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Z

zlinuk

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 8, 2008
111
27
UK
Being a bit of an enthusiast, the guys I work with asked me I wanted to have a go at a new site for the company.

If you feel inclined you can see it at http://www.exac-one.co.uk

comments both good and not so good are very welcome.
 
For the market you are going after, I like it. I love how the pic in the middle sets the theme.

The only thing I would change would be the yellow outlines around the left and right panels. Something about the skinniness of them tweaked my eye.

Maybe change the color to light gray?

over all, well done.
 
Thanks for looking (and commenting), it's not until you attempt a "real" project that you realize how big the gaps in your knowledge really are.

I agree with your point with regard to the border, i'll play with the colours tomorrow and see how it compares.
 
Looks very clean and well designed. I haven't designed a web page in a couple years and I've been thinking about getting back into it myself. This is my first mac in well over 10 years. If I may ask what program(s) did you use for the design of this site?
 
Very nice for this kind of site.
I agree with the other guy about the thin yellow lines around the panels.
I'm also curious about how long it took you to make this. What programs did you use. Did you also do the graphic art-work yourself?
Cheers!
 
It looks very nice, and it also seems very easy to navigate. I would also have to agree on changing the yellow outlines on the side, as they were a bit distracting when I tried to focus of the main picture.
 
I also like it :) Very well conceived.

I see the yellow lines have now been changed.

On the right, news section you have a character encoding problem:

Lavendon made a profit margin of 9.1% in 2008 as pre-tax profit lifted to �23m.
Click to expand...

Not sure which character you were going for.

To validate your homepage, you can't have <h4> tags within your <a href=""></a>

For the video library, to validate the flash on the page, see this A List Apart article and change your javascript links to <script type="text/javascript"> rather than <script language="JavaScript">

Also, the contact page is a little light on content... Maybe include a contact form too? Or rather than having the map in the pop-up, move it to main content? (Although I do like the pop-up.)
 
Nice looking site, easy to navigate like others have said.

Are you selling anything? I can't see any prices. I couldn't get the link to the catalogue to work either.
 
Thanks again for all the comments,

bizzo said:
If I may ask what program(s) did you use for the design of this site?
Click to expand...

Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, PremPro, After Effects.

polyethyleneguy said:
I agree with the other guy about the thin yellow lines around the panels.
I'm also curious about how long it took you to make this. What programs did you use. Did you also do the graphic art-work yourself?
Cheers!
Click to expand...

I also agree and the yellow lines have now been replaced with gray. With the images etc, all my work except the main pic on the front page (this is a stripped down version of an ad that we run in the trade press) and the novid / noslideshow images, which were also third party and altered to suit our needs. For timescale, approx 80% of my working hours for 10 weeks.

design-is said:
On the right, news section you have a character encoding problem:

To validate your homepage, you can't have <h4> tags within your <a href=""></a>

For the video library, to validate the flash on the page, see this A List Apart article and change your javascript links to <script type="text/javascript"> rather than <script language="JavaScript">

Also, the contact page is a little light on content... Maybe include a contact form too? Or rather than having the map in the pop-up, move it to main content? (Although I do like the pop-up.)
Click to expand...

The encoding problem has been resolved, everything was UTF-8 so should it have worked ok, however I have changed the asp page and the xsl page to iso-8859-1 and it seems to work properly know.

h4 tags also moved to their correct position.

In the video library, my flash skills are poor by any standard, so i purchased a .fla template and just amended it as required. Having read the "list apart" article i'm not sure I want to start writing actionscript, so on this one we might just have to live without validation (I have now also corrected the js links in the page though)

I also thought that the contact page looked a bit sparse, a contact form might be just the right solution, so thanks for that.

Padaung said:
Are you selling anything? I can't see any prices. I couldn't get the link to the catalogue to work either.
Click to expand...

Pricing in our industry is always a bit fluid and whether or not to include prices on the site was heavily debated, in the end it was decided that we wouldn't, the key aims for the site were, simplicity, ease of navigation and provision of information.

The catalogue link is now fixed (thanks for pointing it out) I had left it linked to a file on the testing domain which no longer exists.

yoyo5280 said:
but has that cliche I used theming feel to it.
Click to expand...

Not a theme and not really my intention to make it look like one, it's more a case of me having the design flair of an amoeba.


Thanks again for all your input.
 
zlinuk said:
Having read the "list apart" article i'm not sure I want to start writing actionscript, so on this one we might just have to live without validation ...
Click to expand...

Sorry, not sure you understood... Here you go, try just replacing...

HTML: 
<object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=8,0,0,0" name="htmlvideolist" width="931" height="500" id="htmlvideolist">
  <param name="allowScriptAccess" value="sameDomain" />
  <param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" />
  <param name="movie" value="htmlvideolist.swf" />
  <param name="menu" value="false" />
  <param name="quality" value="high" /><param name="SCALE" value="noborder" />
  <param name="wmode" value="opaque" />
  
  <!--<param name="bgcolor" value="#deb30e" />-->
  <embed src="htmlvideolist.swf" width="931" height="500" menu="false" quality="high" bgcolor="#161718" name="htmlvideolist" allowscriptaccess="sameDomain" allowfullscreen="true" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" scale="noborder" wmode="opaque" />
</object>

With:

HTML: 
<object type="application/x-shockwave-flash
data="htmlvideolist.swf" 
width="931" height="500">
<param name="movie" 
value="htmlvideolist.swf" />
<p>You need Adobe Flash Player to view this content. Please visit 
<a href="http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/">Adobe's website</a> 
and download this plug-in.</p>
</object>


Hopefully will do the trick. If not, let us know... :)
 
I'll give that a try once i've had my tea, but did the article not state that the movies won't stream (in ie) unless you makes changes to the actionscript.

I assume he means stream or play progressively.
 
Design-is thanks very much, the page now validates and works as planned, I clearly mis-understood what I read.
 
As others have said, for the target market the design really works.

Like the breadcrumb trail, very visible and good for this type of site.

Small point, but that nice image of the "Deadlock" on the front page could be made to load faster. It's currently 204K and I got it down to 40K quite easily in ImageReady with no degradation to my eye.
 
FourCandles, thanks for your comments. I have optimized the image and it is now around 65kb (I used Ps and at higher compression levels I was starting to see artifacts).

All of the JS on the site is third party, some of it purchased and some of it free, the Breadcrumb is courtesy of Nate Baldwin (www.mindpalette.com).
 
Very nice! One comment, though... Is there anything you can do about the font readability on some of the panels? I think these are a little difficult to read...

picture1ffe.png


Either way, good job!
 
Really nice site. I especially like the navigation. It's very easy to use even on a section like Products which has a ton of items.
 
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