Web Site: Need Your Advice.

[Trickster]

I would like to thanks in advance for those who take their time to read this and for those who will give advice.

I've advanced to Nationals for Business Professionals of America in the Web Site Development Team. At state, I won second place. The judges praised the content, but disliked the design. Consequently, I'm designing a new template to store the data. My deadline for completion is March 25, 2003.

New Template: http://www.fbi-hq.com

Now that I'm through with my exposition, here is my dilema. Resolution compatibility is a requisite for high placing. Most preferably the site should work in: 640x480, 800x600, and 1024x768. The site works in 800x600 and 1024x768, but requires massive horizontal scroll in 600x480.

So, would you in my position, resize the images to satiate the 600x800 goal and sacrifice some of the design, or would you leave it to work in the major resolutions: 800x600 and 1024x768, or perhaps you could give me suggestions on how to make it look right on all three resolutions. I've changed from pixels to percents to have only the same bad luck.

Any advice, constructive criticism, or help would be greatly appreciated.

[Force Flow]

Welcome to PCMech, Trickster! :)

Well, first thing is that it loads quite slowly on my dial-up, so you may want to take a look at that. You could compress the jpg's a little bit.

Second, I would just stick with the major resolutions. I haven't seen many computers that use 640x480 anymore; new or old.

Another really critical thing, you may want to use tables and background images to make the entire "box" strech to cover the whole screen sideways.

I'm being extremely critical here, but the area right below the list of links needs some work. You may want to curve it to match the curve of the link bar. That, or just bring it straight down from the corner of the curve or extend the first colored line to the right side end to be flush with the light blue area.

Like I said, I was being extremely critical, but for the most part, it looks pretty good. I really like the C++ logo. ;)

[mairving]

It's not bad but you could make it a little better by:

Doing something with the text in your navs. The text is a little small, maybe making it bolder and changing the font to a Verdana would help. I am not so sure either about the all caps used. Also I would probably have a mouseover effect so that the nav changes on mouseover.
Anti-Alias your curves. There is noticeable jaggedness in the curve that you have next to your navs.
Some other things are harder to evaluate because you don't have any pages. When you do have pages are you going to have then fit in the same space or let the page change in height?


Overall it looks pretty good. As far as the 640x480 debate, only a small percentage (under 5%) are using 640x480. I normally design for 800x600. I guess you need to determine if you will be counted off because it doesn't look good at 640x480. If not, forget about 640x480.

[Force Flow]

Much improved! ;)


As mairving said, you should probably anti-alias your curve on the menu bar and rounded corners.