Wedding Website Critique

[steviewdr]

Let me know what your overall impressions are. The inner content has to be finalised and dressed up a bit more.

 

As the client wanted music playing throughout, which would stop/pause when swf videos are playing, and as a "fade" transition was required between pages, I went the ajax/javascript route.

 

If the images dont hold together etc. Id be grateful if you could send on a screen grab and stats. I have yet to do load tests seeing what content loads first etc. I also have some xhtml validation errors to fix up (mainly caused by inline javascript). Anyways, the address is:

 

http://www.burkesys.com/stephen/weddingwebsite/

 

Thanks.

-steve

[obsidian]

Overall, I really like it. I would make one recommendation for the SWF music, though: you can simulate streaming audio in Flash using the loader, and the music starts playing almost immediately instead of the wait that is there currently. Design looks solid to me (XP Pro SP2, FF 2.0.0.6). Looks like you've got everything else covered in your OP.

[steviewdr]

Thanks obsidian.

 

Yes - I will improve on the audio. Either I will tweak the loader/player, or I will have a custom sound file with a nice fade/start to it. Also, currently its a large 2.3MB mp3. The client has his audio file which I will reduce the bitrate of to get to a small size in the region of KB.

 

Cheers,

-steve

[Daniel0]

It looks really good. Try putting outline:none; on the tabs, that'll remove the, well... outline that's created around them when clicking them in Firefox.

[jcombs_31]

Not bad. I would either create a top margin or extend the dark grey to the bottom of the page for consistency.  Are you serving each page with AJAX just for the sake of the music player?  I'm not sure I like that idea, but it works, at least with javascript enabled.

 

I think the background might stand out too much and the content area might be too small. The focus should be on the content, but all I really see is flowers.

 

I'd probably center the footer text instead of putting it all in the corner, looks cramped. I would also take that flash movie that is in a lightbox and just put it directly on the page.  It will also help to fill out the page with more content.

[tarun]

Yeah an maybe a preload on the tabs

 

i can't remember how to do it but a simple google will help.

 

 

heres a couple sites:

http://www.pageresource.com/jscript/jhover.htm

 

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It also THINK it can be used for background images but im not really sure

[steviewdr]

Thanks very much for the info and tips lads.

 

Daniel0: ah! So thats what that is! Seeing as Im going the javascript heavy approach, I threw in: onfocus="this.blur();" to get rid of that outline. Thanks for the wording!

 

jcombs: Yes - ajax is a bit much. The sites I was given to work with were all flash based with nice fade effects, rollovers and the whole kitchen sink!! I hope to have a non-javascript version (I'll probably code it server side) for the search engines.

I get your point totally about how overpowering the flowers are. There is very little content in the pages yet. Yes - I will be putting a nice SWF thumnail/graphic (with a movie reel watermark) on the pages which they are on. Hopefully as the pages will be long (2-3 screens long), it will allow the content to stand out much more, and this combined with nice colourful content will draw the users eye.

With the long pages, the dark grey will always be going to the bottom of the screen.

As for the footer text - yep, it looks very bare on the right. I might simply center align the footer....I'd like something different...we'll see.

 

Cheers for the good tips and info,

-steve