Some Constructive criticism please

ilya

ilya

Experienced Member
Joined
7 February 2001
Messages
1,617
Location
CORONA, CA USA
I wasn't sure which section to post this topic under, but figured Off-Topic would be a safe bet.

As some of you know, I have been putting together a basic website for NSX Modified. It's not for profit from my end, but something I wanted to do for them.

Although it is not 100% done, I have just completed the basic design and format of the site. I am posting here to get some opinions and constructive criticism on the look and functionality of the site.

Please note that it is not complete. Much of the text is filler and not representative of the actual vehicles or products. Some text is also not aligned yet and some link are not functional. However, the majority of the graphics are complete and most of the links do work.

I would appreciate feedback on the compatibility of the format with your browser. It was designed for 800X600 viewing with the browser maximized. If you run 1024X768 or higher, everything will be rather small as I have not completed that portion yet. However, it should still look fine and function properly.

Here is the link to the temporary geocities test site: www.geocities.com/nsxmodified

Any constructive criticism and feedback is appreciated. Although graphics may look good on my monitor, it can be too dark or very different on another. My main concern is that everything maintains it's layout, is visible, loads relatively quickly, and is easy to navigate. It's a work in progress.
Also, there should be almost zero broken links. If you see a missing image anywhere, please let me know.

I would also like to know the visibility of the graphics and background. The background was done in Photoshop with a lot of detail overlapping images. It is very visible on my monitor and looks excellent. Dark enough not to distract from the text and images, but bright enough to see all the detail. Please let me know if the background is far too dark on your screen to make anything out. I may have to lighten it.

Please make sure the Home Page has a background behind the featured cars and is not just white. Please make sure that the background is a single image that remains static as the foreground scrolls. Oh... and kill any geocities popups that get in your way!


Thanx for any feedback.

BTW- It is designed for Explorer 5.0 or greater. I do not think it will work properly with Netscape yet.

[This message has been edited by ilya (edited 21 May 2002).]

[This message has been edited by ilya (edited 21 May 2002).]
 
 
Looks good. You might try using Photoshop's Save for Web feature, and knock the thumbnails down in size for faster loading. I took one down from 18K to 13K with little difference in quality. I like your icons.
 
POS Geocities!
Exceeded data transfer limit, down for one hour. achhh.

Well, at least it was up for a while. Guess it should be up again in an hour.

Thanks for the info. I access the site from work over a T-line so it's not representative of access times over a modem.
All the thumbnails are jpg and shouldn't be over 30-40K each, but I could work to make them a bit smaller in size. I'm still using an old Photoshop 4.0 CD w/o the web features.
redface.gif



[This message has been edited by ilya (edited 21 May 2002).]
 
My only problem with the site is that it doesn't use much of the screen. I run at 1920x1200 on a large widescreen monitor...

------------------
--akira3D
'00 Acura NSX-T (red/black), '97 Honda Civic HX (black), '01 Lexus IS300 (black/black)
"Reality is better than the dream..."

akira3d.com/nsx
 
The site looks good. Your right about the small view for 1024. I like your usage of "iframe".

So the price for that turbo is only 5k? I have tried calling Larry about the turbo, but those guys are like on vacation or something, all i get is the voice mail.

Let me know if you need a basic flash intro, i'll do it for free. This was the last intro i did.
<a href="http://www.planetrims.com">click</a>
 
The problem with my usage of a static image in a set frame is I can not resize it. It would look horrible if the browser stretched the image to fit the screen. When all is done, I will have two versions. One for 800X600 and one for 1024X768 which are the two most common. I don't think Netscape supports that usage of iframe as it does not work at all in my ver of Communicator. Not sure what I'll do about that yet.

Larry was at the OTC with Doug all last week. He's back and I just spoke with him today. It's one reason this will be a simple site with info and pricing... no online purchasing or orders. He's too busy fixing cars to keep up with it.

Thanks for the info Eric. I wish I could help, but I don't have an uber-monitor anywhere near the size of yours to make an image in that resolution. You graphic artists get all the cool toys.


[This message has been edited by ilya (edited 21 May 2002).]
 
Hi ilya,

Here's a suggestion for you.

I run my monitor at 480x640. I realize that this is not typical, and I don't expect anyone to customize their web page just for me. HOWEVER...

Right now the screens have two vertical scroll bars - one for the box inside the border that you have created, and one created by the browser because the web page is too tall to appear in its entirety on the screen. I tested one of the pages at 600x800 and it's still too tall. I find it very confusing and user-unfriendly to have two different scroll bars on the page.

What I would suggest is to (a) place the icon links (products, parts, services, etc) at the top of the page, rather than the bottom (so they are easy to find); (b) also add NSX Modified's name/logo at the top of each page; and (c) get rid of the scroll bar on the box inside your web page. Instead, just include the content (what's inside the box, without the border) as the entire web page. Let the browser create the vertical scroll bar. That will give you the entire width of the page in your scrolling area, as well as avoiding the confusion of two vertical scroll bars.

HTH
 
Ilya, that looks AWESOME.

I'm using nightly Mozilla builds. (Last compiled 10:43am. (The heart of Netscape 6.xx.)

It works perfectly.

On the main page though, it has only one picture per line. Not the side by side shown on your screenshot. (I am running at 1600x1200 on a 22" monitor so I don't believe the resolution is the problem... it's prob just Mozilla.)

either way, it looks great! keep it up and see you at the canyon run.
 
Thanks for the info guys.

You are right that I still have some more tinkering and adjustment to do with the design. By deciding to use a static background, I can not eliminate the internal scroll bar and keep the image. Backgrounds will repeat continuously and tile in a browser. If using an image it looks horrible. The only way to maintain the image I know of is to use iframe. It allows for a static image as a background. If I were to change that, I could not use the image at all or any static image as a background.
However, I may be able to increase the size of the image to 1024X768 and fit the featured car thumbnails within that resolution. That would eliminate the internal frame and scrolling. Anyone running below 1024X768 would just scroll the main browser to move down and see everything like any other page.

Maybe I can leave the format as is and just adjust the thumnails to fit the 640X480 background in the frame. That would eliminate the scroll bar in the frame as well.

As you can see I'm more of a graphics guy than a web designer.
smile.gif
There was a lot of stuff I wanted to do that just wasn't feasible as a web page.
 
Ilya, so is Larry's turbo kit considered "commercially available" yet?

I saw on the site that the price is $5k installed and tuned!

Not sure about others, but I for one am very interested in this kit, specially after seeing that the BBSC is more suitable for track driving than street. I am looking for much significant mid-range torque improvements, and I suspect this turbo will provide that (at least that is what I am hoping for).

Any dyno charts for Larry's turbo available yet?
 
Looks great. The only thing that bugged me was the red modified. When I was trying to read the text I noticed I kept scrolling past this so I could read better.
 
Ok. Your webpage is pretty good overall IMO. The colour scheme is good but if I were you, I'll change the colour of the text (make it slightly blue than bold white). Also, change the font size, just make it smaller....perhaps size 8.

Hey, if you are in charge of maintaining the site, I can help you with graphics a little bit (you don't have to pay me
smile.gif
), just e-mail me at [email protected] if ya need help. Just to showcase my graphics capabilities, here are few of my sites...http://nsx.digitalrice.com and http://biobasis.digitalrice.com/affection http://squareinfinity.com .

Don't mind the subject on http://biobasis.digitalrice.com/affection, it's for a school project
biggrin.gif
.


[This message has been edited by Jeffry (edited 26 May 2002).]
 
Just got back from my vacation this weekend.

Geocities is just temp while I'm still testing and changing the site. I uploaded the site there just so you guys could see it and give me some feedback. It will have it's own dedicated domain once it goes up official.

Also, don't mind most of the text for now. It's just filler I created until I have the real info to post from Larry. The turbo kit IS around 5K installed though last time I asked for the basic package. Full details will go up on the final site once I have them.

I agree about the red modified, it doesn't match either. I originally had it a much more subdued color that blended with the background. The official logo is like that with red modified and they wanted me to change it that way. I may find a darker red or give that layer more opacity to try to get it to blend better with the background.
 
Hi Ilya,

Here is a solution to your 'fixed background image with no tiling'. This will not work with Netscape 4 (the image won't appear). I'm sure there is a way to do it using NS (layers comes to mind). I could investigate that if you want; let me know.

Anyway, here is a simple page. Make sure you change the image name/directory to make it work.

Code: 
body{
margin:0px;padding:0px;
background:#ffffff url("nsx.gif") fixed no-repeat top left;
}

Replace 'top' and/or 'left' with the number of pixels the image will be placed from the top or left of screen (or you can use 'center' to center the image).

Hope this helps.

Crap; I can't figure out how to post HTML with the UBB SW (it always strips the HTML from the post). Aint that a kick in the butt, I'm giving technical advice, but can't even figure out how to post.

I'll email you Ilya.

[This message has been edited by milz50 (edited 04 June 2002).]
 

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