SITE REVIEW: Sunnyside Galleries

Okay. This site is NOT at its domain yet and some of the form info (like credit card ordering) isn't finished. I would just like a review on design and accessibility, ease of use, appeal, etc. Whatever you can give me would be great!!!!

http://conorific.com/sunny/home.php

It's nice, although a couple of things...

For links to pages you've already visited, the text gets very light and makes it hard to read. Also, links don't look obviously like they are links, so you have to look real close to figure out what you can click on (although, I'm in 1600x1200 resolution, maybe it's easier to spot in a lower res like 800x600).

Other than that, it looks great. I like the way you've laid out your gallery, although, you might want to think about having the images come up in a pop with the previous/next/close buttons, and have the main gallery index stay in the regular browser window. It might work, it might not, but I'd give it a try and see what you can come up with. Just makes browsing that bit quicker (which is important on a site designed to make money).

Yeah, I was thinking about changing the links and I'll be doing that.

I had originally suggested doing that with popups, but that was shot down because of popup blockers. I thought that popup blockers only killed popups that weren't generated by a click, but I decided to be safe rather than sorry.

Thanks!

Links have been changed. Thanks so much.

Popup blockers are starting to become more intelligent these days, and will only block non-interactive popups (that is, popups that just happen without you doing anything).

If you specfically click on a link and a popup comes up because of it, usually they let it go through.

Although, even the "old school" popup blockers that block everything will allow it to go through if the either the Shift or CTRL key is held down whilst clicking.

Something like Google's toolbar works really great. If you go to a site that you know has popups (popups that you want to display), you can click on the popup blocker icon to allow them for that site. It still blocks them for the rest of the world, but it remembers to not block them for sites you've told it to - oh and Google's toolbar only blocks automatic popups (like when a page loads, exits, etc.) not if it pops up as the result of you clicking on something.

Yup, got the Google toolbar and couldn't live without it. But not everyone has that, and I feel it's super important for everyone to be able to access all parts of this site. But thanks for the info! I'll keep it in mind.

The general design is very clean and simple, I like it.

The header graphic does look like it could use a bit of work. The text that says "Glenham, NY" is kind of bumpy(?) around the edges. Also, the S's kind of looked like B's on first glance. Lol, but that's probably just silly little me. The flowers are very lovely, though!

The only other thing: why is there so much empty space between the content and the bottom of the page?

Good luck with it!

THe website is great, as said before it is "clean and simple", and also really easy to navigate. However I saw a couple of minor problems, I visited it at 1280x1024 resolution and the header and navigation bar was not centered on the content of the site. Also the arrows on the order page where you enter the mailing address look distorted. Apart from thise two small points it looks great.

Without all the empty space, the pages would look stupid because they'd be short. But I should decrease the amt. of space. The Glenham NY is distorted because I antialiased it. But if I didn't, it would be almost unreadable.

About the scrollbar...that's got to be your computer because it's just a standard scrollbar in a textarea. I'll work on the centering a bit.

Thanks!

Where's all the artwork from the artists...?

The site is extremely easy to navigate, the only thing that bugs me about the design is that the table resizes itself, I think you should lock it in with the header size, or allow the header to resize with the table...

Other than that it looks wonderful.

It's in Galleries...uhm, yeh.

How do I lock it in? That does sound like it would help...

If it is simply a table(?) in Dreamweaver just change in the properties of the size from "percent" to "pixels" and give it the same width as the header image...

Hope that helps(?),

Thanks!

You are welcome! Let me know if/when you change it, I'd like to see how it comes out...

I like what I found when I got into your site. However, the Home page and About page are bland...almost as if they are two-color. Considering that it is an art-based site--and you have terrific color work shown inside your site--why not get some real color on your Home page at least? Perhaps you can take a work from one of the artists and put it out front.

Otherwise, very nice. I leave the technical stuff to the other posters.