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I'm redoing a website - please rate it! (for lure manufacturer)

SagaLore

Elite Member
Fellow ATOT peoples, your opinions are worth their weight in gold.

Unfortunately, opionions are weightless so I'm just trying to butter you up. After my enlightenment in using CSS for web design, I decided to overhaul my current website so it would load faster and look spiffier. Let me know if you like the template, and whatever suggestions you might have.

Here is the OLD site:

Hawg Buster Bait Company

Here is the NEW template I have created:

The NEW Hawg Buster Bait Company

😎
 
Looks good but I don't like the way the yellow top banner fades to black - just doesn't look right.
 


<< Looks good but I don't like the way the yellow top banner fades to black - just doesn't look right. >>



I was thinking about extending the header to overlap the black section a little before it started fading. Do you think that will fix the initial akwardness?
 


<< Looks good but I don't like the way the yellow top banner fades to black - just doesn't look right. >>



I'd say keep the fade, but align it to the far right

Where are your menu items?

Mark
 


<<

<< Looks good but I don't like the way the yellow top banner fades to black - just doesn't look right. >>



I'd say keep the fade, but align it to the far right

Where are your menu items?

Mark
>>



No menu items yet. I wanted to get the graphical template finished first. Then when it comes time to build the navigation, I'm going to create the menu on another page and load it with the Include Page component. That way when I change the menu, it get's changed on every page. I tried looking for any articles that suggested not to use the Include Page components, whether it suffered a performance hit or not - but all I could find were articles that actually encouraged it's use. So I'll just still to that for now until I learn ASP.
 
So functionally, it will be same? asthetics also looks very similar. hope you aren't charging much, b/c you aren't really doing much.
Or if you are charging a lot, i hope you can justify it somehow.

 
The new content area makes me feel all "scrunchy" It looks like you are going to have to get it in there with a pry bar.

Half of the screen (at my 1024x768) is that black void on the right. You should design it with 800x600 in mind, but that black really draws my eye over to that side, even more with the bright yellow scroll bar being the only thing over there.


Edit: The LOGO stands out more now, that is a nice change.
 
Maybe there is some confusion... I host the site, and the old design is also mine. I don't charge for the web-work, I receive commission on the online sales instead. I purposely made the new design similar to old one - the whole point is to have it load faster with the graphics being slightly enhanced (using CSS)
 
I personally like the resizability of the first design better. And I wouldn't worry too much about the bandwidth issues, although it's always good to plan for that. The original site is definitely not a bandwidth hog and should be fine for most dial-up modem users.
 


<< The new content area makes me feel all "scrunchy" It looks like you are going to have to get it in there with a pry bar.

Half of the screen (at my 1024x768) is that black void on the right. You should design it with 800x600 in mind, but that black really draws my eye over to that side, even more with the bright yellow scroll bar being the only thing over there.


Edit: The LOGO stands out more now, that is a nice change.
>>



It is actually designed with 800x600 resolution in mind, when viewed in 800x600 there is no horizontal scroll bar. The total width of the page is 750px. There is actually only 120px of usable black space where I'm going to be putting in many ads for the store's products. Keep in mind there is abosolutely no content in the site yet. The reason the black space extends to fill your screen is to keep the page flowing. I'm actually glad it's drawing your focus to that area... once it has content it will look better... I just hope that it isn't overly-distracting. The beauty about the CSS is all I need to do is change one line and the whole website is altered.

I'm hoping that the content area won't look so scrunchy once there is content in it... I'll just have to wait and see. The white star behind the logo is similar to the packaging the manufactuer uses for their tube baits.

It's funny that I could it the "old site" consider that it's actually the 4th generation. You guys should have seen what it looked like when I took over! LOL :Q
 


<< I personally like the resizability of the first design better. And I wouldn't worry too much about the bandwidth issues, although it's always good to plan for that. The original site is definitely not a bandwidth hog and should be fine for most dial-up modem users. >>



I might consider letting the content area resize itself, but on 640x480 screens it would scrunched to nothing - I would have to remove the black ad bar on the right. When I made the previous site, I did it with 800x600 - and on 1024x768 it still looked okay. But on 640x480 and larger than 1024x768, the layout get's really distorted and messes up the presentation.

As far as bandwidth... we have so many problems in this area it's unbearable. :frown: I'm hoping to get the site to almost instantaneous loading instead of waiting 15 seconds for everything to come up. The first time the owner saw the new site his comments, paraphrased, "The site looks great! Took a long time to load though."
 
I did a quick change with your yellow fade area and think you might want to do something like THIS

It also looks ok with a small black area surrounding the entire site like you see in my pic. It kind of ties the black area to the rest of the site. Feel free to grab the pic off the site, the entire thing is a JPEG.

Just an idea, probably not worth a darn, just like all my others. 😀
 


<< I did a quick change with your yellow fade area and think you might want to do something like THIS

It also looks ok with a small black area surrounding the entire site like you see in my pic. It kind of ties the black area to the rest of the site. Feel free to grab the pic off the site, the entire thing is a JPEG.

Just an idea, probably not worth a darn, just like all my others. 😀
>>



LOL that is so funny, with the pop-n-tube sitting up there. I'm not sure if I'll do that, but I like that.

Way back when I created the old site, I couldn't get my margins set to 0 (I think my Frontpage was screwed up). So originally the entire site had the default white border. If I were to allow a border in that manner, I'd most likely create a top down site with a fixed width body centered in the page. Thanks for the suggestion though.

lol that floating lure is too cute...
 
Do you think that a yellow flow after the 120pt width black bar would look better? Maybe not as contrasted?
 
<<LOL that is so funny, with the pop-n-tube sitting up there. I'm not sure if I'll do that, but I like that.>>

hehe, I have no idea what that lure is, but it had the right colors. The whole thought is to use something with the two colors (yellow, black) and have it do the blending of the two areas for you.
 


<< I like the old one better, but maybe you should pick up a book on webdesign. >>



I'm glad you like the old one, because I built that one as well.

Exactly what do you mean "pick up a book on webdesign"? Is there a flaw in the layout? Did I mess up a W3C standard in the style sheet? After looking over your resume, I'm welcome to any suggestions you offer for the site.
 


<< <<LOL that is so funny, with the pop-n-tube sitting up there. I'm not sure if I'll do that, but I like that.>>

hehe, I have no idea what that lure is, but it had the right colors. The whole thought is to use something with the two colors (yellow, black) and have it do the blending of the two areas for you.
>>



Interesting... if I were to do something like that, I'd probably use a column of the tubes by themselves because of the different colors. It would be difficult to re-arrange the tables just to suit that arrangement... maybe from the border on it would work. I'll keep it in mind.
 
Maybe something one of you guys or gals could help me with...

I'm having problems getting all the padding in tables set to 0 in the style sheet. I use:

table, td, tr
{
padding-top: 0px ;
padding-right: 0px ;
padding-bottom: 0px ;
padding-left: 0px ;
}

For whatever reason, this will only work if I have the table set as:

<table CLASS=setTable cellspacing cellpadding>

If I don't include cellspacing and cellpadding, even without values, the CSS won't adjust the padding.

Anybody know why?
 
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