AppleSplash.com - Thoughts and Criticisms Appreciated!

[XIII]

Hi.

I help run, and own, AppleSplash.com. We have been through a lot of designs, and I finally think my friend Jack has created a great looking design and layout.

AppleSplash is based upon the K2 WordPress theme, and then heavily adapted to our purposes.

What we need are views on AppleSplash's content, and design. Criticisms are needed just as much, if not more, than compliments. Also, views on the overall site - content, style, and everything else, would be great.

The link to AppleSplash is here. Please have a look around, and leave us your thoughts.

Thanks very much!

EDIT: A couple of small screenshots:

[XIII]

Bump?

[Mr. Durden]

I think it looks nice. I only spent a minute checking it out, gotta get back to "work", but from what I saw it looks great. I'll go back when I have a little more time.

[XIII]

Originally Posted by Mr. Durden

I think it looks nice. I only spent a minute checking it out, gotta get back to "work", but from what I saw it looks great. I'll go back when I have a little more time.

Thanks very much.

Originally Posted by TechZone

Clean and nice looking website .. Good job

Same to you, thankyou.

Originally Posted by thedude110

I wish the look spanned the entire horizon of the page. The large, gray margins aren't getting it done for me.

I love the scroll over comments.

Its designed to be able to be viewed on smaller monitors aswell as big ones. 1024*768 is very common. I will mention your comment to Jack, who designed this, and we'll see what we can do. Thanks for your feedback.

Jessica, that was just what I was looking for, thanks a lot. I understand the possible legal issues with the site.. The background didn't seem like a big one to me, but the Apple logo, yes, it may have to be changed. We have some stuff that we can use, revolving around a splash idea, which could easily be substitued. I guess the background could be changed too, but it is what the colour scheme for the site it derived from, so it would be a big change. We will look at it, thanks.

Having read you comments on the sections, yes, I agree in a lot of aspects. The front page is not just news.. its just most of what is posted is news. Whatever is posted goes there.. reviews, articles, tips, anything. Tips refers to tricks.. useful info, things we think a Mac user may like to know. I agree on articles and reviews being combined.. They are really fairly similar. Site news and news again, as we don't post much in site news, could probably be combined. I don't know about forums, we tried to make a site that didn't need forum rivalry and vigorous "recruitment", but if we are getting the visitors anyhoo, we may open up a forum, although one which we don't have to maintain too much. Also - what does SOP stand for? Thanks.

Your comments were helpful, I'll talk to Jack about the copyright issues. Anything else like this from anybody is exactly what we're looking for - thanks.

Anyone else just reading this that hasn't left their thoughts yet - do! We need all the opinions we can get. Thanks.

[thedude110]

I wish the look spanned the entire horizon of the page. The large, gray margins aren't getting it done for me.

I love the scroll over comments.

[jessica.]

Generally when someone designs a website and then asks for opinions, the first time someone says anything negative about it the creator gets mad and the person responding is flamed. Therefore, here is my 2 cents and take it as negative or positive, but know that I am not here to support a site, but I am here to give you some insight into the world of design...as I see it.

The design is great, I love the look and feel, probably because it's something that I am familiar with. Also, I don't need to adapt to anything because it has the look and feel of a mac GUI. That is probably because it has elements from said GUI.

From a "legal" or protected works point of view. The background that you have on your header image is Apple's. The Apple logo, well it's Apple's too. The top bar the white, you can't really "claim" it as anyones, but we all know what the rounded menu bars look like. The aqua button, nice, but Apple's. The site is great, it feels and looks good. It flows nicely and is probably one of the easier sites to look at. But, if you plan on going forward with it you might have to change the background and the apple logo. The rest is probably safe.

I hope the site takes off.

The Home page is the news page, maybe you can combine that somehow and free up one page. The rumors page is like the news page, but I can see why you'd want to let that one stand alone. The site news and the news, it's possible those can be combined, but I guess that is a matter of preference and it also matters just how much news, rumors, and site news you plan on having. Tips was easy to understand until I clicked it and it seems like there is a sort of "heads up" or "news" about discounts and then there is a tip on popups in Safari. Are tips meant to be tips on how to do things or tips such as heads up to things happening? If so, is a heads up also a news article? I don't know really. Your reviews look great, I love the overall look of them. I didn't read them, but I like how they look. Articles...again it's kind of redundant, but maybe it's not. Articles are like news and maybe even reviews, but they're articles? I don't frequent enough mac sites to know if this is SOP for them, or if you believe articles will be used for --- news, and news is like ... new news?

Does that make sense? If it were my site (which I know it's not) I would have, home which is your news/current events, rumors, tips (as in tutorials or "hey just found this out in the newest release of tiger"), reviews, and then I'm sure you'll add forums--which seems like it's SOP for sites today. I can't tell you more that I love the layout, but from an ethical standpoint, using Apple's logo and wallpaper seems a bit dodgy at best.

I didn't know wordpress looked that good, I use movable type and it's not nearly as nice...but that could be user error.

[dornoforpyros]

wow, another blog based on os x, horray!

sorry, that was rude, but I have trouble giving an opinion on a design that is 90% based on an OS I use every day. I mean you wouldn't build a site that looks like windows and be like "don't you love my mad design skills?"