Website Review and Suggestions

**tonya** · 02-03-2009, 06:42 PM

Still finishing - its live but am still working on ironing kinks out - meanwhile some real life feedback might be helpful - there are a few cross browser issues with layout & font & eventually I will strip out the tables that currently hold the thumbnails - advice suggestions or crtique please

http://www.gillianarcherdesign.co.uk

Thanks

**hartofalyon** · 02-03-2009, 10:30 PM

i would rethink the background of your site. having such a large image takes forever to load for someone with a slow connection. especially having a different background image for each section.

green text is a bit difficult to read.

**davemies** · 02-04-2009, 02:50 AM

i agree with the above - otherwise it's a nice looking site that gives the feel of a garden
i think that because the background images are important that i would definitely keep them but maybe soften them a little with a small amount of gaussian blur and compress them a little more so they weigh in more towards the 100kb mark than than 200kb

**thefandango** · 02-04-2009, 06:30 AM

Fade that ackground in photoshop right down to about 10% and gaussian blur it a couple of pixels, to give the hint of garden without overpowering the page.

**algozone** · 02-04-2009, 01:10 PM

Site looks good.
I suggest you show popup first and show that image is loading. Checked in safari.
I could not understand what is going on after I clicked, until popup showed up. It took few seconds.

**tonya** · 02-04-2009, 03:28 PM

Thanks for comments so far - I want to keep the images so I am going to blur them down and reduce the size

Anyone have any comments about the size of the gallery images in collection ? Are they too slow ??

**tonya** · 02-06-2009, 10:26 AM

I have reduced the images now ! Quicker ?????

IE 6 shows no background - it seems to be the png format ? any suggestions ??

**Madman340** · 02-06-2009, 03:01 PM

Fade the image into the background color and export/save as a JPG.

Also, where can I learn how to bring up those picture panels?

**tonya** · 02-06-2009, 06:29 PM

Do you mean the thing where you click on the pictures

Its called lightbox & I see it used a lot around the web these days. It was written by this guy who offered it as free script to use. He has a website & it is really easy to use and reference on your site.

http://www.huddletogether.com/projects/lightbox2/

I have decided to look at using a background colour with code that fades it instead of using a faded graphic & see if that works.

**cgc** · 02-07-2009, 05:31 AM

The graphics design is good but you need to watch the size of the pix (background especially)-try importing the image into coreldrw and then export to achieve some compression.

Redesignating ur "Email" link as "Contact us" might be best suited for d purpose of the link.

Also consider adding an "about us" page.

**PBScott** · 02-07-2009, 07:07 AM

I am not on a very good connection and I found the website fast to load for me, looks good, the White text at the top didnt stand out very well and the green text in the main area mabey could be darkened also, looks good.