Another website to crit.

[stuluk28]

Hey I've been currently working on a portfolio website – I say currently I've been so busy with other projects & an exhibition I've only manages to spend 2 days on this so far, one to design and layout and another to code it.

As it's been so quickly completed I already know there's hundred of tweaks and changes that I need to apply, I was hoping some of you guys could take a look too as you'll probably notice things that I'll miss.

I'm quite open minded, if even the slightest thing is bothering you let me know, I'm happy for you to be as critical as you want.

I know there's not much content on there at the moment, obvious that will come with time. For now my main priority at the moment is the portfolio section of the website – I'm currently trying to find a job and this site shows more than a simple CV can!

The site is http://www.lukesturgeon.co.uk

Any thoughts?

 

[ISDProductions]

i like the concept, my main thing is I think the animation is a bit too slow...I feel like I'm waiting to long.

 

[ian]

The homepage looks too blank, and I agree with the comment above about things being too slow, especially the way the text loads.

 

[stuluk28]

Hey thanks for those pointers. I've increased the speed of the movie and the text & animations run faster now. I've also changed some of the content in the portfolio section now and altered the scroll buttons so that they're always visible.

I'm not sure what to do about the home page being too plain. I was thinking about using a simple patterned background. maybe even going as far as adding some PHP so it randomly selects one of say 6 different background patterns each time the page is viewed?

Any more thoughts?

 

[ISDProductions]

a nice big logo would suit that space nicly, or maybe a more non-traditional navigation could go there (keeping the navigation you have incase folks get confused) Your using flash, so why not be flashy, show off a bit? Just don't fall into the flash trap of all glitter and no content and I'm sure it will be good. P.S. I'm liking it alot more now, I really like your use of ease in the navigation when you click on a different topic your obviously talanted with flash, can't wait to see it when its done.

 

[stuluk28]

hey thanks for the positive remarks as well as the useful criticism. I appreciate it. I've altered the background now but only subtly, I don't want the background to overwhelm the main site content however, this way it fills the void a little.

I've also added a slight gradient at the top, but because of the file size it's causing my main flash file to hold a couple of seconds before displaying making the gradient 'jump' into place. I'm gonna have to look at this!

I like the idea of adding a more experimental and 'creative' navigation system. I will definately look into this although I might wait until the rest of my site is at a more complete level.

I don't suppose there's anyone PHP guy out there who knows what it'd take to random load an image say out of a pool of 6 and display it as the background tile? I had something similar using ASP once, but that was an old site and I've got PHP to play with now. I'm sure it'd only be a single line of code but I'm not that familiar with PHP yet.

Any thoughts?

 

[ISDProductions]

Image rotation script, not exactly a line of code, but easy enough to just plug in:

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/randomizer/

Also, with a recent update, IE6 users now must click to activate flash before they can click anything else, I have noticed this with your page... here is a walk around:

1) Just below the last <object> in your HTML page, insert the following Javascript:

<script type="text/javascript" src="ieupdate.js"></script>

2) Open a new document in Notepad or your HTML editor, and copy & paste the following content into it:

theObjects = document.getElementsByTagName("object");
for (var i = 0; i < theObjects.length; i++) {
theObjects.outerHTML = theObjects.outerHTML;
}

3) Save this file as ieupdate.js

4) Upload both files to your webserver, and the problem should be solved.

I hope this helps...

 

[stuluk28]

Thanks for your help that's great. I've 'hopefully' added that script to the correct part of my html and uploaded the javascript file. You can test it at http://www.lukesturgeon.co.uk/main.html

I was wondering if you could check and let me know if it's working, it's just I'm using Mac and the most recent version of IE I can find is around .5 so I've got no way of checking that it's done the job.

I found some funky help for randomly loading a background image too thanks, so I'll create some more bground gifs and then re-post to let you guys take a look.