SITE REVIEW: De La Mare Productions

Hi all,

I've just re-designed my website which is for my movie-making company De La Mare Productions. I did the design mostly in PhotoShop and then adding in some features and text in Frontpage (also Expression Web and Dreamweaver). I also edited some of the code using notepad but I do find it easier to have a design view of it when it's a big site full of pictures like this.

Anyway, please let me know what you think. It's finally multi-browser compatible, as the last few ones before that only worked in IE as I used layers and stuff.

http://www.delamarepro.com

Thanks,
Jack

Nobody going to review the site?

I'll have a crack at it.

First impressions: Splash screens are out. Should be able to access forums from main website.

The website is blue overload. I mean, take any cloudless summer day here in Australia, with every inch of sky blue, and it wouldn't even come close to matching the amount of blue you've crammed into that page. Add some colours other than blue and black, and try to keep it simple; we don't need fancy textures and bevels and whatnot.

Frames are out too. Even if they were in I'd recommend expanding the frame on your website, it's very small.

I need some rollovers on the buttons, and not just a change in the shade of blue in the background. Green goes nice with blue, how about the text changes to green on rollover?

Your HTML is invalid, but your CSS is fine.

I'd suggest using <div> instead of tables ... it's cleaner and easier to use and read.

I might add more when I've slept for a while ... I'm soooo tired.

Thanks for the review. Personally I find green ontop of blue looks horrible. I stuck with blue, for the reason that it looks quite good - the dark and light.

I had to make the page small as some PCs still have 800x600 resolution. Like the EEE PC 701 series. It's sad I know, but I wanted it to be viewable on all computers.

I really don't know how to use <div>. I suppose I should readup on it.

And you're saying I should get rid of the splash screen? I wasn't ok with it in the first place as it's not directly in the centre of the page and I couldn't find out how to do this.

I do appreciate your input, and I'll think about making some changes .

Hmmm, well I wasn't talking these deep blue and green ... lighter. I personally think the whole lot of blue and black ugly.

I can't see how anyone could use those little laptops ... it'd put strain on your eyes trying to read it ... urgh. How about a fluid layout then? One that expands and contracts with the screen size?

If you really want to keep the splash, here's how to align it vertically:

Instead of the lonely Div at the top of your page being <div align="center">, change it to this:

I tried the code but I didn't work unfortunately. I did look around and found similar code but no luck. I guess it has something to do with the fact that I designed it in PhotoShop and then saved for web?

took far to long to load and i have a 20meg connection... what would a 1 meg or ever a 56k veiwer see ..

your link is not working for me... I am getting "Connection Interrupted" error...

Website's still live and working fine.

Argh, I hate vertical align, it's so iffy. Some browsers render it differently from others, and there's several different ways to do it ... such a pain in the behind.

Website seems to be working for me. Fast too, and I am on a slow connection here.

How could I change the splash screen to make it in the center then?

You may be seeing a cache of the website stored on your PC. Try to delete the chched files on your PC then look at the site.

Forums should be accessed from website and if you can you should integrate the forums in the site.
Second, i see some problems in the header... some slice is miss placed there above the search box. I guess that's all because that date and time thingy.
The bevel from the header i think is too wide in my opinion and the outer glow text from the footer is hard to read.
One more thing, try to avoid that iframe you have there for the Latest News.

Good luck.

Yeah I've noticed the problems with the date and time. I am unsure why it does this and i've noticed it's only on some browsers. I'm trying to sort it.

I wouldn't be able to remove the iFrame as the news would just stretch the page and it's not built like that. I don't see it as too much of a problem to be honest.

I will work on changing the text so it's easier to read too, thanks .

One quick notice: the page does not look right on Firefox in Linux.

I just checked my EEE PC 1000h with Linux Xandros and it's working fine. Well actually the same thing is happening, where the time and date is spread onto two lines, so it streches down. Is that the error you're getting?