Comments, feedback

[Socal]

Hi there, how's everyone? I've been pretty busy lately redesigning my site and would like to get some feedback from you geeks ;)

Mostly I'm concerned esp. load times for the gallery pages (from the 'jump to galleries' menu); making sure everything fits and aligns properly, spelling an grammatical, etc.

I've still some tweaking and changes to make but if you have something to note please let me know your internet connection speed (cable/dsl or dialup), browser version and screen resolution. I've done most of my testing in FF and IE, but not Opera, Konqueror, and the rests.

http://thedesignswork.com/

Thanks :)

[hirschY]

:chug:
Looks good from here :)
Very nice, but where is your pic?

I'm using firefox, on cable, with 1024x768

[Socal]

Great, thanks hirschY ;-)

[Sanman]

nice work.
pages load pretty quick on dial up. I am using firefox @ 1280 x 1024

[MDS]

Looking good girl :) It's been a while. I peeked at it with IE 6 with a res of 1024x768 on cable. The pages loaded quick and look nice with no clutter. When I seen you posted up your site changes I figured you had a fancy flash into like your current one or like what you make for digitalmntsnow.com way back when. Something you may consider is if you look at the photo samples in full size have them open in a new window like you have the flash samples do so you don't have to browser back.

BTW you need to peek in more offen

edit: also graphic fullsized does the same as photo full size view

[davidw]

Nice, fast, to the point - good for business - I like it :D
I also note some of Todd's work in there too :)

[Shyguy]

Runs Real good & fast on my end, IE6, & 1280x1024, 3Mb Cable. the gallery links loaded pretty fast.

Great Work!!!:)

[vavega]

hi socal!

i am using firefox, cable, 1024x768 too

should the upper right hand corner "info@thedesginworks.com" be a working link? it's not now.

can you add a name somewhere under contacts? that is one of my pet peeves, there is no clue as to how i should address an email.

under the print link on the left side menu, can you scale the "resident evil" pic to the same size as "image works" right next to it? and then make all of them thumbnails like the graphics page examples? as they stand now, the last 4 are unreadable, and not properly showing off your design skills.

the flash section is harder......you have to click on them to see the animation, can they be scaled down and working? or will that be too much movement? maybe less examples there? and btw...that aquarium one is awesome! ;)

do you do restaurant menus and coupon designs? how about art work for cd's?

[M_Six]

Nice! The older site was cool, but it took a while to load. This one is much more accessible.

I should do something with my site so it looks better, eh? :spank: :o

[GohanSSJ]

Site looks good, loading is good, and i'm very impressed by the editing done on those pictures!

[sharder8]

Hey SoCal --

Opera 8b3, DSL 1.5, 1024x768

Looks GREAT, loads fast . . . .

Only thing that I saw that didn't appear to work, was on the "Webs & Templates". You can see the layouts, but they're all fairly small pic's/thumbnails. It would be nice if you could click on them and see them full size, or at least larger.

Harder

[Socal]

Something you may consider is if you look at the photo samples in full size have them open in a new window like you have the flash samples do so you don't have to browser back.

edit: also graphic fullsized does the same as photo full size view

MDS - The full-sized photos show the 'before' and 'after' view upon mouseover, and goes back to the gallery index upon click. Does it not for you?


(1) should the upper right hand corner "info@thedesginworks.com" be a working link? it's not now.

(2) can you add a name somewhere under contacts? that is one of my pet peeves, there is no clue as to how i should address an email.

(3) under the print link on the left side menu, can you scale the "resident evil" pic to the same size as "image works" right next to it? and then make all of them thumbnails like the graphics page examples? as they stand now, the last 4 are unreadable, and not properly showing off your design skills.

(4) the flash section is harder......you have to click on them to see the animation, can they be scaled down and working? or will that be too much movement? maybe less examples there? and btw...that aquarium one is awesome! ;)

(5) do you do restaurant menus and coupon designs? how about art work for cd's? *enumeration added

Hi vavega, thanks for all the feedback. (1) the upper right e-address is non-linkable, but I'm thinking about linking it also until I can come up with an anti-spam method for all the mailto's.

(2) That's not going to happen unless a serious inquiry comes in. Meanwhile, "Hello" or "Hi" works for me ;-)

(3) Considerable thought and several trials went into size manipulation on all galleries to find the best graphic sizes for pages' uniformity, and not all can be the same size without some becoming distorted. The gallery pages require limited image width due to desgning for an 800x600 audience, keeping FF/IE compatibility, and rendering a properly viewable page.

Loading the full size of a print product (usually an 8.5"x11", 300dpi image) would be prohibitive in load time and most all screen displays. Larger sizes than those shown would result in a bad pageview render again due to image width, and I didn't want a single column due to v-length consideration in adding print jobs in the future. While I agree that as-is the images fail to show detail, one could contact me for a viewing of the full image as they're all published (except for Resident Evil, which was a contest entry [nope, didn't win]).

(4) What exactly is "harder" about the Flash; can which be scaled down - the static images on the gallery iindex [flash_all.html], or the click-through resulting Flash movies?

(5) Sure, I can design restaurant menus and coupon designs. Do you have a restaurant project? Shoot me an email :) I've created a PowerPoint CD presentation for Todd Waite's art; I'll contact him about uploading the presentation. He should have it loaded on his own site, too ;-)

Nice! The older site was cool, but it took a while to load. This one is much more accessible.

I should do something with my site so it looks better, eh? :spank: :o

Hi M_Six - I didn't realize the old site was slow to load. (Why didn't anyone tell me :) ) Hopefully you'll get yours done one of these days, too.

Hey SoCal --

Only thing that I saw that didn't appear to work, was on the "Webs & Templates". You can see the layouts, but they're all fairly small pic's/thumbnails. It would be nice if you could click on them and see them full size, or at least larger.

Harder

Ok, I'll add the full-size webpages open a new window upon click-through from the gallery. Glad to hear on Opera browser feedback, too. Thanks.

Thanks for the feedback, everyone, it's all appreciated! :) I've had this project in development for about a year; lots of mind changing and delays due to time limitations. There's lots wrong with the old site but this new one is improved in many ways.

Ok, got to get to work - I'll check in later!

[MDS]

MDS - The full-sized photos show the 'before' and 'after' view upon mouseover, and goes back to the gallery index upon click. Does it not for you? Umm I think I need to dig my glasses out of storage :) Yes it does work I just overlooked the part about clicking the image.

[Socal]

Ok, the site's gone live, thanks again for your input above and I'm always open to feedback and suggestions.

I've update the link in my first post.

Thanks again :) lol MDS :)

[pain_inbutt]

Hum i clicked on the link useing firefox and said URL dev, cannot be found on this server.

Ah i see she was updating her link when i was probly trying to access it and i did notice the dev was gone now. Have to retry it since im on dialup.

[MDS]

Hum i clicked on the link useing firefox and said URL dev, cannot be found on this server.
No problem here with firefox or IE

Try the link again, I think she was changing it when you posted

[Socal]

Yes, I just uploaded the site and del'd the dev.

http://thedesignswork.com

[pain_inbutt]

Ok works now i'm on dialup at a connection speed of 37Kbps and it takes about 25 to 55 secs for pages to load while going from gallery to gallery and thats with firefox. It all looks great though with resoultion 1024x768 at 85mhz. :)

[Shyguy]

Damn thats a fast refresh rate, 85 Million Times a Second (Cycles), what kind of Display you got there, LOL!!!:D

[vavega]

socal,

wth did you do girl!??? ;) :D yesterday i was looking at a fairly standard website, now i get something completely different!! :eek: oh and so much better :)
well with the exception of those pics, they look like knot's guts after eating easter eggs :P :D

the only 2 frontpage links that work for me are home and portfolio, the rest time out, as does most of the links within portfolio, but i know you're working on them. i do see a weird thing though. this page doesn't display in my screen properly. it's wider ( by say 1/8") than the screen and way too short. say almost a full inch there. is that you or me?

sorry to say, no i don't need menus or cd artwork done up, i was suggesting them to add to your list of services.

[halfwatt]

Looks good

[Socal]

pain~ that's a pretty long wait.. did you find it overly long considering your experience with other sites? It's my hope that the majority of those on dialup are at least 56K..

lol vavega - I think you accessed my old flash site before or during my taking it down; and it sounds liked you preferred it to the new one ;-)

Alas, the 'standard' one is the one that stays :) Perhaps I'll do another flash site in the future. Adding menus and coupons to services is a good idea, thanks.

[Roswell_NX]

yup, the old one looked better...i saved some parts right before you took it down...but i only got like 3 pages

Roswell