site critique

pontovic

Hi

I have uploaded the first stage of development of a site I'm working on--

http://www.latinagirlproductions.com

I'd like an honest opinion. Design was difficult because the client insisted they wanted a heart in the middle of the site, so this is what I have come up with. I;ll fix the two validation errors tonight. The site is designed to work in all browsers from ie5 and up on the PC, although it behaves strangely on ie5.5 on the mac.

Any comments welcome.

Thanks

CoNfOuNd

I think it's well designed, professionally coded, accessible etc.

If you go into the literature section, it looks like the literature logo is slightly skewed, whereas the art and music logos look perfect.

Would it look better or worse without the black border line on the main page?

pontovic

thanks I want to make it as usable and as accessible as possible. I'll have to look into that logo issue. I do want to remove the black border, but I need to expand the decoration on the bottom, and to do that I need to get myself illustrator.

I'm trying to make the best of my client requirements but at the end of the day the user must be happy for the site to be a success. I'm trying to strike a good balance to keep me happy, my client happy, and the user happy most of all.

forbairt

... The site isn't working for me ... oh .. is that cus I turned javascript off ? ... a number of users don't allow javascript ... this will cause problems for you ... add in a noscript to at least inform users that things won't work if JS is turned off ...

not too keen on the colours but that could be just me ...

Why does the logo change suddenly to black text with yellow when I go to view the album details ?

I don't like the black border on the site ...

just a few notes on what I've seen ..

pontovic

forbairt wrote: »

... The site isn't working for me ... oh .. is that cus I turned javascript off ? ... a number of users don't allow javascript ... this will cause problems for you ... add in a noscript to at least inform users that things won't work if JS is turned off ...

Ok fair enough, adding in the <noscrit> was one thing I have on the list, but the site will require users to have javascript for now

forbairt wrote: »

not too keen on the colours but that could be just me ...

Neither am I, but thats what the client insisted on, along with having a heart in the middle. I had to make this work the best I could.

forbairt wrote: »

Why does the logo change suddenly to black text with yellow when I go to view the album details ?

I'll have to change that tonight. Was playing around with colours but you have a point, consistency needs to be kept up.

forbairt wrote: »

I don't like the black border on the site ...

I'm working on taking that off at the moment.

Thanks for the feedback

randombar

Not sure about the hovering pop up div, i mean i know you have to design sites for the most basic users and all that but surely people would know to click on the three icons?

Then again that's just my opinion!

I know on my site no one goes to their respective county using the clickable map!

pontovic

Yep, infact I'm thinking of a functional redesign. I'm going to scrap the hover over prompts and have at least one section open (possibly music) when the user visits.

I'll add links for all three sections to the top nav and some along the bottom, (Privacy policy, terms and conditions etc).

I think that would be much better.

I could then completely move away from reliance on javascript...

di11on

Just a quick comment - I like the look - I think it suits very well your subject and it's different too which is good.

When I hover over any of the three hot spots and the box comes up with Click for XXX, my natural instinct is to try and click inside the box, but then it moves with me... I would do either of two things.... either have the box appear and remain stationary so I can click inside it, or have it more like a speech bubble or cloud, transparent, appearing to the top right rather than the bottom right.

Maybe it's just me though?

pontovic

thanks for all the input !!