I Need Opinions

[Gaf The Horse With Tears]

Tell me what you think of this.

[Fierce Critter]

I have to run. But are you asking for webpage set-up critique?

First off, contacts last after everything else.

Besides that, I gotta run. More later if that's what you're after.

[Gaf The Horse With Tears]

well, it's the first page i have done in like... 10 years. any feed back would be great.

[Kit Kat P]

it looked okay for the brief few seconds I had it up. We don't have the fastest connection so the page was moving very slowly.

[Head Wreck]

indeed. might want to think about using vectored graphics like flash to do the animation. thats the only thing i can think of.

i ddont tend to like image heavy websites as some people still have tet to switch from dialup (silly i know but heyho).

http://walt.head-wreck.org

thats a work in progress and a lot of the traming etc was just tables within tables with margins and backgrounds set to fit,

one trick i have picked up is using php to manage common parts of the page and have the page call upon segments of html saved in other files. thi is very handy for menus etc, so you edit one file and changes for every page that calls apon it

[SuZQZ]

Overall feel is nice. It's clean. The links on the left seem a bit too far over. Almost lost on the left. The typeface after the bold is a bit light when viewing it on my Toshiba laptop's screen. May just be my laptop, but you might want to consider a thicker font, or maybe just adding a slight color block behind the text to anchor it or something. Personally, I like it a bit tighter with the bars. I like a nice spacing between sections, but it seems like a hair too much space, again, on this laptops screen.

Very nice work. I like the colors and the overall feel of it.

[Gaf The Horse With Tears]

Kat - thanks

HW - I would love to have the animation.. if it is working, be flash but I don't know flash at all. The graphics have to be there though. It's a show case for the building designs.. frankly, I am not allowed to do anything more that might diminish how good they look. As for the speed, not too much an issue. People who are going to invest in a 3-12 million dollar project are not on dial-up, but I will be optimizing the code and links once I get the overall look and feel perfect.

thanks

SuZ - Spacing will be less of an issue once the owner gives me more detail of what he wants the page to say. For now, at least for now if I get my way, that text is temporary until something better is provided.

and thanks I normally hate the color yellow except on sports cars. Something about that shade caught my eye and I went with it.

[Msterbeau]

Are you sure you want my opinion? :-)

First take into consideration that I'm a designer full time so my tastes tend toward the sophisticated and the avant guard - What I'm seeing is neither. That's not necessarily a bad thing but if, like you say, you're trying to sell zillion dollar projects, it is. I would do some more benchmarking and mimic the feel of some of the higher end sites. More detail, more subtle elements. I'm not suggesting that you need all kinds of fancy code, but you do want the visuals to draw in a discerning eye. I don't mind a little of the yellow but I think the quantity you have makes it feel cheap. Use some neutral/warm grays in there. Yellow should be the accent. The animation runs too fast and should stop after you've seen everything. It's distracting as hell looping. I would slow it down a bit... maybe make the transitions fade instead of the door opening effect. Again... more sophisticated. When the animation has run through all the images, I think it should either end up at the logo at the top center or at one of the images. Position it at the top of the page. The way the top graphic ends and then the left hand fades is a bad transition. The elements are too different. (I'm talking mainly about that squarish corner device compared to the fade from the left)

That's all for now...

[Gaf The Horse With Tears]

Have you been to Florida? Thats not too much yellow for Florida. Everything is fucking yellow. Also, compared to sites of higher end development firms (that have projects in the 10-100 million dollar range) this site is flashy. I've also taken into account the target audience and the people selling the ideas. They dont want to see a bunch of flash, they want to see the designs with a non-distracting yet complimenting frame. I looked at the sites of other development firms for a week straight, 8 hours a day. 9 in 10 are simple as simple can get. I got the impression that they dont want the frame to out shine the picture. As for the animation, as I said, thats only there till I can get something better put together.

I can't do it from an artistic point of view. I'm not making it to please myself. I have to create it from a salemans point of view. If that makes sense. I wish I were allowed to let the artist in me out.

[Scary Guy]

I hate yellow.

Your GIF files move too slow.

Needs more content.

Anything else was filtered out by my system.

[bav]

On the projects page, the 'project details' look like links but don't actually seem to be. Waiting for the information from your customer?

I would also look at making the font size on them a little larger or loose the bulleted list format for them - there's a fair amount of dead space between the size description of the company's client and the project details themselves.

I 2nd FC on that the contacts section should probably be at the bottom of the side-bar menu.

And the amount of yellow is a little much. While it may be all over Florida, not everyone who would be considering your client will be located in Florida. Especially because of the nature of their business (building anchor/big-box type of stores for a lot of regional/national chains), the people in charge of researching this company for prospective bids may be all over the country.

[Gaf The Horse With Tears]

If you would... please take another look and let me know what you think.

[freydis]

Personally? I don't think the side menu should be scrolling with the entire page. Or, make sure there's not enough on the page to require much scrolling.

And i know everything thats been said about the yellow..... but its not really a web-friendly color.

Also, compared to a few sites I looked up for comparison...... its kinda BIG.

[Scary Guy]

At the very least, define your font color. I can't read black text over a black background. Even with overrides my silver text over the current sunflare background thing is unreadable in parts. Also I doubt your background is actually black and that's just placed under the text.

Consider using a .CSS script, it makes things easier. Maybe even PHP although it does use up more processing power when doing so, makes doing common headers and links on the left a snap.

Here is a useful Firefox plugin for you https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/249

I also recommend double checking in Opera and *shudder* Internet Explorer because they render pages a bit differently.

Another useful (standalone) tool is http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html for checking dead links (not that you have any, just saying).

I don't know what you used to code with but you're also using way too much code to do way too little. You may want to tighten it up so you get faster page load times. I recommend (formerly Macromedia) Adobe Dreamweaver since it works amazingly well and is multimonitor friendly (meaning put your tools on one and have your workspace on another).

I used to know a program that would resize the browser window to different resolutions to see how it would look in them as well. I forgot the name though or even if it exists. You might want to search for it or change your resolution to check it in the different modes (multires is great for this task).

As it sits now it's a contestant for http://worstoftheweb.com, or ./dev/null so I'm glad you're seeking help.

If you can afford it hire http://www.2advanced.com to make you one. Although it will cost you an arm and a leg, and then your soul, it's worth it.

Finally http://warpedvisions.org/projects/how-to-t...-web-page-sucks

[Scales]

I think you improved the header a lot, for a plainer look I think it works. I don't care for the background image, the background of the side menu table, the page flip, and the text could probably be spruced up with a better font and some shadowing to give it a sleeker more professional feel. My two cents, I suck at web design myself.

[Gaf The Horse With Tears]

OK, one more time... I did a near complete re-tooling.

[freydis]

I like the way its organized and the navigation much better.

But that bright freaking yellow background.....is painful to look at.

heh.

maybe more like a goldenrod color? Other than that, lookin good.

[the eternal]

I think it's a big improvement over the original site

I like the yellow. I don't see it very often, so it sticks out in my mind more.

The biggest test for a lamen like me is:

Is it easy to navigate?

Would I be comfortable giving this company my business, based on the information provided?

Yes, yes.

[Winter Steele]

I think the color choices are good and content might be a bit too lengthy. However, good overall presentation.

[Fierce Critter]

I like the look.

One correction: The top header link bar, take the "s" off the end of "contacts us".

And speaking as a former copy editor, break up the homepage into paragraphs as such:

Creighton Commercial Development specializes in the development of retail, mixed use and lifestyle commercial centers anchored by AAA rated national and regional tenants, as well as office, industrial-flex and multi-family projects.

(is there or isn't there supposed to be a hyphen in industrial-flex? Pick one and stick with it.)

Projects include establishments such as big box, restaurants, cinemas, hotels, office and industial flex space.

Creighton Commercial Development performs all aspects of the development process including acquisition, site planning, entitlement, environmental evaluations, architectural and engineering design and project development as well as project sales and/or leasing. (you forgot an "n" in environmental)

Creighton Commercial Development also performs these services for outside development projects.

(notice my re-write of the last paragraph.)

[Fierce Critter]

If possible, put some kind of large-print, bold statement at the bottom sewing-up what Creighton can do for them. Some kind of one-line slogan such as "Creighton Commercial Development is ready to work for you." or something of that ilk. Talk to your marketing guys/gals about that. They probably have something they use already.

[Scary Guy]

I'm pleased with it.

[Destroit]

Personally I like the design alot, it's very bold and gets to the point. Personally, this will sound dumb, but the only thing I could really really pick out that doesn't feel quite right is the introductory paragraph. The entire site has a very squeaky clean look to it, however, the beginning paragraph is up too high (not centered) and believe it or not little things like that have a psychological impact, especially if it's from diserning buyers and especially if they're loaded with cash. I would move it down a little so that it's in the center of the black.

I personally like the yellow alot, but then again for some odd reason I like yellow now and I used to hate it. The yellow is effective because psychologically speaking yellow and green are "power colors" they display dominance, in the business world whether the customers will even realize it, that sort of dominant attitude goes away.

[Head Wreck]

massive improvement!

[Gaf The Horse With Tears]

Thanks peeps. I tried to take all comments and criticisms into account during the rewrite.

and FC, very good idea. I'll get that done, along with other minor changes tommorrow. Need a space here, and extra space there tob e removed... maybe some more god damn content for the projects.