December 3, 2008 - 10:07pm
December 17, 2008 - 12:44pm
Slow?
It didn't take long at all to load at work. We have a slightly better than cable speed so consider the source.
Overall I think the look is pretty good but the fonts need a lot of work (in FF). On the front page the fonts are so small that older people will definitely have a hard time reading it and it's not really attractive even with good eyesight. The use of font sizes is inconsistent too... for example on the Life Groups page there are different sizes in the top 2 sections from the rest of the page (style9 and style10 vs. style11) Consistency is key.
I just went into different browsers - in Safari(PC), IE and Chrome the fonts look the same - in Firefox the sizes are different which brings up a good point - it helps to have all popular browsers and check your site in each.
It's a bit of a learning curve but I think you'd be much better served with a full CSS implementation than all the tags HTML uses. Some of the WYSIWYG editors try to fake it but don't do a great job. If you make a slight adjustment to something they will do a whole new class. It is also easier to view, if done right, by special needs folks increasing font sizes or using screen readers.
Also, deep blue on black ("Know Him, Serve Him, Share Him") is probably not a good choice - not enough contrast. I think I'd also darken the red background a bit too - bright red draws the eye to the edges away from the content.
Finally, on the front page under the Christmas Eve under the stars picture you have text centered. That's usually not a good thing because the eye has to hunt for the beginning of each line. In design, as I understand it, it is best to have a solid left border so the brain can just jump back to the start when it hits the end of a line. Robin Williams (not the comedian) has a good book about this kind of thing - The Non-Designer's Design Book" if you get a chance to read it.
Not to be totally critical, I do really like the abundance of graphics and overall layout of the site. It is much better than most of the church sites in my town!
The menus work as desired in Firefox, IE, Safari(PC) and Google Chrome.
Hope it helps!
January 27, 2009 - 12:02pm
a couple simple fixes and one harder one
Overall, the site is pretty clean. A couple things jumped out at me:
The header seems unbalanced. The white background of the logo against the black is really abrupt looking. Also, the dark blue text tends to get lost against the black background. You might find that changing the background color of the header to white helps out.
Big blocks of red can be hard on the eyes after a while. If it were me, I'd try a more muted color for your background (and then use the red for highlights--like you've done well with the menus).
Finally, the JavaScript slide show is nice, but if you want to go back to catch something, you have to wait through the whole rotation. I'd suggest adding a way to navigate through the slide show (even if it's just a simple forward/back button).
Eric
February 5, 2009 - 2:34am
Hi,
some quickies:
there is
Hi,
some quickies:
there is too much centered content on the start page - i am not that typography geek but you really should use centering as "accent" and not as main alignment. Furthermore i am missing some padding for the outer container and i agree - the blue color is not very readable.
If you are looking for a starting point for a new color set- try: http://kuler.adobe.com
(you even can upload images - kuler will find a nice color set within you image)
Chris
Hey Everyone,
Check out: www.crossroadsnsb.org -- this is our third design and we've been using this layout for sometime now. Any feedback would be greatly appricated.
Please note that I do know how the menu bars look in Firefox and Safari, fortunately most of our visitors are using IE but I am working on fixing the problem. If you have any advice on the problem let me know. Thanks --