www.sednaband.com

i didnt even know that this section existed until today..

first site - www.sednaband.com

the opening popup is a quick temporary attention getter. if i could complain about this layout, it would be that some of the text is hard to read... but i'm not trying to sell a product. im trying to put quick info on a site that is supposed to artistically represent the tone of my band. let me know what you think..

second site - www.afootahead.com

this site was a lot of fun to make because there were a lot of challenges. i wanted to make it look as "user interfaced" as possible by using only html, a little javascript, and a whole bunch of css. i didnt make any of the large graphics.. i just took the band's idea and coded it.. i think they were pretty happy with it.. what do you guys think?

I like the first website, nice layout, quick loading. A couple of suggestions, if i may: i found the black text a bit hard to read on the orange background like you mentioned and while i appreicate the artistic intent it did make it harder for me to recognize what the site was for; i don't know if you need the visitor number thing, personal preference i guess.

For the second site, i like the background graphic quite a lot, adds a very unique flavour to the site. I'm not too big of a fan of the colour scheme and text fonts though - otherwise it's good layout which is easy to navigate. Also, i don't think the contact thing needs to be a popup..can't it just open in the little window like the other links?

ok first, sednaband:

a) your popup doesn't show anything - I get a broken image.
b) I really like the design even if some of the text is hard to read.
c) It'd be nice if the email address box cleared itself when you click on it, like the search box at the top of the forum
d) the top white nav buttons are hard to notice - I didn't spot them for a few minutes
e) your image gallery popup takes a long time to load the thumbnails or large picture. isn't it easier just to use the iframe style you've used around the rest of the site with pure HTML/CSS for the gallery?
f) all in all its a cool site well done...

now, a foot ahead:
a) again the email box autoempty
b) the scrollbars got some funky JS going on there? In firefox I can't seem to use the scrollbars as it won't let me and just jumps around up and down the iframe - i can use the buttons though. for something like this I prefer the scrolling buttons on sedna.
c) you've got a very slight horizontal scroll on the main box that looks stupid - perhaps forcing the text with or no horizontal scrolling allowed or something to stop that.
d) The main white backgrounds with very slight image don't fit in that well IMHO. Increasing the image behind it to make it a bit more like SEDNA may work better?
e) the forum opens in a new window - bad thing

HTH,
computer

thanks a lot for the comments, you guys. everything that was critiqued wrong on afootahead.com were just about all suggestions that i made to the guys in that band (its not my band). .the white windows were their concept. i wasnt a big part on the idea.. like i said.. i coded it only.. but it does help me realize a lot that should be done.

as far as the sedna site (my band) - thats weird that i didnt get any negative things about the auto scrolling at the bottom of the window. i've had people telling me they hate those things. i really dont like the looks of a scrollbar in a site as artistically busy as that, so i wanted to use images. i do like to keep a little text counter up to remind people of how my band's site gets way more attention than a big majority of other local dallas bands.. also, i want to find a new and fresh way to do a picture gallery.. using the flash component was a bad idea and i dont think i'll be using it in the future. it had to be in a pop-up because the iframes on both websites were not wide enough to have a gallery that wide in it.

the feedback was a lot more positive than i expected, so thanks! you made my day

i'll be posting back in this thread soon for a website that should be launching within the next couple of weeks. its an online store, so there are over 150 full pages that i just finished.

and while i'm thinking about it.. im going to put in that script to make the box clear out on the click.. i didnt even think about that.

thanks again
-shawn