SCUBA Services, Travel, and Gear Ratings Site

[oxcrab]

Feedback/criticism welcome on all aspects - design/layout, features, functionality, what works, what's broken, overall, etc.

Please visit: [a href=\"http://www.scubaratings.com\" target=\"_blank\"]ScubaRatings[/a]

Thanks,

Oxcrab

[AV1611]

Well, I needed Sunglasses to view it LOL...

[oxcrab]

[!--quoteo(post=351503:date=Mar 3 2006, 10:18 PM:name=AV1611)--][div class=\'quotetop\']QUOTE(AV1611 @ Mar 3 2006, 10:18 PM) [snapback]351503[/snapback][/div][div class=\'quotemain\'][!--quotec--]
Well, I needed Sunglasses to view it LOL...
[/quote]

Thanks for your input AV. So, that's one down for visual considerations... I derived the color scheme from this photo I took while diving in Santa Ana, CA.

[img src=\"http://scubaratings.com/images/PA231647_sm2.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"IPB Image\" /]

I ruled out design ideas that were chiche for SCUBA sites - Overuse of blue/water/bubbles. Didn't want to forfeit style either by just giving in to white. Maybe a hundred palettes were extracted from photos (used photos to obtain color combination that occur in nature... occur naturally, like your mistakes ;)) from above and below water. The scheme that's in place now was chosen for its unique blend of 4 natural colors and vibrance.

Anyone interested in how I extracted a color palette from my photos can visit here:
[a href=\"http://www.jrm.cc/color-palette-generator/\" target=\"_blank\"]Color Palette Generator[/a]. You can upload your own pics or select from hundreds in their drop-down list.

Other opinions - too bright? Just right?

[frustrated]

I personally don't like the yellow. I think you should change it to a shade of blue..maybe the blue color that borders the oval box on your home page. Blue would seem a better color to me for a scuba site.

[oxcrab]

[!--quoteo(post=352384:date=Mar 6 2006, 11:03 PM:name=frustrated)--][div class=\'quotetop\']QUOTE(frustrated @ Mar 6 2006, 11:03 PM) [snapback]352384[/snapback][/div][div class=\'quotemain\'][!--quotec--]
I personally don't like the yellow. I think you should change it to a shade of blue..maybe the blue color that borders the oval box on your home page. Blue would seem a better color to me for a scuba site.
[/quote]

Your opinion is appreciated, frustrated. Here's what it looks like in blue (also changed the light yellow bg to white): [a href=\"http://www.scubaratings.com/browse/index_blue.php?t=on\" target=\"_blank\"]http://www.scubaratings.com/browse/index_blue.php?t=on[/a]

Continued input welcome...

[roseplant]

Is the line 'this page took x seconds to process' really necessary?

[AV1611]

I thinks the colors an hi contrast from blue to white are WONDERFUL!

This either need to go away or become VER small and obscure... you can do white font on white background and hide it, or log it or eliminate it...
This page needed 0.700 seconds to process

[oxcrab]

[!--quoteo(post=358689:date=Mar 26 2006, 06:10 PM:name=AV1611)--][div class=\'quotetop\']QUOTE(AV1611 @ Mar 26 2006, 06:10 PM) [snapback]358689[/snapback][/div][div class=\'quotemain\'][!--quotec--]
I thinks the colors an hi contrast from blue to white are WONDERFUL!

This either need to go away or become VER small and obscure... you can do white font on white background and hide it, or log it or eliminate it...
This page needed 0.700 seconds to process
[/quote]


Thanks AV. Someone else also mentioned 86'ing the process script. That was intended for development and just didn't get stripped out. Gone now.

EVERYONE... PLEASE say something! My server logs show tons of visits and not much discussion. My hope is that's because it's perceived as well done. Even if it seems minor, please provide your feedback.

[moberemk]

What's up with your page stretching the entirety of the window and then some? In Firefox 1.5 1280x1024, the page just keeps going down for a while even though it's only whitespace.

[ober]

Oh where to start?

1) 90% of the text is bold. Bold should be used sparingly at best. Reading bold text is annoying and how are you going to make something stand out? Changing the color is nice, but changing bold color just looks tacky.

2) I'm not really keen on your seperator lines. They're too thick and you're really wasting bandwidth if those are images (I assume they are).

3) Get some more action out the nav. The color change is so slight that you barely notice it. Change the background color, swap some borders... do something.

4) Your CSS file has to be one of the biggest CSS files I've EVER seen. With that much detail, you should have a much better looking site. Your main layout CSS file should be less than 4KB. Anything more than that and your HTML is going to show up before your styling... and people on slower connections (or if your server slows down for some reason) are going to see a really horrible looking page until your CSS file arrives. You can split it up and only include certain CSS files on certain pages. I noticed you had a lot of sections for specific content. You should only be including that CSS on the relevant pages!

5) If the logo didn't say it was a scuba site, I never would have guessed that. Get some pictures up there of someone under water. Throw some scuba gear in the background... do something to make me think in my head later that that is the site I want to be at for finding diving locations, etc. Right now it's just a bunch of text and lines. BORING.

6) Get a footer. Right now your main content just hangs there ... close it up with some copyright info or an extra link to the contact info or something about who designed it.

I hope that helps.