
Anas

[pauland]

Hi Anas,

A few things to consider:

The candidate and client services flash banner - too much bling! The banner is pretty distracting and gets annoying because it changes too quickly - it never rests on a message and the animation is in all kinds of different directions.

Most menus will react to a mouse-over giving feedback about the position of the mouse.

Sometimes it's hard to tell what is a clickable link and what isn't. Contact us for example - looks like regular text until the mouse goes over it.

Paul

[salaam]

Thanks for looking Paul.
Concerning the menu, the pointer should change to a hand as the mouse over effect?
You are probably right about the flash animation but I hope the client is OK with it.
Maybe I need a bit more 'bling' with the menu and less with the banner.

Anas

[zaphodeist]

Pointer does change here, though I must agree the banner is a bit distracting, especially as the site itself is nicely restrained and 'clean'

[cursor]

Nice colors & transparency usage. For me, the background images seem to take forever to load (on every page).

[pauland]

Thanks for looking Paul.
Concerning the menu, the pointer should change to a hand as the mouse over effect?

Yes it does, but my expectation is for it to change the background colour to the 'selected' colour on mouseover.

You are probably right about the flash animation but I hope the client is OK with it.
Maybe I need a bit more 'bling' with the menu and less with the banner

Be interesting to see the clients view. I have spent DAYS re-doing flash animations for clients!

Definitely no more bling on the menu!

Paul

[slavelle]

One thing you could do to make the mouseovers work better and have a more obvious target would be to put a box of the same color as the background behind the text and mave the link associated with that as well (if you want to leave the text on the menu as text, though multiple text lines have their own issues.

Otherwise, you could take that box and the text and group them (which will make them a graphic) and link that whole group and mouseover the whole group with another similar but highlighted group.

Not more bling really, but extra function, and having the highlights makes it obvious where the menu items are and what there is to click on.

Hope that helps.

[salaam]

Thanks for the suggestions.
I have reduced the banner bling and increased the menu bling.
One style of mouse-over is on the Home page and another is on the Contact page. I am more inclined to the arrows.

Anas